Probably some of the readers might have read in some Tibetan sources
that “Ru” has been used as a kind of a title, say, in place of “Ācārya.”
See, for examples, the Klong chen chos ’byung (Lhasa:
Bod-yig-dpe-rnying-dpe-skrun-khang, 2013 [reprint of the first edition 1991],
p. 318): Ru ’Jam-dpal-bshes-gnyen, Ru Padma, and so on. Note that “Ru” is also
used with Tibetan authors, for example, Ru bKa’[= sKa]-brtsegs. When I first
encountered such a usage, I was totally clueless. (a) Recently, however, Ms.
Mengyan Li, one of my doctoral students who is writing her dissertation on the
history of rDo-rje-phur-pa cycle of Tantric teachings in Tibet, suggested that
“Ru” seems to be an abbreviation of “Guru.” This possibility did not occur to
me and I think one should give Ms. Li the due credit for coming up with this
idea. (b) Could “Ru” have been an abbreviation of Ru-dpon? It is true that
a ru dpon or ru sna is military term and can
mean something like “the head/leader of a regiment” and hence a kind of a
military general. But possibly ru dpon may reflect a
Tibetan equivalent of ācārya or a phase of the Tibetan attempt
to make sense of the Sanskrit word ācārya, which then later
came to be rendered into Tibetan as slob dpon. Can it be that, at
least initially, Tibetans understood both ru dpon and slob
dpon as some kind of a “guide,” “instructor,” or “trainer”?
Incidentally a rectangular ruler used by traditional Bhutanese architects is
called a slob dpon. A search in the OTDO reveals ru dpon but
not slob dpon. Possibly also the term slob dpon was
created (somewhat later) by Tibetans to render ācārya, and slob
dpon seems to literally mean “an instructing or training
leader/master.” (c) Dan Martin, however, has
asked if there is any reason (see below), why “Ru” could not have been an
abbreviation of “Rudra.” Initially, I have claimed that contextually this seems
very unlikely and that it is very unlikely that Ācārya Mañjuśrīmitra would be
titled “Rudra.” But now I am reconsidering this possibility. Mr. Nicola
Barjeta, a student of mine, points out that according to MW (s.v.
rudra), rudra is also a “name of
various teachers and authors (also with ācārya, kavi, bhaṭṭa, śarman, sūri
…).” It is, however, not quite clear to me what MW actually means here. It would be interesting for me only if rudra is interchangeable with ācārya,
which does not seem to be what MW
means. The PW has just “Nomen proprium verschiedener Männer.” The fact that “Rudra” can occur as a Nomen proprium seems to be of no
relevance to the present question.
For fun, consider the following compounds: sde dpon, dmag
dpon, khri dpon, mda’ dpon, khyim dpon, bza’ dpon,
khrims dpon, skyor dpon, rdzong dpon, gsol dpon, gzim/gzims dpon,
mchod dpon, gar dpon, ’go dpon, tsho
dpon, mnyan dpon, grong dpon, ded dpon, lding
dpon, sgar dpon, sger/sgos dpon, sgo dpon, brgya
dpon, bcu dpon, chibs dpon, ’cham dpon, ja
dpon, jag dpon, jus dpon, rje dpon, mgo
dpon, gter dpon, drag dpon, drang dpon, nor
dpon, yul dpon, tshong dpon, par dpon, las
dpon, spyi dpon, phogs dpon, rtsis dpon, phru
dpon, brang dpon, zong dpon, mdzo dpon, mdzod
dpon, zhal dpon, zhi dpon, gsol dpon, gzhas
dpon, bzo dpon, g.yos dpon, lag dpon, she
dpon, sho dpon, so dpon, and so on. The list
would be, by no means, complete.
Dear Dorji, I can't think of a single example. Could you give one? Is there any good reason to think it isn't short for ru-tra? Do we have to go with the gu-ru idea? After all, it's rarely the 2nd syllable that is spared when things get abbreviated. In haste. Yours, D.
ReplyDeleteDear Dan, I added some examples above. Yes, contextually (see examples) Ru can impossibly be an abbreviation for Rudra. But it is true that abbreviation is usually not made with the second syllable of a bisyllabic word. But I shall add some speculation above. Take care, D.
ReplyDeleteY. knows of some examples where the syllable "dal" is used in cursive texts as abbreviation for ma.n.dala (dkyil-'khor). In this one the 2nd syllable is the one that is preserved, for some reason that requires speculation!
ReplyDelete