འཕགས་པ་གནས་འཇག་པའ་མད་ཞས་བྱ་བ notes.12

notes.12

12. Tentative translation. The Tibetan here reads gang gA dang / ya mu na dang / mtsho ldan dang / khyim ldan dang / sa ste. The series of five sacred rivers in Pali is often the Ganges, the Yamunā, the Ajiravatī, the Sarabhū, and the Saritā. The Tibetan sa ste could be a phonetic approximation of the Saritā. The designation mtsho ldan, literally “has a lake,” could refer to the Sarasvatī river, or one of the rivers connected to Lake Manasarovar, perhaps the Brahmaputra. The designation khyim ldan, literally “has houses,” is difficult to identify with any certainty, and looking to sources on rivers in Vedic literature yields several possibilities. In another canonical use of the simile, we find dper na chu bo chen po lnga po ’di lta ste / gang gA dang / ya mu na dang / sar yu dang / gnas ldan dang / chen po zhes bya ba, i.e., the Ganges, the Yamunā, the Sarabhū, the Ajiravatī, and the Mahī. See The Chapter on Medicines (Toh 1–6), 8.227. Searching the Buddhist Digital Resource Center’s database of e-texts reveals that where later Tibetan texts refer to The Sūtra of Vasiṣṭha, the last river in the series varies especially (i.e., sa ste above), such that one also finds palgu (i.e., Phalgu) and pak+Sha.