གཎ་ཌའ་དས་ཀྱ་མད intro.9

intro.9

The sūtra’s colophon states that it was translated into Tibetan by the Tibetan monk Gewai Lodrö (11th ce) and the Indian preceptor Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna, more widely known as Atiśa Dīpaṃkara (982–1054), the great revitalizer of Buddhism in Tibet after the period of fragmentation. Atiśa and Gewai Lodrö worked closely together to translate a number of works. There is no mention of the sūtra in the catalogs of scriptures translated during the Imperial Period (629–841 ᴄᴇ), which suggests that Atiśa and Gewai Lodrö’s translation was the first time it was translated into Tibetan. Based on the dates recorded in Atiśa’s biographies, we can say with some certainty that this sūtra was likely translated sometime between 1040, when Atiśa first arrived in Tibet, and 1054, the year of his passing.