The present study consists of a full translation and analysis of the three main versions of the Section on Law and State, a chapter on Tibetan imperial law and administration found in the mid-16th century Mkhas pa'i dga' ston by Dpa'-bo Gtsuglag Phreng-ba, and in the Rgya bod kyi chos 'byung rgyas pa of Mkhas-pa Lde'u and the Chos 'byung chen po bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan of Lde'u Jo-sras, which both date to the mid to late-13th century. While the post-dynastic Tibetan historical tradition attributes this entire body of legal and administrative reforms to Emperor Srong-btsan Sgam-po (c.605-649), the individual legal and administrative catalogues contained in the Section on Law and State, when subjected to close analysis, can be dated to several different periods. The principal aim of this analysis is to underline the early Tibetan antecedents for the catalogues contained in the Section on Law and State. By relating the catalogues of the Section on Law and State to Old Tibetan sources, this analysis describes in detail the legal and administrative practices of the Tibetan Empire (c.600-c.850). Among the topics covered by this analysis are historical geography and the 'nationalisation' of clan territory, social stratification, technological innovation and legal culture. The Section on Law and State is not limited solely to law and administration, however, and also offers insights regarding cultural institutions such as religious practices and Tibetan funerary culture. Taken together, the scattered and fragmentary catalogues that make up the Section on Law and State, many of which ultimately derive from manuals and official records from the imperial period, constitute a rare juridical corpus of the Tibetan Empire. As such, it furnishes important and detailed information about the legal and administrative culture of the Tibetan Empire, and constitutes a fundamental source for Tibetan social history. The preservation of such documents within Tibet's postdynastic religious histories underlines the persistence of Tibetan political theory, according to which divine rulers, Buddhist or otherwise, must govern according to the just traditions of their forebears.

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The Tibetan practice of bcud len, or 'extracting the essence', has been for long a neglected aspect of Tibetan medical and spiritual knowledge with scattered evidence and little certainty regarding its origins or the extent of its effective presence, either in the past or at currently. In this study, seventy-three texts have been identified and tabulated. Of these, sixty-seven have been summarised and commented on, and five of these, each representative of one type of the practice, have been translated in full. All but a handful of these texts have not been translated previously. The research findings suggest that, whatever its influences from Indian, Chinese or other medical cultures, bcud len soon evolved into a distinctively Tibetan method of life enhancement, with teachings that emphasise both spiritual and medical aims and the use of indigenous Tibetan remedies, accompanied in some cases by particular rituals. The content of the texts indicates that the term bcud len can be applied legitimately to practices involving ritually empowered pills and elixirs which are ingested, respiratory and yogic exercises, dietary restrictions and rituals involving mantra recitation, visualisation and yab yum union with a consort, in that all these are considered to be means of obtaining 'the essence'. The teachings offer extensive material for those interested in the evolution and contemporary practice of Tibetan medicine, especially its botanical aspects, and for historians of ritual. In particular, the texts provide ample evidence of the lineage tradition in Tibetan religious culture, citing examples of transmissions through gter ma, whereby teachings are preserved in secret to be recovered at a future date by a gter ton or treasure revealer. The final section contains conversations with Tibetan doctors, lamas and contemporary practitioners of bcud len in Asia and the West that complement recent ethnographic studies in the field testifying to the continuing vitality of the tradition.

This thesis examines Ratnakarasanti's (ca. 970-1045 C.E.) explication of Prajnaparamita in his doxographical works and his Saratama. Based on extant Sanskrit and Tibetan primary sources, it argues that Ratnakarasanti's main teacher was Dharmakirtisri (late 10th C.E.) and that Ratnakarasanti's Saratama sought to replace his teacher's Yogacara-Madhyamika framework with a causal explanation of Prajnaparamita through redefining the term Prajnaparamita as the path to awakening, rather than its goal. By unpacking that causal explanation in light of his broader system, the thesis demonstrates the way that Ratnakarasanti's own version of Nirakaravadin-Yogacara-Madhyamika refutes cognitive images (akara) as unreal ultimately, but claims they are still perceived by buddhas out of compassion. This conclusion debunks the long-standing theory that Ratnakarasanti was an Indian proponent of the controversial Tibetan gZhan-stong despite later gZhan-stong propon-ents' attempts to claim him as their own. There are two parts to the study. The first part introduces Ratnakarasanti's life, philosophy and doxography based upon evidence from a Tibetan colophon to his Madhyamika commentary and the Tibetan hagiography of his student Adhisa (a.k.a. Atisa) and upon a comparative analysis of his doxographical works that are prerequisites for reading his Saratama. The second part consists of an annotated translation of the Saratama's introductory section, contrasted with the prior standard interpretation by Haribhadra's (9th century C.E.). In the two appendices are included a Tibetan critical edition and a separate hybrid Sanskrit and Tibetan critical edition of the Saratama's first parivarta based on the extant 11th and 13th century incomplete MSS and on the Tibetan translations in the sDe dge, Peking and sNarthang editions. The hybrid edition also includes my provisional critical edition of the root text - i.e. the first parivarta of the Aryasta - sahasrikaprajnaparamitasutra - and my own translation of two small sample sections of the Saratama, which are extant only in Tibetan, back into Sanskrit.

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