Jay Holt Valentine (Troy University)
The Clarifying Ray of Sunlight: A Biography of the Great Emanation (sPrul sku chen po’i rnam thar gsal byed nyi ma’i ‘od zer) is the most complete, early biography of Rigdzin Gödem (1337–ca. 1401), the founding tertön of the Northern Treasures tradition. It was authored, presumably early in the fifteenth century, by Nyima Zangpo (Nyi ma bzang po), who was one of his minor disciples later in life.
Jurgen Herweg (1994) included “a lightly abridged paraphrase of the entire” biography, which features numerous “translated sections,” (p. 15) in his MA thesis completed at the University of Washington. Despite Herweg’s humble assessment of his efforts, his translation of the biography is sufficient enough to allow one to form a rather complex understanding of this famous treasure revealer.
Nevertheless, as Herweg himself admits, his translation is not complete. Additionally, as it has only been published within an MA thesis, it is also rather inaccessible. Lastly, as so much more is known now (2025) about the Northern Treasures, in no small measure as a result of the publication in 2015 of a 63-volume compilation of the tradition’s literature, it is time for a new, complete translation.
Thus, over the past several years, I have been preparing a translation of this historiographically significant biography, which will likely be published, along with a lengthy introduction, at some point in 2026.
In order to facility my translation work, I created the parallel edition of the biography that is presented below. The first column contains the 1983 edition, which I used as the “base text” for my translation. The second column contains the 2015 edition of the biography, which has apparently been edited for clarity at many points throughout text. While I personally would not describe all of the unique features of the 2015 edition as “improvements,” it does provide alternative means for understanding some of the difficult passages as they appear in the other editions. The second column also contains the page number markings for the 1985 edition and an unpublished manuscript, which is represented by the number “0000,” that allow one to quickly check all four manuscripts as needed. The differences between the two editions have been placed in bold as to draw attention to them. There are, in fact, other editions of the biography that have become available since I created this parallel edition, but, alas, I have only included information drawn from the following four editions.
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