འཕགས་པ་སྲད་པ་འཕ་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.6

intro.6

There was no known Sanskrit witness of this sūtra until recently, when a manuscript containing twenty texts, all of them sūtras, was found in the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā published a critical edition and English translation of this collection in the series Sanskrit Texts from the Autonomous Region (2010). Unfortunately, due to the inaccessibility of the manuscript collection and because it was missing a final colophon, its origin and date are currently unknown.⁵ There seems to be a thematic connection among the twenty sūtras. Vinītā gives the example of moral discipline (śīla) as a recurrent theme running through the manuscript,⁶ and we can likewise note the recurrence of themes of karmic cause and effect and the hierarchy of merit. Interestingly, this sūtra is quoted among others, including several from the Potala manuscript, by Kawa Paltsek (ska ba dpal brtsegs) in a text contained in the Tengyur called the *Pravacana­ratnākhyāna­śākya­vaṃśāvalī.⁷ Here we can identify the same recurrent themes among the quotations.