[page 70] Sacred texts or scriptures, transmitted either orally or in written form, are common to all the world's religious traditions. In some traditions these texts are relatively brief and unitary, like the Koran, for example. In others they are longer and spring from various sources, but are brought together in a single compilation, as in the case of the Christian Bible. In such instances the resulting collection is known as a canon, which is not one book, but many. These many books, however, share a common identity by virtue of the particular sanctity or authority attributed to them, which sets them apart from other books. Not every work of religious literature is scripture, after all, but only that which for some reason is thought to be especially sacred. For Buddhists, whose canonical literature is extraordinarily prolific, the sacredness of their scriptures depended originally on their utterance by the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama. Insofar as we can determine it, the canon1 transmitted by Gautama's followers after his death consisted of two principal sets of texts, the Dharma or Sūtras (discourses delivered by the Buddha, or in some cases by his disciples, but with his blessing) and the Vinaya (the corpus of monastic regulations, with the various traditions relating to their original promulgation).[page 71] Later most schools added a third collection of summaries and systematic restatements of doctrine, the Abhidharma. These three collections or "baskets" (piṭaka) were passed down orally for several centuries, and as the Buddhist community split into different ordination lineages and schools, the Buddhist canon or Tripiṭaka ("Three Baskets"), which can hardly have been fixed even in the lifetime of the founder, diverged correspondingly, so that by the beginning of the Common Era there were various "canons" in existence. (Of these only one has survived to the twentieth century relatively complete, but with later modifications that scholars are now beginning to address: the Pāli Canon of the Theravādin school, which was committed to writing in the first century B.C.E.) We are unsure precisely to what extent these collections were ever considered "closed," setting the texts in them apart from others in circulation, but we know that Buddhists worked with very definite ideas about authenticity, about what could be accepted as the word of the Buddha (buddhavacana) and what could not (see Lamotte; Ray; Davidson). And we also know that Buddhists of all "Mainstream" schools (on this term see Harrison, 1992b: 45, n. 8) continued to produce works of literature, which caused no problems as far as the borderline between the canonical and the non-canonical was concerned, as long as they were not attributed to the Buddha.

This situation changed around the beginning of the Common Era with the advent of the Mahāyāna, a loose pan-Buddhist movement which, while it may have found more favorable conditions for growth within some Mainstream schools than others, soon overran their sectarian boundaries. To promote the various doctrinal and cultic innovations which were their characteristic concern, the followers of the Mahāyāna produced an enormous number of new texts claiming the status of buddhavacana. These then circulated in an uneasy relationship with the canons of the traditional schools, which had in many cases furnished the raw materials for their composition. Although this was in one sense an "anti-canon," co-existing with the Mainstream collections in India while challenging their claims to exclusive authenticity and completeness, this alternative set of scriptures was itself never "closed." Rather, it remained an "open canon," a contradiction in terms evidently occasioned by the need to assign the texts a certain primacy and yet not close the door on further creativity.2 As for the contents of this "canon," we can only speculate as to what[page 72] texts were available at any given time or place,3 but we may assume that most Mahāyānists can hardly have had at their disposal the huge collections of their scriptures we now possess. It is much more likely that, in addition to the traditional canons of the schools they belonged to, they had access to a limited number of Mahāyāna texts, in some cases perhaps to compendia of them. We know of two of these major sūtra collections, the Mahāsaṃnipāta and the Ratnakūṭa, the compilation of which poses difficult historical problems, although some of the texts in them are known to date back to the beginnings of the Mahāyāna. Alongside them we might also place "mega-scriptures" like the Avataṃsaka and the various longer versions of the Prajñāpāramitā ("Perfection of Wisdom"), one of the most philosophically important productions of the Mahāyāna. Such longer texts and text-compendia may well have done duty as a type of Mahāyāna Buddhist canon.

This situation was further complicated when a new movement known as the Vajrayāna or Tantric Buddhism began to take shape towards the middle of the first millennium. In fact the production of sacred literature simply continued unabated, while the themes addressed changed to suit the needs and tastes of the times. In this new wave of works, which are known as tantras, the ritual and iconographical repertoire of Mahāyāna Buddhism was extended, while its doctrines were stretched and remolded so as to harness the power of sexual desire and the potency of sexual symbolism (among other things) in the service of the quest for liberation. Although the tantras do indeed qualify as scriptures, given the circumstances of their production and use, a tantric canon was even less likely to emerge than a Mahāyāna canon. By the close of the first millennium, then, towards the end of its life in its homeland, Indian Buddhism was a complex amalgam of three strains—Mainstream, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna—and it is this multi-layered tradition and its equally complex scriptural heritage which the Tibetans have inherited and passed down to the present day. Without some appreciation of this background, it is impossible to understand the canon which the Tibetans developed.

Tibetan translations of Buddhist scriptures, mostly Mahāyāna texts, began to be made in the seventh century C.E.; this is the beginning of the snga dar, the period of the first diffusion of Buddhism[page 73] in Tibet. Initially the production of these translations seems to have been a haphazard and irregular business, but significantly the central political authority soon moved to take control of the process. At the beginning of the ninth century, on the instructions of the Tibetan king, a group of Indian and Tibetan scholars devised a new set of guidelines and a new terminology for translating Buddhist texts, intended to be binding on all future translators. Some of the results of this remarkable attempt at literary standardization survive in the bilingual (later multilingual) glossary known generally as the Mahāvyutpatti,4 and in its accompanying volume, the sGra sbyor bam po gnyis pa (see Ishikawa). At the same time that new texts were being translated, previous translations were collected and revised by the committee, so that their wording could be brought into line with the new terminology. Lists of works so revised were made, one of which, the catalogue known as the lDan (or lHan) kar ma, has survived.5 The lDan kar ma provides no evidence that there was any move at this time towards setting limits to a Tibetan canon as such, presumably because no Mahāyāna or Vajrayāna canon existed in India. What it does show, however, is that even at this early stage Tibetans were beginning to classify Buddhist literature according to certain principles; and as we shall see, it is this attempt to order the scriptures, rather than to circumscribe them, which is most constitutive of Tibetan canon formation. Thus the lDan kar ma starts with sūtras, those of the Mahāyāna being followed by those of the "Hīnayāna." The Mahāyāna sūtras, which are much more numerous, begin with the Prajñāpāramitā texts, then the works making up the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, the Ratnakūṭa texts, various individual Mahāyāna sūtras, the Mahāsūtras, and lastly texts translated from Chinese. The sūtras are followed by a small number of treatises, then by tantras (gsang sngags kyi rgyud) and dhāraṇīs (gzungs), hymns of praise (stotra, bstod pa), prayers (praṇidhāna, smon lam) and auspicious verses (maṅgalagāthā, bkra shis tshigs su bcad pa). Next comes the Vinaya-piṭaka,6 followed by sūtra commentaries and treatises of various kinds, finishing up with works on logic and revisions and translations in progress. Anticipating subsequent developments, then, we could say that the lDan kar ma foreshadows the basic bKa' 'gyur/ bsTan 'gyur division of later times—that bka' (the sacred word) comes before bstan bcos (the treatises) is after all only logical—and that its "bKa' 'gyur section" follows the basic order Sūtra, Tantra, Vinaya.7 Within each category works are arranged according to length, with the[page 74] longer first. Over 700 titles are listed, testifying to the extraordinary level of activity at this time.

This efflorescence of scholarship, the precision and thoroughness of which has rendered the Tibetan translations so valuable to modern Buddhist scholarship, was eclipsed for some time by the political disturbances following the death of King Glang dar ma in 842 and the subsequent collapse of the Tibetan empire, but resumed eventually in the late tenth century with the translation work of Rin chen bzang po (958-1056) and others. Thus began the so-called second diffusion of Buddhism (phyi dar), which continued for many centuries, during which translations continued to be made, especially of tantric scriptures, which were still being produced in India. At the same time older versions from the snga dar period went on being copied and circulated throughout the greater Tibetan cultural sphere.

Although none of them has survived, catalogues like the lDan kar ma continued to be made, and it was only a matter of time before one of them came to be regarded as definitive, that is, moved from being descriptive—a simple inventory of the holdings of a particular monastery or palace library—to being prescriptive. We can say, in fact, that the formation of the Tibetan canon, or at the very least its shape, can be traced back to the work of cataloguers grappling with the task of imposing some kind of order on the sheer mass of Buddhist literature available to them. When that endeavor was combined with the editorial response provoked by the huge number of copies of individual texts in circulation, each carrying its own peculiar readings, the canon as we know it today was born. It is, however, also likely that the Tibetans were inspired by the Chinese example to attempt a definitive edition of their sacred texts. At any rate we know that at the beginning of the fourteenth century a decisive step was taken at the bKa' gdams pa monastery of sNar thang in gTsang near gZhis ka rtse. An account of this is found in the Deb ther sngon po ("The Blue Annals"), written by gZhon nu dpal (1392-1481) in 1476-1478, less than two hundred years after the event. In his sketch of the sNar thang scholar bCom ldan rigs (or rig) pa'i ral gri, gZhon nu dpal tells us (DTNP: 410-412) that his accomplishments were such that:

[page 75] ...he had many pupils who were fine scholars, and it is said that two thirds of the canon specialists (piṭakadhara, sde snod 'dzin pa) gathered at sNar thang. The great scholar 'Jam pa'i dbyangs was also one of his pupils, but because he once dressed up as a demon and menaced his teacher in the sacred courtyard (?),8 he was severely reprimanded and no longer allowed to stay with him. Having as a result taken up residence at Sa skya, he received an invitation from the Mongols and became the court chaplain of Buyantu Khan,9 where he composed a ṭīkā on the Pramāṇavārttika with a summary appended. No matter how many times he sent gifts to bCom ldan through the imperial messengers, the latter displayed no pleasure at all. Finally he sent him a small chest full of ink, with which he was very pleased. bCom ldan also composed sixteen volumes of treatises. The great scholar known as dBus pa Blo gsal was also a pupil of bCom ral and the Reverend 'Jam dbyangs. bCom ral verified the number of sections, the colophons and so on of the sacred word (bka') of the Sugata and also classified the treatises (bstan bcos) and then wrote the bsTan pa rgyas pa, a treatise which puts them together in their various categories.10 Later, the Reverend 'Jam dbyangs sent copious quantities of materials. In accordance with his request to dBus pa Blo gsal and others that they make copies of all the sacred word and the treatises in translation (bka' dang bstan bcos 'gyur ro cog) and keep them at sNar thang Monastery, dBus pa Blo gsal Byang chub ye shes, the translator bSod nams 'od zer and rGyang ro Byang chub went to great pains to find original exemplars (phyi mo) of the sacred word in translation (bka' 'gyur) and of the treatises in translation (bstan 'gyur)11 and make good copies of them, after which they were kept in the monastery known as 'Jam lha khang. From these, many copies spread to other places: in Upper Tibet they spread to such places as Grom pa Sa skya and Khab Gung thang, while in Lower Tibet too three copies went also to 'Tshal Gung thang, and three copies to sTag lung and its environs.12 Bringing the bsTan 'gyur from sNar thang, Bu ston Rin po che13 removed the duplicates, since the sNar thang one, being the very first, was a collection of whatever exemplars were to be had,14 arranged in proper order what had not been in any order, and added over a thousand new religious texts, after which it was kept in the monastery of Zha lu. Taking that as his exemplar the teacher Nam mkha' rgyal mtshan15 made a copy at gZhis kha Rin spungs, which was kept in the Dharma college of rTses thang.16 This supplied the exemplar for those kept at Gong dkar and gDan sa Thel.17 All the innumerable copies produced thereafter—the separate copies which Khams pas made and took to Khams, the copies which[page 76] were made using these as exemplars in Khams itself, the copy made by the Chos rje mThong ba don ldan,18 the copy made in dBus by the Du dben sha ba,19 the copy made from precious substances at 'Tshur phur by the Chos rje Rang byung ba,20 the copy made at Byams pa gling by Yar rgyab dPon chen dGe bsnyen pa,21 the copy in 180 volumes made by gZi Kun spangs pa,22 right down to when sTag rtse ba,23 built a fine monastery and made a copy which includes many exemplars obtained later, in addition to the former bKa' 'gyur and bsTan 'gyur—these also came into existence thanks to the Reverend 'Jam pa'i dbyangs, the pupil of bCom ldan rigs pa'i ral gri, and these two in the final analysis owed it all to the grace of rNgog lo tsā ba, who owed it to the grace of the scholars of Kashmir, and ultimately to the grace of the Buddhas.24

This account is worth quoting in full for a number of reasons, not least because of the light it throws on the motivation for the compilation of the sNar thang "edition."25 As gZhon nu dpal tells the story, this particular collection was made only in response to the request, and with the substantial material assistance of 'Jam pa'i dbyangs, whose contribution was therefore pivotal.26 There is thus a strong suggestion of Chinese influence, since working at the Yuan court 'Jam pa'i dbyangs would no doubt have been influenced by his Mongol patrons' sense of the importance of previous editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon produced under imperial sponsorship, and by their desire to add lustre to this tradition.27 We know too that sNar thang, like Sa skya, had very close connections with the Mongol rulers of China.28 Thus the initial compilation of the Tibetan canon may be seen as a distant echo of that well-known process by which the Chinese culturally subverted foreigners who had conquered them by force of arms, and its political implications merit attention. But what is equally interesting about gZhon nu dpal's account, on a more personal and human level, is the implied additional motivation for 'Jam pa'i dbyangs's initiative. Practical jokes often backfire on their perpetrators, but this hair-raising schoolboy prank had spectacular consequences. bCom ral must have given his hapless student such a severe dressing-down that the poor man smarted from it for the rest of his life, engaging in pathetically extravagant attempts to win back his teacher's favor. In this way a brief moment of boyish fun can be seen as the starting point for centuries of sober scholarly activity.29

[page 77] gZhon nu dpal also paints a vivid picture of the veritable explosion of bKa' 'gyur and bsTan 'gyur copies from sNar thang in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as Tibet was swept by what we might call a "bKa' 'gyur craze." But he tells us little about the corresponding flow of copies towards that center which preceded the compilation of the "edition." Fortunately the details of that are preserved in the section colophons to the Tshal pa bKa' 'gyur (see below) which have been carried over into the Li thang and other editions.30 These are documents of capital importance. From them we learn that the Sūtra section of the Old sNar thang was based on over a dozen different sūtra collections (mdo mangs) from the libraries of Sa skya, gTsang Chu mig ring mo, Shog chung, sPun gsum, Zha lu, and other monasteries, together of course with those held at sNar thang itself. The Tantra section was based on at least five exemplars from Sa skya, Thar pa gling, and sPun gsum, and was arranged according to catalogues compiled by Grags pa rgyal mtshan (1147-1216), 'Phags pa (1235-1280), Rigs pa'i ral gri and others. The Vinaya was based on a manuscript edition compiled by mChims ston Nam mkha' grags pa, abbot of sNar thang from 1250 to 1289, compared against the Vinaya texts of Rung klung shod grog Monastery and others. Nam mkha' grags pa's text had itself been based on the edition made at La stod 'Ol rgod Monastery by Dharma seng ge using copies obtained from bSam yas mChims phu and other monasteries in dBus and gTsang with the help of the teacher and Vinaya specialist (vinayadhara, 'dul ba 'dzin pa) Zhing mo che ba Byang chub seng ge during the time of the Vinaya specialist of rGya, dBang phyug tshul khrims 'bar (1047-1131). We see then from these colophons that the sNar thang "edition" was the result of the gathering in of texts from various monastic libraries in gTsang and surrounding areas,31 and at the same time the culmination of several centuries of collecting and cataloguing activity at a number of centers, including Sa skya.

On some points, however, the testimony of these sources is frustratingly vague. In particular, we do not know whether the scholars of sNar thang took the original manuscripts of all these collections back to sNar thang, or returned home with complete copies of them, or, working from one of their catalogues, copied only those individual works not already in their possession. The DTNP gives the impression that bCom ral and his disciples had first worked on the translations of sūtras and śāstras held at sNar thang,[page 78] and had written several catalogues, before the collection process began, so it is quite possible that they collected selectively and to order. With two or more teams working concurrently, such a procedure is bound to have produced multiple copies of some texts. The DTNP enumerates three significant features of the copy of the sNar thang bsTan 'gyur which Bu ston worked on: it was incomplete, it was not in order (at least not to Bu ston's satisfaction), and it contained duplicates. What was true of the bsTan 'gyur is equally likely to have been true of the bKa' 'gyur; it is quite possible that it too contained multiple copies of texts, either different translations of the same text,32 or different recensions of the same translation. This means that both the sNar thang bKa' 'gyur and bsTan 'gyur may simply have been better arranged collections of high-quality copies, rather than editions in our sense of the word, and that therefore they still required editorial attention.

It is my belief that the initial collection of copies which took place at sNar thang was soon followed by a second phase in the production of the bKa' 'gyur and bsTan 'gyur collections that we know today, and that this phase was carried through in at least two different places.33 One of these places was Tshal (or 'Tshal) Gung thang Monastery in dBus, where a new edition of the bKa' 'gyur was produced during the years 1347-1351 under the sponsorship of the local ruler, Tshal pa Kun dga' rdo rje, also known as dGe ba'i blo gros (1309-1364). Since the original section colophons of this edition have survived we know a great deal about it. We know, for example, that the texts of the sNar thang "edition," of which three copies were employed, were substantially revised (using the Mahāvyutpatti and other such works to standardize the wording), and that their order was also rearranged, with a number of titles being deleted from the bKa' 'gyur because they were deemed to belong to the bsTan 'gyur.34 A three-volume set of tantric texts translated during the early period (rNying rgyud) was also added. The result is known as the Tshal pa edition. The second center of editorial activity was Zha lu in gTsang. We cannot yet be sure that Bu ston carried out a complete revision of the bKa' 'gyur (as well as the bsTan 'gyur) at Zha lu, but there are indications that he did edit both collections, even though gZhon nu dpal mentions only his bsTan 'gyur edition.35 However, we have firm evidence that Bu ston worked on substantial portions of the bKa' 'gyur, and that this editorial work was continued by his successors[page 79] at Zha lu and rGyal rtse (see Harrison, 1994). This aspect of the history of the bKa' 'gyur is rather problematic, but there are good reasons for believing that at some time in the first half of the fourteenth century a Zha lu bKa' 'gyur also came into existence, and that this edition may have been closer to the Old sNar thang than its Tshal pa counterpart, at least in terms of organization. I shall call this edition the *Zha lu ma, using an asterisk to mark its hypothetical status.36 Both the Tshal pa and Zha lu editions may well have been based on the same raw materials, but especially in the matter of the deletion of duplicates, different decisions could easily have been arrived at, which would account for much that was to follow.

From this point on our discussion concerns the bKa' 'gyur rather than the bsTan 'gyur, although we should note that the evolution of a basically bipartite canon seems to be a peculiarly Tibetan innovation.37 (This scheme was also adopted by the Bon pos, whose own canon, divided into bKa' 'gyur and brTen 'gyur, appears to have been systematized in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries (see Kvaerne: 38-39) in imitation of the Buddhist model.) The bKa' 'gyur section of the Tibetan Buddhist canon has in its turn three major divisions: 'Dul ba (Vinaya), mDo (Sūtra) and rGyud (Tantra), thus making it a kind of tripiṭaka in itself, arranged according to the three "vehicles" or three different levels of religious avocation (sdom gsum): 'Dul ba for "Hīnayāna" (i.e., Mainstream Buddhism), mDo for Mahāyāna, and rGyud for Vajrayāna. To put it like this, however, oversimplifies the picture, because although the 'Dul ba section is comparatively clear-cut, the other two are not. Thus the mDo section, broadly conceived, is broken down into Sher phyin (Prajñāpāramitā texts), Phal chen (the Avataṃsaka Sūtra), dKon brtsegs (Ratnakūṭa texts), Myang 'das (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) and mDo sna tshogs or mDo mang(s) (miscellaneous sūtras) sections, while the rGyud texts are divided, following the classification scheme promoted by Bu ston and others, into four main classes, supplemented in some editions by the rNying rgyud ("Old Tantras") and gZungs 'dus ("Dhāraṇī collection") sections.38 These sections and subsections do not appear in the same order in all editions, partly because of different schemes for classifying the sequence of the Buddha's teachings (see, e.g., Skorupski: xiv-xvii). The same holds true for the order of the individual texts within the sections, especially in the rGyud, where[page 80] the placing of particular tantric cycles often indicates sectarian preferences.39 The study of the complicated issues involved here is one way of determining the affiliations of the editions. However, repeated re-arrangements of the bKa' 'gyur make it difficult for us to determine the original order of the Tshal pa and *Zha lu ma editions on the basis of their descendants.

The Tshal pa and the *Zha lu ma manuscripts are the twin fonts from which most of the later standard editions of the bKa' 'gyur appear to flow, hence the division of the bKa' 'gyur tradition as we now know it40 into what have been called the "Eastern" and "Western" branches. Identifying this bifurcation, and making a start at sorting out the twists and turns on both sides of the tradition has been the major achievement of recent bKa' 'gyur scholarship, above all that of Eimer (see especially Eimer, 1992), followed more recently by several other scholars. This scholarship brings three basic methods to bear on the problem of determining the affinities of the various accessible editions. The first is to examine Tibetan histories, biographies and the catalogues of these editions (dkar chag; see Martin, in this volume) for information relating to their creation; the second is to note carefully the order of sections and individual titles within the editions, since this can also indicate affinities; and the third is to apply classical text-critical technique to the problem, by editing individual texts, i.e., collating as many editions as possible and noting patterns of variants. Given the vastness of the bKa' 'gyur tradition, it is little wonder that these methods have not yet yielded all the answers, and that many problems remain unsolved. At the same time, some progress has been made. What follows is, I hope, a reasonably accurate and reliable reflection of our present state of knowledge.

On the so-called "Western" side of the picture the *Zha lu ma passes from the realm of hypothesis into that of historical fact in the form of the manuscript bKa' 'gyur which was made in 1431 on the order of the ruler Rab brtan Kun bzang 'phags pa (1389-1442) and deposited in the dPal 'khor chos sde Monastery at rGyal rtse.41 This is known as the Them spangs ma Manuscript. Complete in 111 volumes, it did not include the rNying rgyud collection. There is no doubt that some of its sections were edited by Bu ston and[page 81] his successors at Zha lu, but the provenance of others is not yet known. Whether the original still exists is a matter of some uncertainty, but there are still several old manuscripts at rGyal rtse, and one of these could be it. The Them spangs ma is extremely important, for it was much copied; during the reign of the fifth Dalai Lama alone (1617-1682), over a hundred copies were made. One such copy was presented to the Mongols in 1671, and now rests in the State Library at Ulan Bator.42 Another was made during the years 1858-1878 and later donated to the Japanese monk and traveller Kawaguchi Ekai; this is now in the possession of the Tōyō Bunko, Tokyo. These are two recognized copies of the Them spangs ma, but we also have to reckon with the many others which were made, and the copies which were made from them. Into this category fall the London Manuscript bKa' 'gyur, which derives from a manuscript held at Shel dkar chos sde,43 and the sTog Palace bKa' 'gyur, which was copied from a Bhutanese exemplar (Skorupski).44 No doubt many more of these copies will eventually come to light. The best general term for all these manuscripts is "the Them spangs ma tradition."

On the other ("Eastern") side of the picture the Tshal pa manuscript provided the basis for the first xylographic or woodblock print of the bKa' 'gyur, the Yongle edition made in Beijing in 1410. At this point the printing technology first invented by the Chinese largely for the purposes of propagating Buddhist literature was enthusiastically adopted by the Tibetans, who were to continue to use it up to the twentieth century, not least to produce ever more editions of the bKa' 'gyur (cf. Snellgrove and Richardson: 160). In Beijing new impressions continued to be taken from the Yongle blocks, and when they wore out, new blocks were prepared, using prints struck from the old blocks as masters. Minor alterations were sometimes made when this was done. In this way were produced the Wanli impression of 1605, the Kangxi impressions of 1684/92, those of 1700, 1717-1720, the Qianlong impression of 1737, and at least one further impression after 1765.45 But these are not the only offspring of the Tshal pa, for a copy of it kept at the castle of 'Phying ba sTag rtse in 'Phyong rgyas, a copy which must have received further editorial attention, was the basis for the 'Jang Sa tham or Li thang edition in 110 volumes of 1609-1614, which has only recently become available in the West.46 The same 'Phying ba sTag rtse Manuscript must also have been the basis for some of the sNar thang blockprint of 1730-1732 (on[page 82] which see below).47 The Li thang was in its turn the basis for the Co ne edition (107 volumes) of 1721-1731. A convenient term for all these editions is "the Tshal pa tradition."

So far all this looks relatively neat, but in fact we have as yet made no mention of the whole question of what is technically known as "contamination." Contamination occurs when one text is not copied from another in a simple linear progression, but instead mixes readings from two or more exemplars, or "conflates" them. In such a situation parentage is often difficult to trace. The later bKa' 'gyur tradition is in fact bedeviled by contamination, due in part to the great pains the compilers of new editions took to ensure that their text was as sound as possible, which they did by consulting as many reputable old editions as they could lay their hands on. Thus the block-print edition in 104 volumes produced in 1733 at the Sa skya pa monastery of sDe dge, which took as its base text the Li thang, also borrowed readings from the lHo rdzong bKa' 'gyur, a descendant of the Them spangs ma, as well as from a bKa' 'gyur produced by A gnyen pa kshi. The sDe dge xylograph thus represents a conflation of the two main branches of the tradition, as do its later offshoots, the Ra rgya (1814-1820), the Urga (1908-1910) and the Wa ra editions (twentieth century).48 Similarly, later reprints of the Peking edition often altered the text of the blocks with reference to the Li thang, while the modern Lhasa edition, produced in 1934, is widely known to be a conflation of sDe dge and sNar thang.49 The sNar thang blockprint edition of 1730-1732, however, is the most unusual case of mixed parentage, since although it takes its texts from at least two separate editions, it does not apparently conflate their readings: text by text, it seems to follow one edition or the other scrupulously. Text-critical research by Eimer and others has only recently enabled us to identify the sNar thang xylograph's two sources: one of them is the 'Phying ba sTag rtse manuscript of the Tshal pa edition,50 and the other is the Shel dkar copy of the Them spangs ma, on which the London Manuscript was based.51 What remains to be worked out is which texts it took from which sources, and whether we can identify the point where it switched from one to the other. At this stage it appears that the 'Dul ba section follows the Them spangs ma, while most of the mDo follows the Tshal pa (making the sNar thang in this respect a sister of the Li thang). Evidence for the rGyud section is sparse. We should note, however, that the sNar thang follows the basic order of the Tshal pa editions. The way in which[page 83] this edition was produced is a good illustration of the care the Tibetan editors took over their work, and of the sophistication of their approach. The same is true of sDe dge. Using these bKa' 'gyurs to edit texts ourselves, we are impressed by the extremely small number of errors which they introduced into the tradition, even though they have complicated our task somewhat by conflating their sources. One other point which needs to be noted in connection with these later printed editions is that the Tibetan canon was never entirely "closed," and that editors of the bKa' 'gyur seem to have had few qualms about adding recently translated or discovered works to existing editions. Texts were still being translated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, albeit not at the prodigious rate of earlier periods.

This picture of the history of the bKa' 'gyur, as complex as it is, may soon need to be revised and elaborated. First of all, new bKa' 'gyurs continue to come to light, some of which do not fit at all well into this scheme. This is, for example, the case with the most recent arrival in the West, the Phug brag (also spelled Phu brag, sPu brag, sPud tra, etc.).52 In terms of organization this edition, produced ca. 1700, follows neither the Thems spang ma nor the Tshal pa traditions, it contains texts found in no other bKa' 'gyur, and it carries multiple translations of works. Since it has only recently become available, not much text-critical work on individual titles within this collection has been done, but what little research there is suggests an independent tradition, which is sometimes closer to the Them spangs ma, sometimes to the Tshal pa editions.53 In the second place, studies of the Tibetan sūtra translations found at Dunhuang, which date from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, are showing us that at its very beginnings the tradition which was later to become known as the bKa' 'gyur was not at all uniform, but highly contaminated. The Dunhuang collection is in fact a confusing mixture of crude archaic versions and later revised translations, together with texts standing somewhere in between, which must be either half-revised versions or conflations of old and new. If the situation frozen in time by the virtual sealing off of the Dunhuang collection was repeated at other Tibetan book repositories, then it would be surprising if the later history of the bKa' 'gyur did not turn out to be vastly more complicated than this survey might suggest. After all, we must remember that from the earliest times most Buddhist monasteries in Tibet would have possessed their own collections of scriptures, their own Sher[page 84] phyins, mDo mangs, rGyud 'bums, 'Dul bas, and so on, and that eventually many of these collections must have interacted in one way or another with the systematized bKa' 'gyur tradition sketched in this paper, which was itself derived from various monastic holdings of this type. The resulting pattern of criss-cross lines of descent, mutual influence and exchange is undoubtedly complex in the extreme.54

The historical and text-critical considerations raised above point up some divergences between the modern Western and the traditional Tibetan approach to sacred texts. While there is no denying the great skill and care with which many of the editions of the bKa' 'gyur were produced, the Tibetan editors approached their task from a rather different standpoint. Thus while the sDe dge edition, for instance, was in a loose sense critical, in that it attempted to establish the best text on the basis of at least three witnesses, it lacks the most essential attribute of a proper edition in the Western sense: it has no critical apparatus, by which we mean a set of footnotes recording the variant readings of all the copies of the text used. The sDe dge editors reproduced what they considered to be the best reading, and consigned the rest to oblivion, while a Western critical edition would record every variant of significance, enabling the reader to check the work of the editor, and occasionally to improve upon it. In this respect the bKa' 'gyurs are more like, say, the editions of Shakespeare produced for the popular market, which give their readers no idea at all of the intricate textual problems which underlie them; in both cases the evidence is, as it were, suppressed. Naturally Tibetan scholars were not unaware of the importance of variant readings in bKa' 'gyur editions—there are several works in existence which record them—but in creating new editions they were performing an act of piety as well as scholarship, and piety requires no critical apparatus.55 Similar considerations apply to their use of the scriptures.

Most modern Western scholars, trained as they are in an academic or scientific approach to texts, view the translations preserved in the bKa' 'gyur (and bsTan 'gyur) as a series of windows through which the historical development of Buddhist thought and practice can be glimpsed. In these translations many texts have been captured which would otherwise have disappeared forever.[page 85] They contain information, meanings and messages which Western scholars are concerned to extract and use in the pursuit of their own purposes; they have a content which can be appropriated intellectually. Tibetans are also capable of reading in this fashion, as the prolific nature of Tibetan scholarship indicates, yet at the same time they also believe the texts to be "meaningful" in a further sense. That is to say, they both contain meanings within themselves—in particular, the teachings relating to liberation from suffering—and have meaning or significance in their own right, as symbols of that liberation, the latter sense clearly being dependent on the former. Thus, as complete entities the texts of the bKa' 'gyur are thought to be powerful and transformative, as physical objects when seen or touched or as sounds when uttered or heard, whether or not intellectual understanding takes place. And if one text can be powerful, then the complete set of them, the entire canon, represents a total power source of considerable importance.

This attitude to the bKa' 'gyur is of course linked to tantric notions of sound, to the Buddhist identification of the Buddha with the Dharma, and to ancient Indian beliefs about the magical power of speech which represents the truth. It is the primary force which drives the whole history of the Tibetan canon, rather than any scholarly quest for accuracy, or for the definitive text. Indeed, it renders marginal questions as to the meaning of particular words on a particular page or the relationship between various editions, however important these might be to "those whose burden is books," be they Tibetans or Westerners. How else could one explain the extraordinary proliferation of bKa' 'gyur editions, each one of which consumed substantial resources in the making? It was no small thing to keep an army of calligraphers and carvers at work for years on end, or to furnish them with even the basic materials required for a new woodblock edition, to say nothing of supplying the gold, silver and other precious substances often used to adorn the title pages, covers and bindings of the prints, or to write the manuscript editions in their entirety. In fact, however, the more lavish the resources expended, the greater the merit which accrued to the sponsor of the edition, for naturally the sacred power of the bKa' 'gyur was conceptualized in terms of the Buddhist ideology of merit (puṇya, bsod nams). Nor are the political aspects of this ideology and its application any less relevant to the Tibetan situation than they are elsewhere in the Buddhist world. It is no accident that many of the editions we have[page 86] reviewed were produced by some of the most powerful players in Tibet's turbulent history: Kun dga' rdo rje, Byang chub rgyal mtshan, the fifth Dalai Lama and Pho lha bSod nams stobs rgyal were all important political figures; even 'Jam pa'i dbyangs, whose sponsorship initiated the whole process of systematization, must ultimately have been representing his Mongol patrons. In supplying the funds to create new editions of the bKa' 'gyur on which they could set their own seal, these rulers were no doubt pursuing less "transcendental" purposes as well.

Produced at the behest of the wealthy and powerful, the editions of the canon continued to provide Tibetans from all social strata with a source of merit. To this day, in monastery chapels all over Tibet (if they have been fortunate enough to survive the depredations of the twentieth century), sets of the bKa' 'gyur often flank the central images, with an ambulatory set up beneath them so that, simply by passing under one and around the other, the faithful can worship the books and the images at the same time—the former being a repository of the voice (gsung rten), the latter of the body (sku rten) of the awakened ones. Indeed, the books are often more worshipped than read, as the thick layers of dust which coat them testify. On special occasions, however, the texts may be recited, teams of readers going through the entire collection, or the bKa' 'gyur of the local monastery may be borne in procession around the fields, so that its power may be applied to the health of the community. This kind of ritual activity, then, is far more common than the kind of reading for sense with which Westerners are familiar (which is of course also practiced in Tibet), yet it is to the attitude which informs it, this intense feeling for the sacredness and power of the bKa' 'gyur as a whole, that we owe the survival of this precious historical resource.

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