Orthodoxy is enforced at the lexeme

Claim (verbatim)

Orthodoxy is enforced at the lexeme: the Tibetan imperial translation reform (the Mahavyutpatti and the sGra sbyor bam po gnyis pa decree, c. 814) shows that pre-print doctrinal standardization operated on vocabulary, not wording. When old translations were revised into the canonical versions, revisers should have overwhelmingly replaced decree-regulated technical terms while leaving ordinary language and syntax alone — orthodoxy was a controlled lexicon, and the state's hand should be measurable as a substitution spectrum spiked exactly on the decreed word-list.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

For Buddhist texts extant both in Dunhuang-era Tibetan copies and in the received Kanjur, align the versions. Primary clause: the per-token substitution rate between versions for terms on the Mahavyutpatti list is at least five times the substitution rate for content words not on the list; the verdict follows this clause. Secondary clause: listed-term substitutions run at least 80 percent from old form to Mahavyutpatti form, not the reverse.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: Old Tibetan Documents Online (OTDO) and the digitized Dunhuang Tibetan collections (International Dunhuang Programme; Pelliot tibetain on Gallica), aligned against an electronic Kanjur (the BDRC eKangyur), with the digitized Mahavyutpatti as the term list.

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

The reform's lexical-standardization character is documented -- the Mahavyutpatti and the sGra sbyor bam po gnyis pa (early 9th c.) decreed a controlled Sanskrit-Tibetan lexicon, and old translations were revised to it -- so the qualitative claim that standardization operated on vocabulary is close to the reform's stated purpose (near-leaked). But the specific empirical prediction is genuinely open and possibly falsifiable: the documented revision also 'reduced overtranslation' and corrected omissions (non-lexical changes), so whether per-token substitution concentrates >=5x on Mahavyutpatti-listed terms and runs >=80% from old form to the decreed Mahavyutpatti form is unrun against aligned Dunhuang-era vs Kanjur versions -- the decidable operationalization on OTDO/eKangyur.

• Mahavyutpatti and the sGra sbyor bam po gnyis pa translation decree (c. 814); see 'Traditional Guidelines for Translating Buddhist Texts' (Study Buddhism) — State-decreed controlled lexicon and mandated revision of old translations
• Old Tibetan Documents Online (OTDO); BDRC eKangyur; digitized Mahavyutpatti term list — The kill datasets for the Dunhuang-vs-Kanjur substitution-spectrum test

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.