གཎ་ཌའ་མད intro.4

intro.4

There is to our knowledge no extant Sanskrit or Chinese version of The Gaṇḍī Sūtra. According to the colophon to the Tibetan translations, it was translated into Tibetan by Dharma­śrībhadra and Tsültrim Yönten and subsequently edited by Rinchen Zangpo, which dates the Tibetan translation included in the Kangyur to the early eleventh century ce. The text is, however, also recorded in the Denkarma⁵ catalog of the Tibetan imperial translations, so it appears that it was first translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by an unknown translator no later than the early ninth century, as the Denkarma is dated to 812 ce. It is not recorded in the Phangthangma catalog of Tibetan imperial translations.⁶