New Stanzas of Dzyan Study Documents

[Joe Fulton]

I would like to thank Ingmar de Boer for compiling a list of study documents pertinent to our continuing effort in finding the historical Stanzas of Dzyan.

A number of important writings will show up, including Emil Schlagintweit's "Buddhism in Tibet", considered by some to be a primary source document for HPB. 

There is well over a hundred of these texts and any help from any member willing to pitch in is most appreciated.

These will start appearing over the next few days in the Stanzas Documents section.

One note of interest is tonight we have added the Cosmological Notes, referred to in the Mahatma Letters.  These are photocopies of the letters in the British Museum, and they are somewhat difficult to read, as they are in Sinnett's handwriting.

[Ingmar de Boer]

Some relevant sites for finding scanned PDF-books:

Digital Library of India	http://www.new1.dli.ernet.in/
French National Library	http://gallica.bnf.fr/advancedsearch?lang=EN
Google Books	http://books.google.com/
indologica.de	http://www.indologica.de/drupal/?q=node/62
Internet Archive	http://www.archive.org/
Kőrösi Csoma Sándor Archívum	http://www.archivum.kcst.hu/studies.html
Scribd	http://www.scribd.com/

[Ingmar de Boer]

Huc	Evariste	Perils et Aventures D'Un Voyage D'Exploration Dans Les Steppes de la Tartarie et Les Montagnes Neigeuses du Thibet
Turner	Capt. Samuel	Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet Containing a Narrative of a Journey Through Bootan, and Part of Tibet, An-	1800
Müller	Max	Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. I	1872

Quite a collection of works of Huc can be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale too. I didn't study the "Perils et Aventures" yet, as also the work or Turner.

Müller's "Chips" was quite interesting because of (the ablative case ending) explaining the final "t" on svâbhâvat.

Schmidt's 1835 Mongolisch-Deutsch-Russisches Wörterbuch was pointed out to me by the late Henk Spierenburg, in relation to the word chohan. I have not been checking this one out either.

[Ingmar de Boer]

A link to the bibliography of "works on Buddhism available to HPB", by Richard P. Taylor:

http://www.blavatsky.net/forum/taylor/tibetanSources12.htm

The items marked with ** are "established sources" for HPB.

[Jacques Mahnich]

+ what was cut.

 

Analyse du Kandjour	Csoma de Köros	Feer Léon	1881
Abrégé des matières du Tandjour	Csoma de Köros	Feer Léon	1881
O-mi-to-king	Koumarajiva	Ymaïzoumi et Yamata	1881
Textes sanskrits découverts au Japon	Müller Max	Milloué M. de	1881
Le Bouddhisme au Tibet	Schlagintweit Emile de	Milloué M. de	1881
Fragments extraits du Kandjour		Feer Léon	1883

[Jacques Mahnich]

Here are some books (20) written in French either as translations from other languages or as native which were published between 1830 & 1883, and which are dealing with buddhism at this time. I have downloaded them from the French National Library and I intend to go through this collection. It will just need time...

 



Titre

Auteur

Traducteur

Année

La vie chez les indous et les peuples bouddhistes	Bochinger J.J.		1831
Introduction à l'Histoire du Bouddhisme Indien	Burnouf E.		1844
Introduction à l'histoire du Buddhisme Indien par E.Burnouf	Biot		1845
Le Bouddhisme, son fondateur et ses écritures	Neve Félix		1853
Du Bouddhisme	St Hilaire B.		1855
Du Nirvana Indien	Obry J.B.F.		1856
Le Bouddha et le Bouddhisme	Schoebel C.		1857
Le Trésor des Belles Paroles	Saskya Pandita Lama	Foucaux Ph. Ed.	1858
Histoire du Bouddha Sakya Mouni	Foucaux Ph. ED.		1860
Le Bouddhisme et ses dogmes	Vassilief M.V.	La Comme M.G.A.	1863
Du Nirvana Bouddhique	Obry J.B.F.		1863
Introduction du Bouddhisme dans le Kashmir	Feer Léon		1866
Le Bouddha et sa religion	Saint-Hilaire Barthélémy		1866
Vie de Gautama, Bouddha des Birmans	Bigandet P. Monseigneur	Gauvain Victor	1878
Analyse du Kandjour	Cso

[David Reigle]

to finish:

I have also not been able to check Eugene Burnouf's books in French, because I do not know French. But again, I have looked through them for terms such as fohat. And again, Jacques has checked them.

Sources such as Brian Hodgson's 1874 Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepal and Tibet (on the Svabhavikas, etc.) may have been used only at second-hand; that is, as these were quoted by others.

So in all, it seems that only a relatively small number of books pertaining to Buddhism were used by HPB. There were not many available then, and the ones that were available are usually not very reliable. Much in the SD comes from them.

[David Reigle]

Regarding the large number of sources that HPB may have used, well over a hundred, it is probable that only a comparatively few of these were used by her to any extent. Ever since finding, by accident around 1978, that material on Tibetan Buddhism found in The Secret Doctrine came from Schlagintweit, I have been gathering other likely SD sources. HPB's primary sources on Buddhism seem to be Schlagintweit, Beal, and Edkins, along with a fair amount of material from Spence Hardy (especially from his Eastern Monachism), and with occasional material from Markham, Rhys Davids, Eitel, Burnouf, and a few others. Here are my conclusions:

For Eastern material in general, William Emmette Coleman is right that HPB's major source is H. H. Wilson's translation of the Vishnu Purana, edited by Fitzedward Hall and published in six volumes. Since she often quotes Hall's notes, we need this edition rather than Wilson's earlier editions. Richard Robb, Wizards Bookshelf, had intended to reprint this set in his Secret Doctrine Reference Series, but could never raise the necessary funds for this large project. This was before the days of internet and Google. I do not know if this edition is available on the internet now, but if not I can scan my copy.

The major SD source for Tibetan Buddhism is Emil Schlagintweit's 1863 Buddhism in Tibet.

The major Mahatma Letters source for Buddhism, incuding the devachan question, is Samuel Beal's 1871 Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese.

Another important HPB source for Buddhism is Joseph Edkins' 1880 Chinese Buddhism.

Spence Hardy's books (1850 Eastern Monachism, 1853 Manual of Buddhism, and 1866 Legends and Theories of the Buddhists), despite giving Buddhism second-hand from Sinhalese sources rather than directly from Pali sources, contain a surprising amount of reasonably accurate information on Buddhism. This is especially true, considering their early date. HPB uses these a fair amount, including in the Voice.

P. Bigandet's 1858, 1866, and 1880 Life or Legend of Gaudama, also early and second-hand from Burmese, is used occasionally by HPB, such as the important but quite unmarked reference in the Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 388 (cp. Stanza 5, sloka 6), relating to Bigandet's vol. 2, pp. 209-211. This is from the third edition, which is the one HPB used. It was reprinted unchanged into the 1900s. You also see "Dzan" here on p. 210 of vol. 2, although a fuller reference on this is in Edkins.

Clements R. Markham's 1876 Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa, of course, is HPB's source for "Kiu-te," and a few other things.

T. W. Rhys Davids' 1877 Buddhism: Being a Sketch of the Life and Teachings of Gautama, the Buddha, is critiqued in the Mahatma Letters, and also in Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism following these letters.

Ernest J. Eitel's 1870 and 1888 Hand-book of Chinese Buddhism, Being a Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary with Vocabularies of Buddhist Terms in Pali, Singhalese, Siamese, Burmese, Tibetan, Mongolian and Japanese, has some of the strange spellings used by HPB, such as "dj" for "j" at the beginning of Sanskrit words (djana for jnana). Another such strange spelling comes from Schmidt's German books, which use initial "ss" for "s" in Tibetan words. We see this in "ssa" for "sa" in the Cosmological Notes.

I have not been able to check Wassiljew's and Schmidt's books in German, because I do not know German. But I have looked through them for terms such as fohat. Also, Jacques has recently read through the whole French translation of Wassiljew's book, and Frank has been checking Schmidt's books for quotations used by HPB.

I have also not been able to check Eugene Burnouf's books in French, because I do not know French. But again, I have looked through them for term