BuddhistRoadPaper 1.2 "Toward A Typology of Chödrup’s (Tib. Chos Grub, Chin. Facheng 法成) Cursive Handwriting: A Palaeographical Perspective"

Abstract

In this paper, I focus on the palaeography of a collection of eight Tibetan manuscripts hypothesised to have been written by the same scribal hand. The eight manuscripts—IOL Tib J 217, IOL Tib J 686, IOL Tib J 687, IOL Tib J 625, IOL Tib J 588, IOL Tib J 619, P. T. 770, and P. T. 783v—are closely related, not merely in light of their sophisticated cursive handwriting, but also by virtue of their common textual genre (being summaries or commentaries rather than direct scriptural translations) and thematic content: these Tibetan texts were all based on Chinese sources and attributed to Gö Chödrup (fl. first half of the 9th c., Tib. ’Gos Chos grub, Chin. Wu Facheng 吳法成), either directly or indirectly. Moreover, many manuscripts produced by the imperial Tibetan copying project contain editorial records written in the same hand; these records indicate that Chödrup acted as the final proofreader. Therefore, we can now more confidently attribute this hand to Chödrup himself. By establishing a typology of this handwriting and offering a table of how syllables are written by this hand in the appendix, this paper contributes to a better reading of manuscripts containing this type of script and can potentially provide a benchmark for further recognition of works written in the same hand.