The Clear Mirror of Royal Genealogies (1368)
A Tibetan royal history by a Sakya hierarch, ending with the Sakya and Mongol period.
Full title The Clear Mirror of Royal Genealogies (1368): history of the Tibetan kings with a closing section on the Sakya-Mongol period
རྒྱལ་རབས་གསལ་བའི་མེ་ལོང་།
Sakya Lama Dampa Sönam Gyaltsen (1312-1375)
Sakya Lama Dampa Sonam Gyaltsen (1312 to 1375) wrote this history of the Tibetan kings in 1368 at Samye, in the last year of Yuan rule in China. It runs from legend to his own day and closes with the Sakya and Mongol period, when the Sakya lamas dealt with the Mongol court of Godan and Qubilai. The card lists a 1973 Delhi reproduction of a manuscript, scanned at BDRC, and gives Sorensen's 1994 translation as the standard English version. The atlas does not hold the text of this edition: no copy was harvested into the corpus, so nothing from it was read for this guide.
- How they knew
- Compiled from others
- Who “Tartar” means here
- Not recorded. The card names the Mongols of the Sakya and Yuan period, including Godan and Qubilai.
- Why read it
- It is a near contemporary Tibetan witness to the Sakya and Mongol relationship and to the end of Yuan rule.
- Watch out
- The early periods are largely legendary, while the late sections are near contemporary. The copy is a manuscript reproduction, not a critical edition.
What it says
No quotes from this one yet. Its text is out of reach for now, or the scan could not be read.
The fine print
How we know
compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.
retrospective religious history, written at Samye in the last year of Yuan rule by a Sakya hierarch who dealt with the Mongol court
Research notes
- Largely legendary for early periods; late sections are near-contemporary. Manuscript reproduction, not a critical edition.
Why it matters
Contemporary Tibetan witness to the end of the Yuan and to the Sakya-Mongol relationship; the standard English translation is Sørensen 1994 (Tibetan Buddhist Historiography).
Places named
Tibet; Mongolia (Sa skya-Yuan relations)
Peoples named
Tibetan Yarlung dynasty; Sa skya; Mongols (Godan, Qubilai)