Author: viehbem2@univie.ac.at

In a recent contribution to The Digital Orientalist, an online platform dedicated to exploring the intersection of digital tools and the study of the humanities, Rachael Griffiths provides a detailed review of the rKTs platform.

By highlighting its core functions as a textual repository, through search functions in the titles or full-text search in e-texts of canonical literature, she provides a very useful account on how to use the rKTs archive. Her review also addresses additional functions and tools, such as different tools for the translation of canonical texts or the automated comparison of structural features, or its resource for tackling Tibetan abbreviations.

rKTs is gathering and integrating all available e-texts of canonical sources into its search functions. Thanks to the great generosity of ALL (Asian Legacy Library), which provided rKTs with a set of e-texts from the Narthang Tengyur, it is now possible to search the contents of this collection in full text. These e-texts represent an important addition to the data already available for the Derge Tengyur. In fact, the Narthang Tengyur includes more texts than the Derge edition, which were not previously available as e-texts.

The production of this data was carried out under the direction of ALL and involved seven years of intensive work of manual input, a task that was completed under female leadership in three different centers of Tibetan communities in South India. rKTs is extremely grateful and proud to be associated with this project and to be able to disseminate the data through the rKTs archive.

The next step in the deeper integration of this data into the rKTs database will be to align the Narthang Tengyur with the available e-text of the Derge edition. This will allow rKTs users to switch directly between the two editions and hence facilitate comparative studies between different canonical sources. For now, the e-text is available and listed among the other details of that particular work in the Narthang Tengyur (ID, title, e-text, location, colophon).

As part of the documentation of the highly endangered manuscripts of Drakmar Monastery, which took place in the Tarap Valley in September 2022 and May 2023, all the manuscript volumes were provided with new protective cloth covers. The replacement of the covers was accompanied by a public reading of some of the sūtra manuscripts. This event provided an opportunity not only to observe the ritual use of canonical manuscripts, but also to document local attitudes toward the social significance of Buddhist texts. The film and audio recordings of this event, together with interviews with local stakeholders, have been compiled into a short documentary film (22 mins.), which has now been released under the title Resounding the Buddha’s Sūtras.

The film is screened in the context of various academic events and has also been shown with an emphasis to include the local stakeholders in Kathmandu at the beginning of the year. It is also available online:

Videos & Films

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.

In Tibetan societies, artefacts containing entire works or passages of canonical literature hold a revered status. They include deluxe manuscripts or prints produced with precious materials, engravings in stone or metal, and frescoes. Canonical literature is publicly displayed through various media, with both the writings and their physical forms believed to carry protective and beneficial blessings. The production of such artefacts involves considerable social prestige, publicly acknowledged in dedicatory texts that extol the virtues of the land and its people.

In this workshop, we will read and discuss dedicatory texts from a variety of Tibetan canonical artefacts to explore the relationship between canonical scriptures, their specific physical media, and the social context of their production and use.

Contributors: Nyima Woser Choekhortshang, Jigmey Lodey Gurung, Amy Heller, Channa Li, Nils Martin, Charles Ramble, Marta Sernesi, Helmut Tauscher, Kurt Tropper, Markus Viehbeck, Alexander Zorin

A detailed program of the workshop is provided here.

Recently, our cooperation partner BDRC announced on social media (here and here) that the second edition of the Bon Kanjur, printed in northern Sichuan in 1987, is now available online through their BUDA archive.

rKTs, which specialises in the cataloguing of large canonical collections, has set about creating an electronic version of the catalogue for this second edition of the Bon Kanjur. Titles have been entered into the database and images have been linked to allow direct reading of the texts.

Searching for a specific title is done in the same way as before for Buddhist canonical texts. Only an additional category of Bon Kanjur titles has been added to the search results.

For each text, details can be displayed such as title, location in the Bon Kanjur, colophons and other notes.

A link connects the data to the images. The images can then be viewed directly in the rKTs viewer tool.

Now, the Bon Kanjur has its place alongside the Buddhist canon in the rKTs archive, making it easier to compare these two traditions of Tibetan culture.

Other resources will be added over time to create, as with the Buddhist canon, a modern, powerful tool for navigating the canonical literature of the Bon tradition.

A very important dimension of the TMPV’s documentation work is its contribution to the preservation of local cultural heritage. Most of the canonical manuscript collections studied by the TMPV are stored in rather precarious conditions, especially the many manuscripts recently documented in Dolpo, a very remote area in the borderlands between Nepal and Tibet with a weak infrastructure. The digitisation of such collections not only preserves this heritage in a direct way by providing a digital copy, but the engagement and care given to endangered manuscripts also helps to raise awareness of the importance of this heritage among local communities.

All of this work builds on strong and stable relationships with local stakeholders. Trust often takes time to develop and depends on personal relationships. But it is also strengthened by transparent and respectful communication. When documenting a new manuscript collection, objectives and procedures are discussed in detail with local stakeholders. This includes the mutual signing of a written agreement (in both English and Tibetan) that stipulates public access to the manuscript images through the websites of both the rKTs archive and our close cooperation partner BDRC (and excludes commercial use of the images).

The TMPV also promises that once a collection has been published, a digital copy of all images will be returned to the institution. As part of this year’s documentation work in Bicher, Upper Dolpo, members of the TMPV took a longer detour to visit again the Tarap Valley, where collections from two institutions have been digitised over the past two years. At the recently rebuilt Drakmar (brag/drag dmar) Monastery, they met with Phurba Gyaltsen, secretary of the monastery association, and presented him with a USB stick containing images of all 116 large canonical volumes. Similarly, the image set of a Tantra collection (rnying ma rgyud ‘bum) from nearby Ghagar (gad dkar) Monastery, fragmentary in twenty-five volumes, was returned to Lama Pema Trinle, the monastery’s head lama.

The digitisation of textual collections is a concrete means of protecting this heritage from natural disasters such as water, fire, earthquakes, etc. It is also important as proof of ownership for the institutions concerned. Even though theft of canonical copies is rare – they are simply too heavy to be stolen easily and do not fetch high prices on the international antiques market – it is important to show how digitisation of cultural heritage can act as a concrete countermeasure against such problems. And, perhaps more importantly, the documentation of cultural heritage also contributes to a sense of belonging and responsibility among local stakeholders.

The main documentation work for this year was conducted again in Bicher/Vijer, a rather remote village in Upper Dolpo, which was visited by the TMPV already in 2018 and 2019. This year’s documentation focused on the Serkhang collection, a collection of around 45 larger canonical manuscripts and several other historiographical and ritual texts that belong to the nearby Serkhang Temple but were shifted to Nesar Monastery in Bicher in order to protect them from theft. With this documentation, all of the three major canonical manuscript collections of Lang, Nesar, and Serkhang that are currently located at Nesar Monastery are preserved in a digital format.

More detailed accounts of the documentation of these individual collections are provided in the documentation section.

The cooperation between the Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies database (rKTs) and the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) is a significant collaboration in the field of Buddhist Studies, particularly in their focus on the preservation, digitization, and accessibility of Buddhist canonical texts. By combining their resources and expertise, BDRC and rKTS enhance the accessibility and possibilities to study Buddhist texts globally. Their collaboration allows for the aggregation and sharing of data, improving the navigation and usability of these texts for scholars and the interested public alike. This partnership exemplifies the benefits of cooperation in preserving and disseminating cultural and religious heritage.

Internal rKTs-BDRC resources

The images used on the rKTs site predominantly come from the extensive collection of the BDRC library and the images obtained during fieldwork by the Tibetan Manuscript Project Vienna (TMPV). These images are meticulously catalogued by the TMPV and then hosted on the BDRC servers, ensuring their long-term accessibility. The images on BDRC are presented as single page images, even if the source images contain multiple pages on each.

In order to achieve this result, the cropping of images was done manually until the recent emergence of the SCAM tool (see here), which allows images to be processed much more quickly than before. In this way, rKTs was able to put online a good number of collections which were awaiting cropping (for example the images of Matho).

External resources

Another important source for the study of the Tibetan canon are the Kanjurs and Rnying ma rgyud ‘bum collections digitized by the British Library as part of the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP). This initiative has preserved numerous valuable manuscripts, making them accessible for research and study. Recognizing the significance of these collections, rKTs and BDRC swiftly integrated these digitized texts into their platforms. This integration has greatly enriched the resources available to users, providing a broader and more comprehensive field of study.

The EAP sources, which include the digitized Kanjurs and Rnying ma rgyud ‘bum collections, present a unique challenge for readers. These images have been photographed in a way that each image shows two pages side by side, with subsequent images displaying the backside of these pages. As a result, navigating these collections requires readers to continuously go back and forth between images to follow the text sequentially. This can make reading and studying the manuscripts more cumbersome compared to single-page formats, necessitating extra effort to piece together the intended order of the pages. To enhance the readability of the manuscripts and achieve a consistent representation of the collections, rKTs utilized the SCAM tool to virtually crop the EAP images.

While the British Library provides these images at a reduced resolution on its platform, higher resolution versions are available via the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) server. By processing the low-resolution images of Chizhi’s Kanjur with the SCAM tool and combining the resulting files with the EAP manifests, rKTs was able to virtually crop the higher resolution IIIF images. This process significantly improves the user experience by allowing for easier navigation and study of these important witnesses.

A detailed catalogue of the precise textual contents of the canonical collections from Drakmar Monastery in Dolpo has just been published along with the digital images of the manuscripts on the rKTs archive (under “handlist” or “viewer”) and also shared with BDRC.

The manuscripts comprise altogether 116 volumes, with larger sets or individual volumes being produced and added to the collection at different times. A substantial part of the collection is constituted by a Sūtra collection (30 volumes) and a Tantra collection (18 of 20 volumes are present). Further, there are different sets of Prajñāpāramitā and other larger sūtras as well as collections of dhāraṇīs and related volumes. While the collection thus contains many of the typical building blocks of a Kangyur, it was clearly not produced as a coherent set in this sense. It rather reflects a phase prior to the formation of structured Kangyurs, when larger text collections of a similar type were transmitted independently. These collections feature individual works but also alternative textual versions not found in later mainstream Kangyurs.

Reports on the documentation of the manuscripts in 2023 and 2022 including images of the site were already published.