Manjushri is the Bodhisattva of transcendent wisdom. The youthful prince carries with his right hand the double-edged sword able to cut through illusion and with his left hand a blooming lotus that supports a volume of the Prajnaparamita Sutra. He is depicted as a youth sixteen years in order to convey the Buddhist insight that wisdom is not a matter of mere experience or years, but results from the cultivation of intellectual genius, which can penetrate directly to the bedrock of reality. Wisdom is the most honored virtue in Buddhism, called the mother of Buddha, since only wisdom makes possible the great bliss of total freedom from all suffering that is the goal of all living beings. Thus, Manjushri is one of the most important of all Buddhist deities, the veritable god of wisdom and herald of emancipation.
In the Sutras, Manjushri has a pure land in another universe, wherein he manifests himself as the Buddha he actually is. He is in fact a perfect Buddha who vowed to emanate all over the universe as a Boddhisattva to put the hard questions to the Buddhas on the topics of voidness, freedom, and the nature of self. But in the popular Tibetan imagination, Manjushri has his earthly pure land at the magical Five Mountain (Ch. Wutai shan T. Riwo Tsenga) Paradise in Northeast China, one of the most important pilgrimage places for Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese Buddhists. This painting depicts the vision of Manjushri and his Boddhisattva companions that, it is said, can be seen there even to this day by these of great purity of heart.
The Boddhisattva is in his paradise, on his lotus seat in a courtyard with a palatial structure and wall behind. Beyond the golden roofs, the diamond-pattern ground of the pure land is seen, and various figures drift against the dark sky. Among these, Padma Sambhava is in the center, flanked by his two consorts, who offer him food and elixir. To the left and right are the Medicine Buddha and Shakyamuni Buddha and below them are Amitayus and Ushnishavijaya on the lower part outside the courtyard appear from left to right a Green Tara, the god of wealth Kubera, Vasudhara, and a White Tara. Within the courtyard are five White and three dark Boddhisattvas, seated on lotus pedestals.

SARASVATI is the goddess of learning and music, a goddess beloved by Hindus and Buddhists alike. Here popularity spreads far beyond the borders of India to Tibet, China, Korea and Japan.

Soon after the Tibetan great king Srong-btsan-sgam-po reign began, he saw the need for a government guided by clearly established laws to stabilize the country and promote moral behavior. A system of writing was essential for its purpose, as well as for bringing the teachings of the Dharma to the people of Tibet. Srong-btsan-sgam-po gave his trusted minister Thonmi Sambhota the task of devising such a system, sending him abroad to work with foreign scholars.
Thonmi sambhota sought out an expert in Indian Literary language, a scholar named Li-byin, according to the rGyal-rabs-gsal-ba'i-me-long (The Mirror of Clear History); some sources call him Legs-byin. Offering gifts of gold to the learned master, Thonmi studied two different Sanskrit grammars, as well as poetry and logic.
As Thonmi became learned in many different scripts, he created an alphabet to represent the sounds of spoken Tibetan. Choosing from among the fifty Indian letters, he adapted thirty symbols for consonants and devised variant forms for use in combinations. Three " head letters" were to be written as superscripts; four " tail letters" were to be written as subscripts. From among the fourteen vowels of Sanskrit, he selected four signs to be written above or below the consonants, while each consonant was to contain an inherent "a," just as in Sanskrit. Some letters were modified to represent sounds not existing in the India languages, while signs for sounds not used in Tibetan were omitted. Thon-mi worked out spelling rules for combining letters and determined which consonants could serve as prefixes and suffixes.
The rGyal-rabs also notes that Thon-mi worked with the Pandita lHa-rigs-seng-ge (Devavidyasimha), becoming expert in all the treatises on grammar, as well as in the five traditional sciences: Language, logic, philosophy, medicine, and art. The name Devavidyasimha may be connected with one of three Kashmiri teachers of this era who are mentioned by the Buddhist historian Taranatha: Vidyasimha, Devadvidyasimha, and also Devasimha. This seems to indicate that Thon-mi went Kashmir, and Bu-ston and the La-dwags-rgyal-rabs agree. But the Blue Annals reports that he studied in India, which was a separate kingdom in those days. The rGyal-rabs-gsal-ba'i-me-long states that he met li-byin in India, though it does not mention where he worked with lHa-rigs-seng-ge.
The Indian Nagari script I soften mention as the model for Tibetan; some sources also state that the Lantsa script was the inspiration for the Tibetan dbu-can printed script and the Vartula script was the model for the Tibetan dbu-med cursive script. Modern scholars, however, believe that these particular Indian scripts came in to use after the seventh century, and they suggest instead the northwestern variety of the Gupta script as likely model. After comparing inscriptions in Gupta script with samples of ancient Tibetan script, the author of the Deb-ther-dkar-po concluded that the Gupta script was the model used.
Thon-mi Sambhota returned to Tibet not only with a new alphabet, but also with Mahayana Sutras and Tantras. In a great celebration he presented the script to Srong-btsan-sgam-po in the form of an unusual piece of poetry in honor of the king. The first four lines were composed of words using only the vowel 'a'; the fifth line contained only using the vowel 'e'; the sixth line used only words with 'I'; the seventh used only 'o' and the eighth only 'u'. This lovely poem praised the spiritual qualities of the king whom Thon-mi deeply admired.
A sample of the writing shown by Thon-mi Sambhota to Srong-btsang-sgam-po was erected just north of lJa-sa behind the nine-storied castle of Pha-bong-kha, which was built by the king as his own meditative retreat. There upon a large rock Om Mani Padme Hum was engraved in the new Tibetan script.
The great attention being paid to Thon-mi Sambhota began to cause uneasiness among the other ministers. So Thon-mi gathered the ministers together and explained how he had undergone great physical hardship in his travels, how extensive his studies had been, and how all his energy had been devoted to devising the alphabet. Indeed, Thon-mi's genius had been recognized by the Indian masters he had worked with, and as the ministers listened to his adventures, they began to understand what an unusual man he was. When Thon-mi declared, 'I am the first learned man to arrive in this uncivilized country! There is no one like me, the others knew that his pride was truly selfless- his efforts were for the benefit of his people. Working in the temple of Me-ru in lHa-sa, Thon-mi composed eight treatises on Tibetan grammar and writing that laid out the newly devised rules, together with examples and explanation. Only two of these treatises have survived to the present day, the rTags-kyi-'jug-pa and the rTsa-ba-sum-cu-pa.

THE BENEFITS OF THE NEW SCRIPT
It seems possible that earlier efforts to create a written language could also have been made, and that some of the Tibetan tribes had developed writing systems for their own dialects. There is mention in the T'ang annals, for example, the some of the Ch'iang tribes used Indian scripts, and ancient Zhang-zhung is said to have had a written script. But it is clear that no national language existed before the days of Srong-btsan-sgam-po. With the establishment of standard grammar and spelling, all literate persons could communicate with one another and with future generations. Unlike Europe, where records, histories, philosophy, and litereature were all composed in classical Latin, Tibet transformed its spoken language into a 'classical' form. The spoken languages of most European peoples were not regularly used even for record-keeping until the fourteenth century.
The Tibetan language, already very old by the time Thon-mi developed these standardizations, contained words whose ancient meanings gradually became uncertain or were forgotten. Yet many very old terms are still in use, for the basic sounds and rhythms of Tibetan have carried on into modern times. Today, Tibetan - speaking people can read material from the era of the Dharma Kings, especially texts revised or composed in the ninth century. English-speaking people, on the other hand, can scarcely decipher texts in tenth-century Old English, which appears to the untrained eye to be a completely different language.

THE LITERARY WORKS AND TRANSLATIONS
In order to master the new script and grammar and to begin translations, Srong-btsan-sgam-po retired for four years. Thon-mi Sambhota and Srong-btan-sgam-po together translated twenty-one Avalokitesvara texts, as well as the Za-ma-tog-bkod-pa (Karandavyuha,Ny.116) and the dPang-skong-phyag-brgy-pa (Saksipurnamsudraka, Ny. 267), which King lHa-tho-tho-ri had received long before; the 'Phags-pa-dkon-mchog-sprin (Ratna-meghasutra, Ny.2310 and the 'Dus-pa-rin-po-che-rtogs-gzungs were also translated at this time.
Other translators working with the king and Thon-mi included Brahmana Samkara, the Nepalese Silamanju, the Indian teacher Kusara, the Chinese Hwa-shang Mahadeva, Acarya Dharmakosa, who was a student of Thon-mi sambhota, and lHa-lung dPal-gyi-rdo-rje. Word of Srong-btang-sgam-po's efforts for the Dharma reached Khotan, and two Khotanese monks traveled to lHa-sa to study several years with the king.
Thon-mi Sambhota, whom the Buddhist tradition considers an incarnation of Manjusri, taught eighty great disciples, who eventually became successful yogins.
Through Srong-btsan-sgam-po's and Thon-mi Sambhota's careful efforts, the Tibetan language was being deliberately crafted into a tool to convey sophisticated concepts with precision. Within a century and a half after the foundation laid by Srong-btsan-sgam-po, large teams of Tibetan Lo-tsa-bas were working with Indian panditas to translate hundreds of Buddhist texts dealing with subtle mystical subjects, complex meditation techniques, and refined philosophical concepts.