A gateway to early Tibetan scholasticism

Introduction

The early centuries of the Later Diffusion of Buddhism to Tibet constitute a crucial period for the development of Tibetan scholasticism. Tibetan scholars faced the import of massive quantities of Indian Buddhist sources. They developed various techniques to deal with this corpus and its contents.

In a similar way, scholars today are faced with great quantities of new Tibetan textual material. Vast numbers of works from the 10th to the 15th century have recently surfaced, in particular works that were preserved in gNas bcu lha khang of ’Bras spungs Monastery (referred to as the private library of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho [1617–1682]; see Ducher 2020) and other monastic libraries. Among those, works that were published as facsimiles in the bKa' gdams gsung 'bum ("Collected Works of the bKa' gdams pas") offer a wonderful opportunity for in-depth investigation of early Tibetan scholasticism.

As part of their ongoing research on Tibetan scholasticism, Pascale Hugon (IKGA) and Kazuo Kano (Komazawa University, Tokyo) initiated in 2018 the project "A gateway to early Tibetan scholasticism," which focuses on the bKa' gdams gsung 'bum Collection. The first step of the project pursues two aims:

1. a detailed description of the material contained in the bKa' gdams gsung 'bum Collection (information about the exemplars as well as the contents of each text)
2. editions and translations of the incipit, conclusion, and colophon of each text.

This webpage provides open access to the project's results at the present stage, in the form of "info-sheet documents" (i), the editions and translations of excerpts being available in separate document (t). The information contained in these PDF-documents will be, in the future, made available in a more practical format through a database and finalized for a publication in print. Note that all the translations in these documents represent a work-in-progress (cf. the date of the latest update) and should therefore be treated accordingly.

Also available for download below are the e-texts (e) that have been put together in the course of our investigation and in preparation for the next step of the project, in which they will be completed and marked-up in XML. These contain a transcription of the text (in Wylie) which, at the minimum, covers the portions edited and translated in the info-sheet, as well as the first and last folios. This already gives a good idea of the style of the text and of the types of orthographic particularities found in the exemplar. When available, more extended (and in some cases complete) e-texts have been provided. Note that these e-texts are not critical editions and may not have been proofread (check the status at the beginning of the document). We make no guarantee of accuracy for the contents, but trust they will nonetheless be helpful to researchers.

If you have comments, corrections, or additional information we could include in the info-sheet, please kindly send us an email (you can for instance send us an annotated version of the downloaded document). If you have e-texts (transcriptions) of works from the bKa' gdams gsung 'bum Collection sleeping on your hard-drive, you might consider bringing them to a more useful fate by sharing them on this website. All contributions will be duly acknowledged.

pascale.hugon(at)oeaw.ac.at kanokazuo(at)hotmail.com

We are grateful to Mathias Fermer for his advice on technical issues.

Material

The tables below list, for each text, the name of the author; the short title of the text (according to the info-sheet); a link to the corresponding entry on the website of the Buddhist Digital Archives of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center; a link to download the info-sheet (i), the excerpts (t), and the e-text (e); information about the status of the e-text (F=fragmentary, P=partial, C=complete).

The bibliographical references for the articles and books mentioned in the info-sheet can be found in this Zotero library. Library data added until 1.2024 has been curated by Dania Huber.

The editorial conventions applied in the info-sheet and the e-texts are listed here: Editorial conventions.

Set 1

bKaʼ gdams gsung ʼbum phyogs bsgrigs thengs dang po. Vols. 1-30. Chengdu, 2006: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang.

Vol. 1

Vol. 2

Vol. 3

Vol. 4

Vol. 5

Vol. 6

Vol. 7

Vol. 8

Vol. 9

Vol. 10