འགྲེས་རྩ། འགྲེས་རིང་། འགྲེས་ཐུང་། འགྲེས་རྐང་།

In the Tibetan accounts of the Śatasāhasrikā, we find terms such as ’gres rtsa, ’gres ring, and ’gres thung. One can notice from the context that ’gres is certainly used as a technical term: “basic ’gres, longer ’gres, and shorter ’gres.” But what exactly is ’gres in our context? The closest plausible word seems to be ’gres rkang. See the Tshig mdzod chen mo (s.v. ’gres rkang): tshigs bcad dum bu re’i mtshams su gzud rgyu’i rigs ’gres gtong rung ba’i tshig rkang. According to this, a ’gres rkang is a pāda or a line which occurs repeatedly and hence can be inserted in between blocks of verses or passages. But this does not seem to be only meaning. Some sources (see TBRC or BDRC) simply seem to use ’gres rkang in the sense of “items” of phenomena (i.e. “subject of the property of emptiness” (stong gzhi chos can) usually divided to those that belong to saṃkleśa (e.g. 5 skandhas) and those that belong to vyavadāna (e.g. 6 pāramitās). Even in this sense, what would exactly be ’gres rtsa, ’gres ring, and ’gres thung? This needs further investigation. The following expressions seem to shed some light the use of the word ’gres rkang: ’gres rkang gi mtshams la ’jug par bya; gzhan rnams ’gres rkang du bzhag ’dug pa; ’gres rkang phyes ma phyes kyi khyad par tsam; ’gres rkang ded par bya; ’gres rkang sbyor ba; de bzhin du ’gres rkang ded pas legs po ’ong mchis so ||.