ON THE MEANING OF OLD TIBETAN RJE-BLON DURING THE TIBETAN EMPIRE PERIOD
BY
CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH AND MICHAEL L. WALTER*
The compound rje-blon occurs many times in Imperial period Old Tibetan texts. According to Tibetan rules of derivation it may mean ‘lord minister’, ‘lord’s minister’, ‘lords and ministers’, etc. It has traditionally been interpreted to mean ‘a lord and his ministers’, with the first element rje referring to the ruler—in most cases, the Tibetan emperor. That is, the term has hitherto been taken to include the paramount ruler (usually the Tibetan emperor, the btsanpo) and put him on the same level with his ‘ministers’. As shown below, the violence this traditional interpretation of rje-blon does to Imperial period Old Tibetan rulership terminology is extreme. It also necessitates extremely odd grammatical reference when the compound is used, as it often is, linked by the coordinative conjunc- tion dang to the name or title btsanpo, as in a sentence of the SAMYE inscription, lines 18-20 (Li and Coblin 1987: 188): | btsan po yab sras dang rje blon gun gyis dbu snyung dang bro | bor ro | Richardson (1985: 30), following the above interpretation, translates this as: The btsan-po, father and son, ruler and ministers all have so sworn. Li and Coblin (1987: 190) translate it even more oddly as: The btsan-pos, father and son, and the ruler and ministers have all sworn on their heads and avowed it. Despite the strange results typically produced when this interpretation is followed, it has been applied to all instances of rje-blon’s occurrence, includ-
* Indiana University, Bloomington.
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ing the Tibetan version of the bilingual portion of the Sino-Tibetan Treaty inscription (henceforth, ‘the TREATY inscription’) erected in 823 in Lhasa. Scholars who have worked on the TREATY inscription have almost completely ignored the parallel Chinese text1. In the Tibetan version of the concluding portion of the inscription rje-blon corresponds to the Chi- nese version’s 君臣 jun-chén. This has been interpreted as support for the received translation of rje-blon as ‘a lord and his ministers’2 or, even more extremely, in Li and Coblin’s glossary, as “rulers and subjects”, even though the glossary reference is precisely to the one with the explicit Chinese equivalent3. In their translation of the passage in which the Tibetan term occurs, Li and Coblin (1987: 80) give it as “sovereigns and ministers”, following the usual explanation. This passage of the TREATY inscription, West face lines 71-72 (Li and Coblin 1987: 40), reads: || ‘dï ltar bod rgya gnyïs kyï rje blon gyis kha cïg bshags4 mná bor te || gtsïgs kyï yï ge zhïb mor brïs nas || rgyal po chen po gnyïs kyï ni phyag rgyas btab || This is translated by Li and Coblin (1987: 80) as: Thus the sovereigns and the ministers of both Tibet and China together declared and swore an oath. After the text of the treaty was accurately writ- ten, the two rulers affixed their seals. Richardson (1985: 127) translates it as: Thus the rulers and ministers of both Tibet and China declared, and swore the oath; and the text having been written in detail it was sealed with the seals of both great kings.
1 Li and Coblin (1987) do not even bother to translate it. See also note 4. 2 Li and Coblin (1987: 399). 3 Li and Coblin (1987: 399). For all other citations listed in their glossary they translate it as ‘rulers and ministers’. 4 Scholars’ readings of this portion of the text (given here in Roman type) do not agree. Richardson (1985: 126) has zhal gyïs bshags for these three syllables, and he glosses the hapax legomenon bshags as “avow, declare” (Richardson 1985: 177). Although his read- ing and interpretation may seem better, his text is very far from being a critical edition. We have given the text verbatim as it is in Li and Coblin (1987: 40) and repeat here (see Walter and Beckwith, forthcoming) that we have no access to photographs or rubbings of the inscriptions other than the execrable samples provided by Richardson (1985) and oth- ers. We hope that one of the many Tibetologists, including Tibetans, Chinese, and others, who now live in or frequent Tibet will eventually ameliorate the situation somewhat.
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The corresponding Chinese text of this passage of the TREATY inscrip- tion, West face (lines 27-28 as presented in Li and Coblin 1987: 77) reads5: 蕃漢君臣並稽告立誓周細爲文 二君之驗證以官印 This may be translated as: The lords and ministers of Tibet and China prostrating themselves declared and standing upright swore [the oath]. They accurately wrote the text [of the treaty]. They used their official seals to mark its verification by the two lords. Are we to envisage the emperors of Tibet and China kowtowing (稽), performing the menial task of “carefully writing the text” of the treaty, and finally checking it and affixing their official seals to mark their veri- fication of the text? Did the Tibetan and Chinese emperors actually meet in person somewhere at some point in time—perhaps in another dimen- sion, so their meeting went unnoticed by the fastidious Chinese chroni- clers—and do all these things? The extreme unlikelihood of any of this compels us to argue that the traditional interpretation of rje-blon is wrong. In order to solve the problem it is first necessary to discuss the indi- vidual Old Tibetan terms for some members of the Imperial ruling class. It has been pointed out long ago that there is a sharp distinction between btsanpo and rgyalpo in Imperial period Old Tibetan documents. Contem- poraneous early medieval international linguistic evidence confirms that btsanpo meant ‘emperor’, not ‘king’6, and recent work has only rein- forced our understanding of the differences between them7. The use of
5 According to the text as presented by Li and Coblin, there is a long space before 蕃, a long space between 文 and 二, and no space after 印. However, it is uncertain if the stone is so inscribed, because the authors (both well-known Sinologists) give no explicit statements as to to the actual line layout of the original, and in fact say nothing else what- soever about the Chinese text of the West face, except for a few indirect comments in their discussion of the Tibetan text of the West face. Li (1956) also says nothing about the Chinese text per se. He and Coblin use it almost exclusively as a sort of glossary for the Old Tibetan text. Richardson (1985), not being a Sinologist, does not discuss the Chinese text, but explicitly remarks that he has relied entirely on Li’s (1956) edition and translation of the TREATY inscription for information on the Chinese text. 6 Beckwith 1993: 14-15 n. 10. 7 Walter (2009); Beckwith (2009, and forthcoming). The distinction is preserved even in some early post-Imperial texts such as the RKONGPO inscription, though most post-
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rgyalpo in the Sino-Tibetan Treaty inscription might seem to be an exception, but it actually is not. The text never uses the word alone to refer to the Tibetan and Chinese emperors. It always occurs together with chenpo ‘big, great’ in the expression rgyalpo chenpo ‘great king’, which is clearly an innovative title used in this text to indicate diplomatically the status of equality between the emperors of China and Tibet. According to the early medieval world view, which was shared by all the great empires across Eurasia, the title ‘emperor’ actually referred to ‘the one legitimate ruler over the entire world’8. As a result, neither the title btsanpo in Tibetan nor the title 皇帝 huángdì in Chinese could be used for any other empire’s ruler. The titles were unique and culturally specific: the Tibetan title could only be used in official documents for the Tibetan ruler, and similarly the Chinese title could only be used for the Chinese ruler. Indeed, Chinese texts always refer to the Tibetan supreme ruler as btsanpo (in Chinese transcription usually 贊普 zànpu), the Türk supreme ruler as kaghan (Chinese 可汗 kehán), etc. Because neither huángdì nor btsanpo are neutral titles—they were used exclu- sively for the paramount ruler of their respective countries—it was dip- lomatically necessary to find culturally neutral titles for ‘emperor’ to use in the bilingual TREATY inscription. Chinese 君 jun ‘lord’ is a neutral term that can be used for any ‘lordly person’, regardless of rank, includ- ing an emperor, so it was unnecessary to create a new term to refer to an ‘emperor’ in Chinese. In Tibetan, the solution was rgyalpo chenpo—lit- erally, ‘great king’—meaning ‘emperor [of any empire]’. It must be emphasized that btsanpo is never, ever used in Tibetan, Chinese, or any other language for any other ruler except the Tibetan emperor. In accord- ance with the early medieval political worldview shared by all the great empires of Eurasia, to the Tibetans all other rulers were (or should have been) by rights the subjects of the Tibetan emperor, regardless of whether or not they actually were under the political control of the Tibetan Empire. Moreover, rgyalpo ‘king’ in Imperial period texts is used more or less exclusively for neutral or positive reference to the ‘rulers of the four directions’, who were nevertheless still viewed as subordinate to the
Imperial texts reveal their youth by using rgyalpo ‘king’ anachronistically to refer to the emperor. See Walter and Beckwith (forthcoming). 8 See Beckwith (1993: 14-15 n. 10).
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btsanpo. For these reasons another term had to be found for ‘other’ rul- ers, those who had actually submitted, perhaps under duress, and those who needed to be forced to submit—including the ruler of China. The literal meaning of the Old Tibetan terms for rulers and other pow- erful men deserves some attention. The traditional explanation of btsanpo is based on the explanation given in the Chinese sources, which take it as a compound formed from an adjective *tsan ‘strong’ + *pho ‘male. However, it has been rightly objected that the Old Tibetan word meaning ‘strong, firm’ is regularly spelled brtsan, not btsan in Imperial period texts9. The meaning of btsanpo is thus uncertain or unknown. Neverthe- less, its form is clear. Old Tibetan /po/ (indiscriminately spelled
9 Li (1956: 58) notes: “HTS (216a/1) gives an etymology for this title: Tsan ‘mighty 疆雄’ and p’u ‘male, hero 丈夫’…” and comments, “in this inscription the word for ‘mighty’ is consistently written as brtsan, never as btsan.” 10 As is now well known, there was no phonemic distinction between the unaspirated and aspirated stops and afficates in Imperial period Old Tibetan, in which language they occurred in complementary distribution. Although some have argued that there was a phonemic distinction between them in Old Tibetan, it only begins to appear in documents written after the Imperial period, when the phonemic distinction began shifting from the Old Tibetan one of a voiced : unvoiced opposition (in which the unvoiced obstruents had unaspirated and aspirated allophones) to the New (Central dialect) Tibetan one of unaspi- rated : aspirated opposition (in which the unaspirated obstruents have unvoiced and voiced allophones). The problem here, as in many other issues involving Old Tibetan, is scholars’ failure to periodize their texts, q.v. Walter and Beckwith (forthcoming).
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Tibetan and foreign contemporary sources attest that the Tibetan Empire’s leading officials, including ministers, generals, and whatnot, bore the title blonpo or blon. Finally, it is known that subordinate rulers of any sort—kings, princes, feudal lords, etc.—were generally referred to as rje ‘lord(s)’. The title rje is never used alone, as a noun, to refer directly to the Tibetan emperor in Imperial period texts. In fact, the word could not be used to refer to the btsanpo because he was, by definition, not subordinate to anyone. Yet rje frequently occurs in Old Tibetan texts as the title of the Chinese ruler, in the compound rgya rje (lit., China-lord) ‘the Chinese lord’. In Tibetan, pace Li and Coblin, this very definitely does not mean ‘the Chinese emperor’; the title is unambiguously a term for a vassal of Tibet11. Its conventional Chinese translation 漢君 ‘the Chinese lord’, is, by contrast, not a subordinate term—within Chinese 君 ‘lord’ has no subordinate meaning whatsoever—so it is used correctly (though it has a rather poetic flavor) in the Chinese text of the TREATY inscription, West face, line 3, to refer to the Chinese emperor. The word rje ‘subordinate ruler, feudal lord’ is obviously not an adjec- tive by form. In Classical Tibetan it is homophonous with two other roots, with various meanings. Of them, the etymological relative of rje is clearly the noun rjes, which in early Old Tibetan regularly has the nom- inal meaning ‘following’12. It occurs in this sense in the post-Imperial period ZHWA’I LHAKHANG inscription, West face line 10, in the com- pound rjes ‘bangs, translated correctly by Li and Coblin (1987: 265, 399) as ‘followers and subjects’. The word rje ‘subordinate ruler, feudal lord’ thus ultimately means ‘follower’, in the medieval sense of a member of a ruler’s ‘following’ or retinue13.
11 Li and Coblin (1987: 84 n.3) comment, “Rgya-rje is a designation in this inscription and some early documents for the Chinese Emperor and is therefore so translated.” On the same page they discuss the Tibetan title of “the Tibetan ruler,” and in their bibliogra- phy they cite Pelliot (1961), in which a Tun-huang glossary is published that defines btsanpo in Chinese as ‘Tibetan emperor’. Nevertheless, they refer to him throughout the book as a “king.” It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that their interpretation has unscholarly motivations. 12 It occurs in the TREATY inscription (once), the Old Tibetan Annals, and other Impe- rial period texts, always in this meaning. It is often translated as “after”, but in the Tibetan language—even in modern Tibetan—rjes is a noun. 13 The other basic root meaning of rje is as a verb meaning ‘to change’. It is interesting
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The compound rje-blon is formed from two constituents, rje ‘subordi- nate ruler, feudal lord’ and blon ‘high official, minister’, and accordingly should mean ‘lords and high officials’. This agrees with the Chinese equivalent of rje-blon in the TREATY inscription, 君臣 jun-chén ‘lord(s) and official(s)’, which due to the lack of much overt grammatical mark- ing in that language is ambiguous. It could mean ‘the ruler and (his) ministers/officials’, ‘lords and ministers/officials’, ‘feudal lords and min- isters/officials’, and even ‘ministers of a lord’. Although Classical Chi- nese texts are typically highly abbreviated and laconic, in this case we happen to have a Tibetan version, though the intertextuality of this bilin- gual text has not hitherto been treated carefully, if at all, so its meaning has unfortunately been misunderstood. In the TREATY inscription, Chinese 君臣 jun-chén certainly does cor- respond to Tibetan rje-blon, so that 君 jun does correspond to rje, in this term. Scholars therefore have equated the individually occurring mean- ing, in Chinese, of 君 jun with the meaning in Tibetan of rje. Yet in the very next line of the very same text 君 jun actually occurs alone in the Chinese version, and here it corresponds not to rje but to rgyalpo chenpo ‘emperor’ (lit., ‘great king’) in the Tibetan version. This is not an acci- dent. The text as a whole was very carefully crafted by a joint committee of Chinese and Tibetan diplomats14 whose peace-making work was of great urgency due to the difficult times15. There are no diplomatic gaffes in the treaty. The difference in usage here is thus highly significant. Because neither rje nor any other term for a subordinate ruler could ever be used to refer to the Tibetan emperor, and the diplomats certainly understood that16, it was necessary to use rgyalpo chenpo, the neutral term for ‘emperor’, here. The sharp distinction thus clearly rules out the interpretation of rje-blon as ‘the emperor and his ministers’. It also tells us that rje-blon does after all follow Tibetan grammatical rules, and the
to note that many of the examples of this word in Jäschke’s (1881) dictionary are involved with death, and suggest the fate of comitatus members, who were of course the core of any medieval Central Eurasian lord’s retinue. On the Tibetan comitatus see Beckwith (1984) and Walter (2009); on the Central Eurasian comitatus in general, see Beckwith (2009). 14 See the comments of Li (1956). 15 See Beckwith (2009: 157-162). 16 See the discussion of the meaning of btsanpo above.
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referents do in fact follow Imperial-period Old Tibetan semantic con- straints: rje-blon must mean ‘(feudal) lord(s) and (high) official(s)’ or the like. Its equivalent in Chinese, 君臣 jun-chén ‘lord(s) and official(s) [or minister(s)]’ could have either or both meanings in this case—i.e., either ‘(subordinate) lord(s) and (high) official(s)’ or ‘ruler(s) and minister(s)’— because in Chinese 君 jun is ambiguous; it does not have the sense of specifically ‘subordinate ruler’ but simply that of ‘lord’. It is in fact a highly respectful term for any man. It certainly can refer to an emperor, but it is often used to refer to an ordinary non-governmental ‘gentleman’, and in T’ang Chinese, at least, it was also colloquially used as a polite second person pronoun, ‘you’17. For Chinese, 君 jun is thus a politically and culturally neutral or ambiguous term, but a respectful one, for any man, including a ruler of any kind. That is why it is used, alone, in the second part of the passage cited. It is only Old Tibetan that had previ- ously lacked a politically and culturally neutral or ambiguous respectful term for ‘ruler’, thus necessitating creation of the new term rgyalpo chenpo18. In the South face of the ZHOL inscription the rje in rje-blon might be argued to refer to the Chinese emperor, following earlier interpretations, even though his title and reign name are given in full, followed by dang ‘and’, before the occurrence of rje-blon19. Indeed, Li and Coblin (1987:
17 See for example the famous T’ang poet 杜甫 Tu Fu’s poem 兵車行 ‘Ballad of the War-Wains’. 18 The title rgyalpo chenpo ‘great king’ was probably based on the Sanskrit model maharaja ‘great king, emperor’, which the Tibetan officials, the head of whom was a Buddhist monk, certainly would have known. 19 Even the post-Imperial RKONGPO inscription, line 20 (Li and Coblin 1987: 199) casts doubt on the received view of rje-blon. The passage reads: || lha sras || yab kyi bkás || gnang ba bzhin du || lha sras lde srong gï sku ring la // rje // blon mol te / bkás || gnang ngo // This is translated by Li and Coblin (1987: 207) as, “According to what was granted by command of the Son of the Gods, the father, (now) in the time of the Son of the Gods, Lde-srong, ruler and ministers having consulted, by decree it is so granted.” It is translated by Richardson (1985: 71) as, “In accordance with the order to that effect by the divine prince the father, so it was decreed by order in the time of the divine prince Lde-srong, the son, after consultation between ruler and ministers.” But after the btsanpo has given his orders (bká), it makes no sense for them to be discussed all over again between the ruler and his advisors—a point obscured by Richardson’s inaccurate rendering. The text thus says that the discussion was among the feudal lords (rje) and high officials (blon). Note that this inscription cannot be from the Imperial period, so its contents are not his- torical; for its dating and interpretation see Walter and Beckwith (forthcoming).
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144) do translate the relevant part of the passage in this way, as: “…the Chinese Emperor He‘u-‘gi ‘wang-te20 (perhaps for Su-tsung), both the Emperor and his ministers, being afraid…” This does not, however, con- stitute a counter-example, because throughout the ZHOL inscription the Chinese ruler is never referred to with a Tibetan word that could be translated as anything like ‘emperor’. He is always called Rgya rje ‘the Chinese feudal-lord (vassal)’—that is, he is always referred to as a rje, a lower-ranking feudatory subordinate to the Tibetan Emperor, according to the well-established but much-overlooked early medieval world-view discussed above. Moreover, even in this ZHOL passage, the traditional interpretation of rje-blon does not work. The passage introduces the history of the refusal of the son of the Chinese ruler Su-tsung (rgya rje sras) to pay tax-tribute to the Tibetan emperor Khri Srong Lde Brtsan, and the sub- sequent Tibetan military campaigns to force the Chinese to submit again. It thus tells us explicitly that the Chinese ruler was like the T’u- yu-hun ruler, the ‘Azha rje (i.e., the ‘ ‘Azha lord’) in Tibetan eyes: both were rje, petty feudal rulers who were subordinate to their overlord, the Tibetan Emperor, and were required to pay tribute to him. The ZHOL passage in question (South face lines 46-47), reads (Li and Coblin 1987: 144): rgya rje he‘u ‘gï ‘vang te rje blon skrag ste Following the above analysis, and noting especially that rje-blon is actually an additive compound in Tibetan, this passage is to be trans- lated as:
20 Li and Coblin transcribe the ligature at the beginning of the third syllable of this name or title as ‘w and comment (Li and Coblin 1987: 140), “Uray (1955) has shown that the current letter w- is actually derived from an earlier combination of ‘- plus subscribed w, and he suggests ‘w- as the paleographical transliteration of this combination.” However, the combination is of the letter ‘ (better transcribed as 2 or Ì) and the letter b, together making an Old Tibetan ligature that is accurately transcribed as ‘v (better, 2v or Ìv or the like). This ligature was pronounced [2w] or [gw] in Old Tibetan. It has come to be pro- nounced [w] in Modern Tibetan, and the ligature has come to be written as a new, unitary alphabetic letter in Classical Tibetan and Modern Tibetan. The normal and correct trans- literation of this modern phoneme and letter is w. Note that Uray’s article is a model of good scholarship and is still to be recommended.
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The Chinese lord He’u ‘gi ‘vang te, (his) feudal lords, (and his) ministers, being terrified… In short, even here, where the superior of the rje and blon is himself called a rje, the term rje-blon nevertheless does not include him. The ZHOL inscription’s use of rje-blon is thus completely consistent with the other instances of its occurrence; rje here means not ‘(Chinese) emperor’ but ‘the (Chinese) feudal-lord’, and the term rje-blon means ‘(his) feudal- lord(s) and minister(s)’. There is thus no exception to the usage of rje in Old Tibetan even when it refers to the Chinese ruler, because the latter is always referred to as a subordinate of the Tibetan ruler. This would not be possible in a Chinese text, of course, but the ZHOL inscription is a Tibetan text, written in the context of hostile relations between the Tibetan and Chinese empires. The language of the text makes it abso- lutely clear that the Tibetans considered the Chinese to be subordinates whose ruler did not have the imperial dignity. Although the Chinese of the day referred to their own ruler as 皇帝 huángdì, who was considered by them to be the rightful paramount ruler of the entire world, the Tibet- ans had their own supreme ruler, who made the same claim. According to the Tibetans, no other ruler could rank as high as the btsanpo. For Tibetans, the imperial dignity belonged solely to the Tibetan emperor21. Among the reasons for the many problems in the above-quoted trans- lations of the Tibetan text, even leaving aside the problematic interpreta- tion of rje-blon, are that they ignore or misunderstand far too much Old Tibetan grammar; they mistranslate known words and expressions; they ignore the fact that Tibetan is a pro-drop language; they silently collapse two Tibetan expressions into one; and so on. One example of these errors is directly relevant to the question under consideration. Not one but two distinct expressions for ‘swearing an oath’ are used in the text. The consistent use of distinctive terms for oathing by the emperor and his family on the one hand and by the feudal lords and ministers on the other is yet another clear indication that the btsanpo was not among the rje-blon. The term for the btsanpos’ oath is dbu snyung(ba), while that for the rje-blon ‘feudal lords and ministers’ is bro (or mna’)
21 The Chinese had the same view about their own emperor, and in fact they still do.
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bor(ba)22, as is clear in the SAMYE inscription passage in lines 18-20 discussed above: btsan po yab sras dang rje blon gun gyis dbu snyung dang bro bor ro The sentence has an overt coordinate-distributive construction. It clearly assigns the collocation btsanpo yab-sras ‘the emperors, fathers and sons’ to the verb phrase dbu snyung(-ba) and the collocation rje-blon ‘the feudal lords and ministers’ to the verb phrase bro bor(-ba). The declarative finite sentence suffix -o, though suffixed to the last word— written
22 On oathing in the Tibetan Empire see Walter (2009); cf. Beckwith (forthcoming). On oath swearing between lord and comitatus in Central Eurasia in general see Beckwith (2009). 23 Of course, as is well known to those who read Old Tibetan texts in the original, the declarative finite sentence suffix is often written in exactly this way (usually understood as a graphic abbreviation):
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The term for an oath made by the Tibetan emperor, dbu snyung, is conspicuous by its absence. The only term for swearing used here is mná bor, which is specifically for non-Imperial personages. It is thus not possible to include the emperor as a participant here. The state- ment shows, not surprisingly, that once the rulers acceded to an agree- ment per se, they were not involved in the petty bureaucratic or dip- lomatic procedures that had to follow. The discussion mentioned by the text took place among the rje-blon, a group that included the semi- autonomous feudal lords and princes (rje), such as the ’A-zha rje ‘the Lord of the T’u-yü-hun’ (who took part in the Samye oathing) and the btsanpo’s chief officials (blon), such as Dpalgyi Yontan, the Buddhist monk who was blon-che ‘great minister (i.e., chief minister)’ in charge of the Tibetan side in the treaty negotiations and final cer- emonies. The Chinese passage from the West face of the TREATY inscription (lines 27-28) quoted above is perfectly parallelled by the Tibetan passage from the West face (lines 71-72). The texts are in full agreement: in both languages it is absolutely clear that government officials, not the rulers themselves, performed these tasks in the rulers’ names. The Old Tibetan term rje-blon means ‘(feudal) lords and (high) ministers’; its scope does not include the emperors at all. This solution to the problem of the mean- ing of rje-blon gives good, meaningful translations for all instances in which the term occurs in the inscriptions and other Imperial period Old Tibetan narrative texts25.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beckwith, Christopher I. 1984. Aspects of the Early History of the Central Asian Guard Corps in Islam. Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 4: 29-43.
say not one word about the Chinese equivalent (稽告) of the defective part of the Tibetan text. 25 The earliest text other than the inscriptions in which we have found rje-blon is a letter from Mazar Tagh (Thomas 1951: 412). The text as given by Thomas supplies most of the salutation rje-blon in brackets, showing it is not certainly present in the manuscript. However, rje-blon does reoccur clearly at the end of his text. He translates it ‘lord council- lor’. It would seem that ‘lords and councillors’ would work even better.
Journal Asiatique 298.2 (2010): 535-548
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—— 1993. The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages. Revised edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. First edition, 1987. —— 2009. Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —— forthcoming. The Central Eurasian Culture Complex in the Tibetan Empire: The Imperial Cult and Early Buddhism. In: Ruth Erken, ed., Eintausend Jahre asiatisch-europäische Begegnung. Gedenkband für Dr. Peter Lindegger. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Jäschke, H.A. 1881. A Tibetan-English Dictionary, with Special Reference to the Prevailing Dialects. London: The Secretary of State for India in Council. Li Fang-Kuei 李方桂 1956. The Inscription of the Sino-Tibetan Treaty of 821- 822. T’oung Pao, Second Series, Vol. 44.1/3: 1-99. Li Fang Kuei and W. South Coblin 1987. A Study of the Old Tibetan Inscriptions. Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Special Publi- cations No. 91. Richardson, Hugh E. 1985. A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions. [London:] Royal Asiatic Society. Thomas, F.W. 1951. Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents Concerning Chinese Turkestan. Part II: Documents. London: Royal Asiatic Society. Uray, Géza 1955. On the Tibetan letters BA and WA. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 5: 101-122. Walter, Michael L. 2009. Buddhism and Empire: The Political and Religious Culture of Early Tibet. Leiden: Brill. Walter, Michael L. and Christopher I. Beckwith, forthcoming. The Dating and Interpretation of the Old Tibetan Inscriptions. Central Asiatic Journal.
SUMMARY Old Tibetan rje-blon has traditionally been interpreted as ‘the lord and his min- isters’. This makes rje ‘subordinate ruler’ refer, irregularly, to the btsanpo ‘emperor’ in some Early Old Tibetan passages, and requires peculiar or ungram- matical interpretations. It is shown, based primarily on the Imperial inscriptions, that this interpretation is incorrect; rje-blon cannot include the Tibetan emperor in Early Old Tibetan texts, but refers strictly to ‘feudal lords and high ministers’. Keywords : rje-blon, btsan-po, Tibet, Imperial period, Old Tibetan
RÉSUMÉ L’expression rje-blon que l’on trouve en tibétain ancien/Old Tibetan (OT) est traditionnellement interprétée comme signifiant «le seigneur et ses ministres».
Journal Asiatique 298.2 (2010): 535-548
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Il est aussi admis que le rje, un «souverain subalterne», dans quelques passages en tibétain ancien ferait occasionnellement référence au btsan po, et ceci au prix d’interprétations surprenantes, et qui font fi des règles grammaticales. Se fondant essentiellement sur les inscriptions de l’époque impériale on essayera de montrer que cette interprétation est incorrecte. En effet, l’expression rje-blon dans les textes anciens ne renvoit aucunement à l’empereur tibétain, mais bel et bien au «seigneurs féodals et ministres de haut rang». Mots-clefs : rje-blon, btsan-po, Tibet, époque impériale, OT/Tibétain ancien.
Journal Asiatique 298.2 (2010): 535-548
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