Begin with the poem and the edition

Minor Tibetan Texts I: The Song of the Eastern Snow-Mountain contains one complete devotional poem by Gendun Drub (Dge ’dun grub, 1391–1474), later counted as the First Dalai Lama. The poem praises Tsongkhapa and his principal disciples, remembers the kindness of Gendun Drub's teachers, condemns hostility among religious practitioners, and turns toward discipline, compassion, awakening, and blessing.

Its scale is exact: fourteen numbered stanzas and fifty-six numbered Tibetan lines, followed by a complete historical English rendering. This is enough to establish a real reading doorway into a narrow field of Gelug devotional poetry. It is not a miniature version of all Tibetan literature, all Tibetan Buddhism, every Gelug genre, or the writings of every Dalai Lama.

The page also preserves a much larger historical edition. Johan van Manen published the poem in Calcutta in 1919 as the first installment of Minor Tibetan Texts, “primarily lexicographically treated.” Alongside the Tibetan text and English translation are an introduction, readings from three blockprint witnesses, textual variants, a long glossary, syntactical and contextual notes, additional notes, and printed errata. Read the whole page as both a fifteenth-century Tibetan poem and an early-twentieth-century scholarly encounter with it.

Keep the people and roles straight

Gendun Drub composed the poem. Van Manen edited the Tibetan witnesses, translated the poem, and wrote the philological study. The historical title page says “By Johan van Manen” because it names the maker of the 1919 monograph; it does not turn him into the author of Gendun Drub's verses.

Van Manen also names two Tibetan teachers, Skarma Bsam Gtan Paul and Pʽun Tsʽogs Lung Rtogs, as his nearly exclusive authorities for oral information and illustrative examples. Their help runs through the glossary and notes wherever he tests usage, pronunciation, meaning, or current understanding. They should be remembered as teachers and informants essential to the edition's making, not hidden behind a European editor's name and not silently promoted to coauthors of the poem.

L. A. Waddell appears only as one cited scholar among many. He neither edited nor translated this volume.

Read the language layers honestly

The edition prints the complete poem in Tibetan script and supplies Van Manen's complete English translation. It also contains many romanized Tibetan names and terms in the English commentary. It does not contain a complete line-by-line transliteration of the poem. A reader who cannot yet read Tibetan script has English access to the poem and lexical discussion, but not a romanized duplicate of every Tibetan line.

That distinction controls the language claim. The work gives direct Tibetan evidence: a complete fifty-six-line source text, a Tibetan colophon, variant readings, prayers quoted in the introduction, and extensive Tibetan headwords and examples in the glossary. It therefore counts as partial Tibetan-language coverage. One short poem, even when surrounded by eighty-six pages of analysis, cannot make the Tibetan-language shelf complete.

The English is also historical. Van Manen uses terms such as “lamaism,” “witches,” “half-blood,” and other colonial or racialized ethnographic language. He sometimes presents the testimony of his teachers carefully and sometimes filters it through the categories of his period. Good Works preserves those words as evidence of the 1919 edition. They are not current community terminology, house voice, or a modern authorized liturgical translation.

Remember that the prayer is alive

The poem is not only an antiquarian specimen. The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama identifies it as a prayer recited in Gelug ceremonial life. In a 2019 account of Ganden Ngamchö, the Dalai Lama recalled reciting it before the Avalokiteshvara image and read passages while discussing Gendun Drub's warning against sectarian hostility. A December 2025 account from Drepung records its ceremonial recitation as a praise to Tsongkhapa composed by Gendun Drub.

That public ceremonial use means the poem is living Gelug devotional literature, not ownerless “folklore.” It does not appear to be a secret or initiatory text, so an archival reading edition need not hide it. Respect here means accurate attribution, a clearly historical translation, no claim of institutional endorsement, and no suggestion that reading an old philological edition gives ritual authority.

A short route through the page

1. Read the fourteen-stanza English translation once without the glossary. Follow the movement from remembrance and gratitude through criticism of religious rivalry to prayer and blessing.
2. Return to the fifty-six Tibetan lines. Even without full language competence, notice the stanza divisions, repeated names, editorial markers, and the final colophon attributing the song to Gendun Drub.
3. Read “The Variants” to see how Van Manen compared two small blockprints with a larger witness and chose among their readings.
4. Sample the glossary around words that carry the poem's moral pressure: teacher, kindness, faith, enemy, shame, compassion, and blessing. Keep the voices of Skarma Bsam Gtan Paul and Pʽun Tsʽogs Lung Rtogs visible when Van Manen invokes his teachers or informants.
5. End with the printed errata. Project Gutenberg's visible transcription repairs and the 1919 author's errata are different layers; the Good Works edition preserves both without silently rewriting the source.

The right scale is one complete poem, one complete historical study, and one living devotional route. Let it deepen the Tibetan room without pretending to finish it.