འཕགས་པ་གསར་འད་དམ་པ་མད་སྡའ་དབང་པའ་རྒྱལ་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད notes.45

notes.45

45. This line shows significant variation across sources and is difficult to interpret precisely. Toh 556 and Toh 557 render this figure’s name as slob dpon lung ston pa bram ze kauN+Di n+ya, which can be interpreted to mean “the Kauṇḍinya brahmin, the Dharma master Vyākaraṇa.” The extant Sanskrit reads ācārya­vyākaraṇaprāptaḥ kauṇḍinyo nāma brāhmaṇaḥ, which could be taken to mean “The brahmin named Kauṇḍinya who had obtained a prophecy from a/the Dharma master.” The Sanskrit line includes the term “obtained” (prāpta), which is not attested in the Chinese or Tibetan sources. The translation here follows the Chinese text that is the basis of Toh 555 in regarding kauṇḍinya as the brahmin’s family name (姓). This brahmin is then “named (名曰) the Dharma master Vyākaraṇa (法師授記).” The Tibetan sources for Toh 555 appear to take kauṇḍinya as the brahmin’s proper name and treat the rest of the phrase as descriptive, reading “The brahmin named Kauṇḍinya who was prophesied by a/the Dharma master (bram ze kauN+Di n+ya chos kyi slob dpon gyis lung bstan pa). To further complicate matters, the Degé version of Toh 555 also declines kauṇḍinya in the instrumental, which would result in the reading “the brahmin prophesied by the Dharma master Kauṇḍinya.” The Kangxi, Lhasa, Narthang, Stok Palace, and Yongle versions of Toh 555 lack this instrumental declension.