ABSTRACT
The leading personality amongst the Tibetan translators, the so-called Lo-tsa-ba, was Vairocanarakshita, a man of linguistic genius and religious zeal who has been extolled by texts such as the biography of Padmasambhava. The writings of the rNying-ma-pa contain a biography of Vairocanarakshita. The creation of a Tibetan religious literature in translation was vigorously encouraged, and the interests of the some rival religions were both taken into consideration. A fanatical Buddhist hermit, dPal-gyi rdo-rje, killed the king with an arrow whilst the king was intently reading an inscription on one of the big obelisks set up in Lhasa. The big advance of Buddhist scholarship in this respect seems to have been due to the arrival by invitation of a further famous Indian teacher, Vimalamitra. As a result of the protracted internal struggles the political kingdom of Tibet finally collapsed and the country became a priest-dominated State.
