Ngok Lotsawa Loden Sherab (རྔོག་ལོ་ཚཱ་བ་བློ་ལྡན་ཤེས་རབ་)
One of the most renowned translators in Tibetan history and believed to be the first native Tibetan to compose original works on Indian logic (sonam-introduction-treasury).
Life
Ngok Lotsawa studied under the Kashmiri scholar Kalden Gyalpo (བསྐལ་ལྡན་རྒྱལ་པོ་), who is said to have been trained in non-Buddhist schools prior to his conversion to Buddhism. Many scholars believe that non-Buddhist tenets were inadvertently introduced into Ngok’s interpretations through this influence (sonam-introduction-treasury).
Contributions
- First native Tibetan to compose original works on Indian logic
- His scholarly legacy was carried forward by students including cha-ba
- His tradition, along with Cha-ba’s, became the dominant Tibetan interpretation of dharmakirti before sakya-pandita’s critique
Legacy
sakya-pandita regarded the interpretations stemming from Ngok’s tradition as reading into Dharmakīrti’s texts positions that the master “either explicitly rejected or never propounded.” Sapan held that “the doctrinal purity of the Indian Buddhist pramāṇa system had become littered with Hindu tenets and novel concepts” through Ngok’s and Cha-ba’s innovations (sonam-introduction-treasury).
Go Lotsawa’s Blue Annals (དེབ་ཐེར་སྔོན་པོ་) mentions that before Ngok, rMa taught pramāṇa, and this earlier tradition is known as ཚད་མ་རྙིང་མ་ (the Old Pramāṇa), though it appears to have died out long ago (sonam-introduction-treasury).
Sources
- sonam-introduction-treasury — first native Tibetan logician, Kashmiri teacher, Sapan’s critique