1. Text number 

Drangsong 154

2. Text title (where present) in Tibetan

༄༅།།ཀོང་ཙེ་གཏོ་སྤྱད་མར་མེ་ཆུ་ཐར་བཞུགས་པ་ལེགས་སོ།།

3. Text title (where present) in Wylie transliteration 

Kong tse gto spyad[dpyad] me chur thar bzhugs pa legs so//

4. A brief summary of the item’s contents

A prayer of hope that the offering of the lamp will remove misfortunes brought about by the attributes of the year.

5. Number of folios

6

6. Scribe’s name

None

7. Translation of title

A ritual (gto dpyad) of Kong tse for surviving fire and water

8. Transcription of colophon

bkra shis/ byed lugs thams cad ni zhal las shes so/ theg dman lam zhugs don byed spang dgos kyang/ sbyin bdag gegs brgyugs byung dus ngal ’tshor bris/

9. Translation of colophon

Blessings. All the techniques are already known. Even though one should give up activities related to entering the path of the lower vehicles, when a patron is afflicted by obstructions one has no choice but to (? ngal ’tshor) draw [the ritual diagrams?].

10. General remarks

This ritual is based on the principles of Chinese elemental divination, whereby certain combinations of the eight trigrams, the five elements are the twelve signs of the zodiac may be either auspicious or antagonistic. The ritual is intended too offset harm arising from inauspicious configurations.

11. Remarks on script

dpe tshugs

12. Format

Loose leaves

13. Size

7.1 × 36 cm

14. Layout

15. Illustrations and decorations

16. Paper type

Woven with thick fibre bundles, 2-3 layers

17. Paper thickness

0.35–0.53 mm

18. Nos of folio sampled

f. 1

19. Fibre analysis

20. AMS ¹⁴C dating

21. XRF analysis

22. RTI

23. GCMS