rKTs has recently integrated the catalog of the second edition of the Bon Kanjur, comprising 192 volumes. Each entry is linked to the corresponding images, allowing direct reading of the texts (as described here).
rKTs is proud to announce that the 300-volume Bon gyi bka’ brten (Bon Katen), published in 1998 in Lhasa, is now also available on the rKTs platform. This collection of Bon texts comprises over 8.000 texts, which are now accessible (here or here).
In contrast to its Buddhist counterpart, the Tanjur, the Bon Katen does not appear to have survived in a single set of manuscripts or printed edition, neither in Tibet itself nor anywhere else. Sog sde bsTan pa’i nyi ma, the publisher of the present collection, thus perceived a pressing need to collate the available Bon texts, which were dispersed across various locations. This Bon Katen is an attempt to reconstruct the Bonpo Tanjur. It is a comprehensive compilation of Bonpo texts, encompassing not only traditional Tanjur texts but also some Kanjur texts, a substantial number of rare texts, and also an array of non-canonical texts.
The texts of this Bon Katen have been integrated into the rKTs database and are displayed alongside the texts of the Bon Kanjur under the class denomination “Bon Canon,” as shown below.
A link connects the bibliographic data with the images of the primary sources, which can then be viewed directly in the rKTs viewer tool.
The images were digitized in 2006-2007 at the Tibetan Bon Yungdrung Library at Menri Monastery in Dolanji, Himachal Pradesh, India, and were subsequently made accessible online by our cooperation partner BDRC.
We would like to thank Kurt Keutzer for providing us with a manually reviewed OCR of “A Catalog of the New Collection of Bonpo Katen Texts” (Karmay & Nagano 2001), which formed the basis for the present rKTs handlist.
Further resources, such as the third edition of the Bon Kanjur (MW21872) or the Khyungpo Tengchen Monastery’s compilation of the Bon Katen (MW4CZ58532), will be added in the future.