Getting the names of the kings of Śambhala correct is very important for the Jonang order of Tibetan Buddhism, which has specialized in the Kālacakra/Śambhala teachings. So the Jonangpa lama Khentrul Rinpoche asked me if I could check with other Sanskritists to confirm that the name aja cannot mean “inconquerable” or “unconquered” in accordance with the rules of Sanskrit grammar. Since the many learned Sanskritists on this list have not responded with a way to derive this meaning in the three days since the question was posted, I take this as confirmed. This is a difficult problem, because a thousand years ago two different Indian Sanskrit pandits, working with two different Tibetan translators, apparently did take aja in this meaning. Unlike with the name harivikrama, we cannot trace how the error with aja arose (if it is an error).

The case of harivikrama is comparatively simple. This name occurs with another name in this anuṣṭubh pāda: śrīpalo harivikramaḥ. Sanskrit verses had to be translated into Tibetan verses with a fixed number of syllables, seven for a pāda in the śloka or anuṣṭubh meter. So the eight syllables of this anuṣṭubh pāda were translated into these seven Tibetan syllables: dpal skyong seng ge rnam par gnon. Because the number of Tibetan syllables was limited by the meter, the syllables giving necessary grammatical information were omitted, leaving no way to know where the names divide. At some point, annotations were added, dividing this pāda into three names rather than two. So the Tibetan tradition got two kings, hari and vikrama, for one, harivikrama. All eight Sanskrit manuscripts that I used 31 years ago have harivikramaḥ (not harir vikramaḥ), as do the two that have become available to me since then. These ten include six old palm-leaf manuscripts, two of which had been used in Tibet, as seen by the Tibetan handwriting on their opening leaves.

The case of aja is more complex. Even though the pāda of the śloka that ajaḥ occurs in lacks a syllable, samudravijayo 'jaḥ, all ten Sanskrit manuscripts have ajaḥ, not ajayaḥ. This name occurs again in prose in the Vimalaprabhā commentary on 1.27, three times, so the form aja is there confirmed. Yet the canonical Tibetan translation by the Indian pandit Somanātha and the Tibetan translator 'Bro Shes rab grags, revised by Shong ston, has rgyal dka'. Similarly, the Tibetan translation by the Indian pandit Samantaśrī and the Tibetan translator Rwa Chos rab has ma pham pa, as reported by Bu ston in his annotated edition of the Vimalaprabhā. Both mean “unconquerable” or “unconquered.” Here we do not have an error that is traceable to the transmission process, as we do with harivikrama, but rather a discrepancy in the translation itself.

In the last few years two other old Tibetan translations of the Vimalaprabhā that had recently been recovered were published, and part of a third. The translation by Tsa mi Sangs rgyas grags, said to be the only Tibetan ever to become abbot of Nālandā university in India, has transliterated the name into Tibetan characters (a dza) rather than translated it. The first ever Tibetan translation, by the Indian pandit Bhadrabodhi and the Tibetan translator Gyi jo Zla ba'i 'od zer and his students, has the incomprehensible nyi ma'i, “of the sun,” at the end of the pāda in the list of kings (probably a scribal error in the one manuscript we have), and chu skyes, “water-born,” in the three occurrences in the commentary on 1.27. A third translation, of which we have only the first chapter (so we do not know who made it), has rgyal ba, “conqueror,” in the list of kings (probably a scribal error for rgyal dka' in the one manuscript we have), and rgyal dka', “unconquerable,” in the three occurrences at 1.27.

The question now is whether the name aja could stand for ajaya in some Prakrit or even vernacular language, probably from northeastern India. If we reject Gyi jo’s chu skyes, “water-born,” as an erroneous translation, a simple mistake, we are left with figuring out how three translators took aja as “unconquerable” or “unconquered.” Is this, too, just an erroneous translation? Significantly, Tsa mi did not translate the name but only transliterated it. This indicates that he did not take it as “unconquerable” or “unconquered,” but neither did he take it as “unborn,” as we might have expected. My apologies for the long post, but this is important to me and to Khentrul Rinpoche, and I wanted to provide enough background information to possibly lead to a solution to this problem.

Best regards,

David Reigle

Colorado, U.S.A.