Short Text Titles

Full text titles are seldom used in Tibetan texts, of many reasons. Paper was scarce, it was assumed that the reader knew what the shortened title referred to. In debate it's quicker to use a short title than the full title.  Depending on the text you sometimes need to figure out what root text,  རྩ་ཙིག་ rtsa tshig, is referred to based on the topic studied such as middle way (Nagarjuna's Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way). Or then the root tantra based on the study of the tantric object such as Guhyasamaja གསང་འདུས་ sang 'dus.  There are even oblique cases where it's just assumed the reader knows that a quotations from let's say Nagarjuna ཀླུ་སྒྲུབ་ klu sgrub and the context is from a specific text. In the case of Shantideva ཞི་བ་ལྷ་ zhi ba lha there's a very good chance the author refers to སྤྱོད་འཇུག་ Sometimes with Tibetan masters all you get is something like ཀུན་མཁྱེན་ལྔ་པས། kun mkhyen nga pas, from the great fifth, and then you need to know that this is the Fifth Dalai Lama but the actual quotation never mentions where the quote came from. So then you need to use detective work and do searches across various Fifth Dalai Lama electronic collections to find the actual source of the quotation to get the title. It was again assumed that the reader would know the quote and where it came from.

Below is a list of very common shorter names of key root texts studied in monasteries and shedras (བཤད་གྲྭ་ bshad grwa) based on Tengyur བསྟན་འགྱུར་ bstan 'gyur text titles (links are given for the full titles, Sanskrit title and more information about each text):

སྤྱོད་འཇུག་ Shantideva's Engaging in the Bodhisattva Way of Life

བྱམས་སྡེ་ལྔ་ Maitreya's five treatises

རྩ་བའི་ཤེས་རབ་ Nagarjuna's Fundamental Treatise on the Middle way called "Wisdom"

བཤེས་སྤྲིང་ Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend

བཞི་བརྒྱ་ Āryadeva's Four Hundred Verses

ཐོག་གི་བར་བ་ Bhāvavikeka's Blaze of Reason

དབུ་འཇུག་ Chandrakirti's Entering the Middle Way

ཙིག་གསལ་ Chandrakīrtis' Clear Words

བྱང་ས་ Asanga's Ground of Bodhisattvas

ས་སྡེ་ Asanga's five grounds treatises

ཀུན་བདུས་ Asanga's Compendium of Manifest knowledge or Dignāga's Compendium of Valid Cognition

མཚོད་ Vasubandhu's Treasury of Manifest Knowledge

འདུལ་བ་ Gunaprabha's Aphorisms on Monastic Discipline

རྣམ་འགྲེལ་ Dharmakīrti's Commentary on Valid Cognition

See Also

• Learning Classical Tibetan: A Reader for Translating Buddhist Texts, Paul Hackett, ISBN 1559394560