Standard Tibetan Grammar [Volume II: The Application of Gender Signs of Minister Thumi] 9789937572361, 9789937572378

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STANDARD TIBETAN GRAMMAR VOLUME II: THE APPLICATION OF GENDER SIGNS OF MINISTER THUMI

TONY DUFF PADMA KARPO TRANSLATION COMMITTEE

STANDARD TIBETAN GRAMMAR VOLUME II: THE APPLICATION OF GENDER SIGNS OF MINISTER THUMI

TONY DUFF PADMA KARPO TRANSLATION COMMITTEE

Copyright © 2009 Tony Duff. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher. First edition, 14th april 2009 ISBN: Janson typeface with diacritical marks and Tibetan Classic typeface Designed and created by Tony Duff Tibetan Computer Company http://www.tibet.dk/tcc Sanskrit text set in Devanågari courtesy of the Om Karananda Ashram’s ITranslator98 software. Produced, Printed, and Published by Padma Karpo Translation Committee P.O. Box 4957 Kathmandu NEPAL Web-site and e-mail contact through: http://www.tibet.dk/pktc or search Padma Karpo Translation Committee on the web.

CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 I. COMMENTARY BY THE AUTHOR

Overview of The Application of Gender Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Difficult Points of The Application of Gender Signs . . . . . . 31 Pronunciation According to The Application of Gender Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Tibetan Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 II. MINISTER THUMI SAÎBHOÛA’S DEFINING TREATISE Grammar, The Application of Gender Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

III. NATIVE COMMENTARIES ON THE APPLICATION OF GENDER SIGNS

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CONTENTS

1. Yangchen Drubpay Dorje’s summary of the meaning of The Application of Gender Signs:

“A Mirror which Reveals the Difficult Points”, A Short Statement of the Essential Meaning of The Application of Gender Signs by Yangchen Drubpay Dorje . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 2. Yangchen Drubpay Dorje’s extensive commentary to his summary of the meaning of The Application of Gender Signs: “A Golden Key of Knowledge”, Commentary to “The Mirror that Reveals the Difficult Points of The Application of Gender Signs” by Yangchen Drubpay Dorje . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3. Ngulchu Dharmabhadra’s explanation of The Application of Gender Signs which follows the content of Situ Rinpoche’s Great Commentary but without the difficult points: “Situ’s Words” Part II: Explanation of The Application of Gender Signs by Ngulchu Dharmabhadra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 4. Karma Ngedon Jamyang’s commentary on The Application of Gender Signs which is a paraphrase of Situ Rinpoche’s Great Commentary but without the difficult points: “Essence of the Elegant Thorough Explanation” Part II: Explanation of The Application of Gender Signs by Khenpo Ngedon Jamyang . . . . 175

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Index of Grammar Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

INTRODUCTION

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ibetan grammar is defined within a series of eight texts that Thumi Sambhota wrote sometime around 630 A.D. Thumi did his work at the command of the king of the time, Srongtsan Gampo. The story surrounding his work and the background to the eight texts is covered fully in the first volume of this series1.

Two only of Thumi’s eight defining texts survived the purges of King Langdarma that occurred around 900 A.D. The history around this loss also is fully covered in the first volume of this series. One of the defining works that survived was, fortunately, the basis of the whole definition of Tibetan grammar. It was called Grammar, The Root in Thirty Verses and laid out the basis of Thumi’s new grammar system. The other seven texts, it seems, acted as ornaments to that basis, with each one covering a specific aspect of the grammar, each one adding another piece of the overall definition. The only one of them that survived has the title Grammar, The Application of Gender Signs. It is the subject of this book. Standard Grammar, Volume I, The Thirty Verses of Minister Thumi by Tony Duff, published by Padma Karpo Translations, Kathmandu, Nepal. 1

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APPLICATION OF GENDER SIGNS

Grammar, The Application of Gender Signs covers three main areas in relation to letter gender: the categories of letter gender, how they are applied to the letters of the alphabet, and the effects of their application. The categories of letter gender are not hard to understand but their application to the letters of the alphabet is complicated and the effects that come from them are extremely complicated. Because of that, the subject of letter gender in Tibetan language is very hard to understand and fully comprehend. The subject is regarded as being difficult that even many learned people do not even attempt a study of the Application of Gender Signs text. Previously, anyone who was going to learn to read and write would study the Grammar, The Root in Thirty Verses and these days it is taught to every Tibetan schoolchild. The Application of Gender Signs on the other hand was and still is only taught in advanced classes at monastic colleges and even then, not everyone studies it. To understand The Application of Gender Signs you must understand the basics of Tibetan grammar and not only that but according to Tibetan grammar itself. A study of Western-conceived ideas of Tibetan grammar gained through Western classes or books about the grammar will not be of much help because those books mostly do not deal with the technical details of the language as seen by the language itself. The Application of Gender Signs is not a “follow on” to the The Thirty or another straightforward grammar explanation like The Thirty. Rather, it assumes a full knowledge of all the technical details of the language according to the grammar of the language and not a foreigner’s ideas about it, and then it delves very

INTRODUCTION

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deeply into a certain, technical aspect of the language assuming that knowledge as a basis. Thus, anyone who wants to understand The Application of Gender Signs should first read our treatise that explains The Thirty and all of its concepts from the Tibetan grammatical perspective. Then, with a proper understanding of the concepts and terminology of Tibetan grammar, this text can be approached and the coarser levels at least of the subject could be comprehended. However, to follow all the details of Thumi’s definitions in this text is something that is very difficult even for very intelligent, well-educated Tibetans to do and that difficulty should be appreciated before starting. You will need to be able to read Tibetan fluently, because many of the points made in the text and the examples in the commentaries to it simply cannot be translated. Much of the understanding involved is with the gender of letters and how that affects the pronunciation and meaning of words; it is not translatable and you will have to be able to read Tibetan fairly well just to be able to follow the text and its commentaries. There are many places where the text demands a feel for the words of the language and how they are used. In these cases, if you cannot actually read the language fluently, the meaning will just be lost on you. In short, it is an extremely difficult text and there is no point in pretending otherwise. If the text is so difficult and not understood by the average Tibetan, how useful is a study of the text? The truth is that the effects of letter gender are already built into the language. Even if you do not know most of what is laid out in The Application of Gender Signs, it does not matter because the rules laid out in the text are already in effect in the spoken and written language. In other words, if you learn the language from a Tibetan who has a good grasp of his language, most of what this text is about will be imparted to you in

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that process of learning. For example, one of the principal effects of letter gender is to modify the pronunciation of Tibetan words. If you have learned the language from someone who speaks correctly, then you have already mastered all of what has been said in the text about letter gender and pronunciation. Similarly, another of the principal effects is which phrase linker should be used following which ending letter on the word that the phrase linker is being written after. If you have learned the details of phrase linkers and how to use them in The Thirty or in our The Thirty Verses of Minister Thumi, then you have already mastered all of what has been said about letter gender and that subject. If you know those two things, which is something that any educated Tibetan would know, then there are only a couple of specific issues that The Application of Gender Signs raises that you would need to learn. These are called “the difficult points” of the text. They are concerned with letter gender affecting verb tense and letter gender being the basis of the whole system of transitive verb operation. And even then, only someone well educated would need knowledge of those so, in previous times at least, the average Tibetan did not know about them and was not affected by that lack of knowledge. Or, if someone did need to know about those specific things, it would mostly be easier to learn them from a teacher in a practical way, without having to study the rules and definitions behind how these “difficult points” worked. What this comes down to is that The Application of Gender Signs is not only very difficult but much of its content is not a useful point of study. That is true now and has always been true for Tibetans. For Westerners wanting to learn the language in a practical, general kind of way, it is true. If you have a good Tibetan teacher who is teaching you true Tibetan pronunciation then that whole section of this text is irrelevant to you. However, I should say that there is a

INTRODUCTION

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great misunderstanding of Tibetan pronunciation amongst Westerners who are teaching it and writing books about it. The information in this text is the means to correct that. My own students have been amazed when I have taught them the right way to pronounce the language and then shown them how the rules of letter gender that Thumi laid down in this text support that. For Westerners who are deeply involved with the language, especially translators, there are things in this text that are required knowledge. Some of the details of transitive verb theory are still not properly understood or presented and because of it translators miss key points of meaning and then translate in ways that go altogether in the wrong direction. Well-educated Tibetan authors used these subtleties of their own language to great effect and, for instance, there is even a book on the direct transmission of Mahåmudrå that relies entirely on a correct understanding of tense forms per the details of letter gender. I remember a translator who came to me after a course by Tenga Rinpoche in which Rinpoche had taught the text just mentioned. The translator at the time could not understand what was being taught and muffed a whole week of teachings of mahåmudrå. Tenga Rinpoche and the other lamas there could not understand why it did not seem to be working. Other translators in the audience also could not understand. When the translator brought the text to me afterwards and asked about it, I understood immediately. It was not difficult but you did have to understand the subtleties of verb tenses based on letter gender and you did have to understand how a Tibetan author could play with that in order to show the non-dualistic meaning. Western translators still have a lot to learn about this language and this text is one of the ones that has to be understood in order to have that knowledge.

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To sum up, The Application of Gender Signs is not useful to your average Tibetan and possibly even less to most Westerners. However, the subject of letter gender does contain certain details of the language that are very important for someone who is truly going to understand the language well, and especially for someone planning to translate it. There are two main effects of letter gender: 1) effects on pronunciation; 2) effects on meaning. The effects on pronunciation are subtle and difficult to comprehend without a teacher who speaks the language properly. There is a vast difference between the way that Tibetan is taught in most classrooms for Westerners and the way that Tibetan is actually spoken. Much of the subtlety of the language not being correctly taught concerns subtleties of pronunciation that are the effects of letter gender. The first volume of this series includes a major section on pronunciation. In that section, the effects of letter gender on pronunciation are stated though not explored to the fullest possible depth. In this volume all the subtleties are explained because it is the subject of letter gender that has all of these details. Reading the section on pronunciation in the first volume The Thirty Verses of Minister Thumi followed by reading the sections in here on pronunciation would be the best way to approach a study of how gender affects pronunciation and to learn about these subtleties. The effects on meaning occur in two ways. There are effects due to the gender of the prefix letters and effects due to the gender of the suffix letters.

INTRODUCTION

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The effect on meaning for the prefix letters concerns verbs. There are two sets of effects: letter gender of a prefix in a verb determines the tense of the verb; and letter gender within verbs is the basis of a whole system of transitive and, following on from that, intransitive verb theory in the Tibetan language. The effects on meaning for the suffix letters concerns the placement of letters during composition of the language. There are two sets of effects: the effect that a suffix, with its specific letter gender, at the end of one word has on the spelling of the following word; and the effect the suffix, with its specific letter gender, at the end of a word has on the type of word that will have to be following it. These two effects cover the entire composition of language. In particular, the second effect embodies all of the meaning contained in the first treatise on grammar, The Thirty Verses, so is a vast topic in itself.

OVERVIEW OF “GRAMMAR, THE APPLICATION OF GENDER SIGNS”

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s mentioned in the introduction, The Application of Gender Signs is as an extremely difficult text to understand. The first step towards understanding it is to separate out the different sections of the text and see how Thumi develops the topics related to letter gender. Therefore, this chapter goes through the text, showing the main sections and giving an overview of the meaning. The language of Thumi’s text is highly technical and much of the vocabulary in it is peculiar to Tibetan grammar. Therefore, this chapter tries to use the simplest language to show the overall meaning of the text. The text is structured according to the system of ancient Indian, Buddhist literature. As Thumi states in his first text on grammar, this is not accidental but is done as part of his demonstration of how to use the new grammar and writing systems that he has just invented when composing Tibetan treatises. In other words, aside from the meaning of the text, it is also a model for how to write

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treatises in the new language of Tibet. Accordingly, the main parts of the text are: I. Title II. Preface containing 1. Homage and 2. Expression of worship III. Body of the treatise IV. Conclusion

I. Title The title is given in Sanskrit, followed by Tibetan. The title could be taken in various ways, depending on how you understand the ( ’jug pa ) at the end of the title. The word has Tibetan verb the basic sense in Tibetan of “getting into something” and corresponds to English ideas like “getting involved with”, “entering into”, “entrance to” and then, for a book like this “guide to”. Because of this, some translations of the title as “Guide to …” have appeared. However, the term also has a specialized usage in grammar. In grammar, it is used to refer to the affixation of one letter onto another when constructing the morphemes (roughly words) of the language. It is this usage that is appearing in the title. This book is not a general guide to gender signs of Tibetan letters but is a book about “the gender signs of Tibetan letters and, in particular, how they are affixed”. Hence, the title is Grammar, The Affixation or Application of Gender Signs.

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Situ Rinpoche takes this explanation a step further in his Great Commentary on grammar. He states that the treatise is about how these gender signs are applied and not only that but also about the purpose that is fulfilled by their application. In other words, it is a

OVERVIEW OF THE TEXT

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treatise about their application both in the sense of how they are placed or applied and also about the effects obtained by their use. Based on what Tibetans say in their commentaries like that and also on what my own teacher told me as oral tradition, there can be no doubt that the title is “Grammar, Application of Gender Signs”. Thumi introduced the Tibetan style of writing the title in Sanskrit followed by Tibetan. Although the text itself is not a translation, it was written both to expound a new Tibetan grammar system and at the same time to make a model for how to write and set out Tibetan literature using this new grammar. What he did was based on the model of Indian literature, especially the Buddhist sýtras that he learned. His system was later codified by King Tri Ralpachen and his translators as the way that official translations of Buddhist texts into Tibetan had to be done. I have followed his formulation and added an extra line with the title in English, which seems to me to be a good way to do these things.

II. Preface The preface starts with a homage. The homage is a homage or prostration to the “Lord of Grammar”. It is not clear who that is though Tibetan commentators have their various opinions about it. I do not wish to add an opinion here on something that cannot be known, at least not by this non-omniscient writer. The preface continues with an expression of worship. In it, Thumi praises and pays homage to the “Omniscient One, the Buddha, who is the King of Communication”. This is appropriate since grammar is a formalization of language done specifically so that there can be communication.

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II. Body of the Treatise Overview The body of the treatise concerns letter gender in the Tibetan language. It treats this topic by doing three things: 1) it defines categories of gender for the letters of the Tibetan alphabet; 2) it allocates the Tibetan letters into those divisions; 3) it states the effects that the letters’ gender has on the language. Tibetan letters are of two types, vowels and consonants. The body of the treatise does not even mention the vowels; it concerns itself only with the consonant letters. The reason for this is that consonant letters are seen in Tibetan language as the basis of word construction, not the vowels. In the Tibetan system, words have three “slots”. A word is made by filling each slot with a consonant letter. The primary slot is called the “name base” because it is the basis from which the name is produced. The other two slots are the prefix and suffix positions to the name base slot. All the consonants can function as a name base letter. However, only ten of them can function as suffixes, and only five of those can function as prefixes. To sum this up, Tibetan words are made by using these three types of consonant like this: [prefix] [name base] [suffix] The body of the treatise does not merely define letter gender for all the name base letters and state a set of effects that comes from that.

OVERVIEW OF THE TEXT

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It goes further than that. It defines the consonants as being of these three types and then defines letter gender within each of those three types and states the effects of letter gender within each of those three types. This results in the treatise being composed of three main sections: the first section deals with the name base consonants, their gender, and the effects of that; the second with the suffix consonants, their gender, and the effects of that; and the third with the prefix consonants, their gender, and the effects of that. In sum, The Application of Gender Signs deals with letter gender by considering its definition, allocation, and effect and does that moreover, for each of the three types of consonant that make up Tibetan words. By doing this, it builds a complete picture of the gender of letters and its various effects on the words of the language. The cleverness of this should not be missed nor under-rated. At the same time, it should be understood that the overall meaning of the text and its importance to Tibetan grammar cannot be seen until the fullness of this is understood.

The name-base consonants The body of the treatise starts by plunging into the definition of gender for the “male letters”. In order to make sense of this, all commentaries start by back-stepping and filling in the piece of information that Thumi has assumed. They all start by pointing out that the lettering set as a whole is composed both of vowels and consonants. In exact accordance with the Sanskrit way of defining letters, the vowels as a whole are defined as female and the consonants as a whole as male. With that clarified, the thrust of meaning of whole treatise, stated in the first line, becomes clear. This is a treatise about the male, that is, consonant letters only: “The male letters only allocated into

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Eight sections, one a half, also Having been condensed into five groups, Are divided into fours of the four Male, neutral, female, and extremely female Up to the end of the fourth section; For the fourteen left as the remainder, The three , and so on, are connected with , and so on, The is connected with , Six of the rest are connected to female, The , , and are called “barren”, And is also called “characterless”.”

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The consonants, which are male letters generally speaking, are the exclusive subject of this treatise. When these consonants are looked at from the perspective of how they are used to build the words of the language, they have three functions and hence are of three types. Consonants in a word are either name bases, prefixes to the name bases, or suffixes to the name bases. This treatise looks at the gender of consonants for each of three functions. For each category: first it states the categories of gender defined for the consonants of that category; second, it allocates the consonants of that category into those gender categories; and third, it examines the effects of the letter gender when the consonants are used in the language. Now the male consonants, that is, the consonants taken as a whole before gender is considered, are presented by dividing them into eight sections of four letters each, with the last of those sections having only two letters in it. All of these male consonants can function as name bases. Taking them as name bases, they fall into five sections, meaning that they

OVERVIEW OF THE TEXT

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fall into five, different categories of gender sign. The five gender categories for the consonants when they are functioning as name base letters in a word are: male, neutral, female, extremely female, and barren. What are these gender categories based on? They are based on the force of pronunciation of the letter when it is functioning as a name base. The male letters are defined as having a the strongest force of pronunciation. It is named “stronger”. The female ones are defined as having a “weaker” force of pronunciation in relation to that. The neutral ones are said to have a force of pronunciation exactly in between the two. Their force of pronunciation is defined as being equal amounts of the male and female forces of pronunciation; thus they are named “neutral” not “neuter” because they are specifically stated to have a gender that is not genderless but which consists of equal parts of both. The extremely female ones have a force of pronunciation that is even weaker again than that of the females. The barren ones have a force of pronunciation that is again weaker than the extremely females. The last gender category of all types— name-bases, prefixes, and suffixes—always has the weakest force of pronunciation and is always named “very weak” or “extremely weak” given its relationship to the others. How are the name base consonants allocated into those five categories? The first sixteen consonants are the first four sections of eight sections mentioned. These first four sections correspond to the contact-type consonants2. The first one in each of the four sections

2

The name for the consonants of the first five sections of Sanskrit and the first four sections and three-quarters sections of Tibetan language. These consonants are defined, from the perspective of their pronounced (continued...)

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is a male letter, the second one is a neutral letter, the third is a female letter, and the fourth is a extremely female letter. Then, the remaining fourteen letters are allocated as follows. The next three, alphabetically speaking, are the letters , , and . Pronunciationwise they are also contact consonants that can be related to the contact consonants letters , , and respectively of the second contact section, therefore they are given the same gender category that is, male, neutral, and female respectively. The next letter alphabetically is and this, in a similar fashion is connected with that is, given the same gender category, which is female. That leaves ten letters. Six of them, the letters , , , , , and are defined as female. The remaining four , , and are defined is not only defined as barren but is as “barren”. The last letter also called “characterless”. This is not a sixth category of gender for the name bases but an additional name for this particular letter. It is given because the force of pronunciation for this letter is so weak that it cannot be characterized as anything in particular, even though it is put in the “barren” category.

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To sum all of this up:

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(...continued) definition, as “contact” consonants.

5- 6- 7- 8- ;9- :- =- >-