འཕགས་པ་ས་ལའ་ལྗང་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.6

intro.6

There are four Chinese translations (Taishō 709–712), the first and earliest having been carried out during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420 ce). A very similar sūtra (Taishō 708) had already been translated by Chih-ch’ien in the Wu Dynasty (222–280 ce). As Martin (2014, p. 283) has noted, the Testament of Wa / Ba (dba’ / sba bzhed) mentions that a Chinese version was translated into Tibetan before the completion of the first monastery of Tibet, Samye, toward the end of the eighth century. The Tibetan translation is also mentioned in the Denkarma (ldan dkar ma) catalogue compiled by Kawa Paltseg et al., probably in the year 812. The colophons in two of the oldest surviving Tibetan manuscripts identified so far (the Dunhuang manuscripts PT 551 and PT 552), credit Yeshé Dé, a famous Tibetan translator of the eighth to ninth centuries, as the translator. This information is absent in the later editions.