DRANGSONG MANUSCRIPTS
| 1. Text number | Drangsong 336 |
| 2. Text title (where present) in Tibetan |
ཚེ་རིང་བཅུ་གསུམ་གྱི་ཤུགས་མགོན་བཞུགས་སོ།། |
| 3. Text title (where present) in Wylie transliteration | tshe ring bcu gsum gyi shugs mgon bzhugs so// |
| 4. A brief summary of the item’s contents | Offering to the powerful shugs mgon deity, a protector of humans, and the god for long life, who has thirteen signs from the natural environment. |
| 5. Number of folios | 8 |
| 6. Scribe’s name | |
| 7. Translation of title | The shugs mgon divinity who has thirteen [signs] of longevity. |
| 8. Transcription of colophon | No colophon |
| 9. Translation of colophon | |
| 10. General remarks | The thirteen signs of the king of the life: the creation of the earth, as steadfastness of the hills, the rootedness of the trees, the gathering of the sky, the radiance of the sun, the light of the moon, starlight, ten thousand shelducks, a hundred thousand of the white shug gu [kind of bird?], a thousand black crows, as fearless of the white rock, as without skipping of the blue river, as the green juniper that never withers. |
| 11. Remarks on script | dpe tshugs, ’khyug ma tshugs |
| 12. Format | Loose leaves |
| 13. Size | 7 × 36.3 cm |
| 14. Layout | |
| 15. Illustrations and decorations | This folio containing both text and images complements the text of the Tshe ring bcu gsum gyi shugs mgon. It is meant to be displayed vertically and accommodates three joint columns of different width and height traced in red, with the pairs of red lines usually indicating the margins of the text serving here to delimit the top and bottom of the columns.The column on the right half of the folio is both the widest and the highest, extending in height through the entire space delimited by the margins. It breaks up in a total of fourteen squares, each but the lowest one inscribed on top with a short phrase in dbu med script that informs about the material or colour of the thirteen signs of Shugs mgon described in the text (from the bottom up):
rus sbal ser (the gold of the tortoise) ri rab shel (the crystal of Mt Meru) shing mu man (the sapphire of the trees) sprin mu tig baidurya (the vaidurya pearl of the clouds) nyi ma me shel (the fire-crystal of the sun) zla ba chu shel (the water-crystal of the moon) skar ma phra min (the gilded silver of the stars) ngur pa ser (the yellow [colour] of the goose) bru gu mu men dung (the sapphire [and?] conch of the shu gu birds?) pho rog so la (the charcoal [colour] of the ravens) brag ri mchong (the agate of the rock face) g.yu chu ris (the turquoise of the waves) brug lo dngul byu ru (the silver and coral of the ancient ponds (brug lo)?) While these thirteen phrases were apparently inscribed so as to leave enough space for adding illustrations below them, only five were eventually complemented by drawings. The crystal of Mt Meru, the sapphire of the trees, the vaidurya pearl of the clouds, the agate of the rock face, and the turquoise of the waves were illustrated with a tiered mountain, a four-branched tree, Chinese-style clouds and rocks, and circular waves, respectively. The reasons why these phrases were complemented by drawings and not the others are unclear. In comparison with this column, those occupying the bottom left part of the folio are approximately twice thinner and shorter. They extend from the tenth square of the right column down to the bottom margin of the folio and similarly break down in five squares each, with the difference that their top and bottom squares end in triangles like banners would. Among these ten squares, four contain short phrases and four contain images. The two top squares are drawn with what may be three streams joining the ocean or rain falling from three clouds and with a triple jewel. Below, the second and third squares of the column the most to the right are inscribed with the phrases nyi zla skar gsuṃ bris (‘the images of the sun, the moon, and the star, the three of them’) and sprin ’ja’ dal gsuṃ (‘the cloud, the rainbow, and the river, the three of them’), respectively, while the two corresponding squares of the next column are drawn with images of these celestial bodies and natural. |
| 16. Paper type | Laid patchy, 2 layers |
| 17. Paper thickness | 0.25–0.27 mm |
| 18. Nos of folio sampled | f. 8 |
| 19. Fibre analysis | |
| 20. AMS 14C dating | |
| 21. XRF analysis | |
| 22. RTI | |
| 23. GCMS |
