འཕགས་པ་སྡང་པ་རྒྱན་གྱ་མཆག་ཅས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས intro.6

intro.6

There are several factors that suggest the possibility (though it is by no means a certainty) that this particular work may have been translated into Tibetan from Chinese, rather than from Sanskrit. The first is a reference to an inauspicious divination result specific to a Chinese style of divination.⁴ But there are other factors, as well: the work’s immediate proximity in the Kangyur to a text that was certainly translated from Chinese (Toh 1067), the absence of a translator’s colophon, the incorrect/incoherent Sanskrit title given at the beginning of all of extant versions of the work, and the presence of at least one feature indicative of the older “Chinese” translation lexicon and style described by Stein (i.e., the vocabulary and style used to translate Buddhist texts from a variety of languages, including Chinese, prior to the lexical standardization imposed by the Mahāvyutpatti in 814 ce).⁵