ABSTRACT
From the Tibetan perspective also, it is clear that the events of 838 act as a watershed not because the earlier lineages of Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra and Buddhaguhya disappeared but because the eleventhcentury Tibetans responsible for the restoration of Buddhism were exposed to a new generation of Indian masters-Naropa, Gayadhara, Virūpa and Atiśa, with their own distinct lineages, in addition to the earlier traditions. Tibetan polemists of the rNying-ma school have sometimes sought to distinguish the ancient and new translations on the basis of their translation style rather than their textual content, attributing the earlier to be meaningful and the later as lexical interpretations of the Sanskrit originals.5
