Divinity Secularized: An Inquiry into the Nature and Form of the Songs Ascribed to the Sixth Dalai Lama

Divinity Secularized: An Inquiry into the Nature and Form of the Songs Ascribed to the Sixth Dalai Lama. By PER K. SORENSEN. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, vol. 25. Vienna: ARBEITSKREIS FUR TIBETISCHE UND BUDDHISTISCHE STUDIEN UNIVERSITAT WIEN, 1990. Pp. 446. OS 480.

This meticulously researched study is devoted to one of the most remarkable personages in the history of the internecine strife between the secular and ecclesiastic factions of the Tibetan religious-political system of the seventeenth century, aided and abetted by internal and external forces. This person was the short-lived Sixth Dalai Lama Blo-bzang Rin-chen Tshangs-dbyangs rgya-mtsho (1683-1706), of whom it is unknown whether he died a natural death (after some illness) or was murdered. Similarly, his famous love songs may have been genuine poetic works by him or popular songs ascribed to him in a commonly used and politically motivated ruse to get rid of him.

After a short survey of the types of Tibetan songs, their stylistic forms and contents, largely modelled after the Indian kavya genre, the author lists the various editions of the sixty-six songs as a preamble to his own critical edition. Each song is given in Tibetan, followed by an English translation, and copious annotations that at every turn reveal the author's profound knowledge and appreciation of his chosen subject as well as its contextual place in the vast Indo-Tibetan literary tradition.

The appendices contain the transliterated text of a photo-static copy, in the author's possession, of a unique document kept in the library pertaining to the Tibetan Language Section of the Central Academy of National Minorities in Beijing (pp. 283-338) and an Apparatus Criticus and Explanatory Notes to the aforementioned text (pp. 341-448). This "Apparatus," too, is a mine of information. The bibliography lists works both in Western languages and in Chinese.

The value of this work would have been enhanced if the author had provided a glossary of the Tibetan terms, many of which are not found in any of the standard dictionaries.

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