The Tibetan Manuscript Project Vienna (University of Vienna) invites applications for a 15-month full-time Post-Doctoral Research Position, starting in January 2026. The position is part of the project “Himalayan Sūtra Collections” and focuses on the documentation and study of Tibetan canonical manuscripts within the Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies (rKTs) archive.
The role combines cataloguing, original research, and fieldwork (including high-altitude expeditions in Nepal) and offers the chance to contribute to the development of digital resources for Tibetan Studies.
OpenPecha, an initiative dedicated to advancing the study of Buddhism and Tibetan culture through modern digital technologies, has recently released a remarkable collection of Tibetan fonts. Many of these typefaces are inspired by historical manuscript styles, allowing users to engage with traditional Tibetan calligraphic forms in a dynamic, contemporary way. The fonts are available through a GitHub repository, and an excellent preview can be viewed here. We were especially delighted to see that the twelfth-century Namgyal manuscripts served as inspiration for the Bhozuk Katenma font; the Bhozuk Dunhuang typeface, modeled after Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts, is equally fascinating.
Bhozuk Katenma, modeled after twelfth-century canonical manuscripts from NamgyalBhozuk Dunhuang, modeled after Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang
Building on the foundation of our previous E-text Viewer, the E-text Lab offers a significantly expanded and redesigned environment for working with our textual resources. At its core are two powerful new search modes:
Selective Search: Focuses on a curated corpus of representative, high-quality e-texts.
Expert Search: Enables exploration across the full range of all available e-texts, including those of varying quality and completeness.
To support transparency and scholarly rigor, we have introduced a quality classification system for all e-texts, categorized as:
Input: Manually entered and reviewed texts (highest quality)
OCR+: Machine-generated texts with multiple proofreading steps
OCR: Raw OCR output without further verification
Thanks to the integration of the BDRC OCR Appinto our workflow, we are now continuously producing and gradually releasing new e-texts. These will be available as free downloads in TXT format directly from the E-text Lab.
Additionally, we have enhanced the integration with the Image Viewer to include a citation export feature, allowing users to easily generate and adapt references for their work.
As part of our commitment to open collaboration, we warmly invite contributions from the scholarly community. If you identify errors or have corrected or high-quality e-texts to share, we welcome your input. All contributions will be properly attributed.
We would like to share this CfP for a panel to be held during IATS 2026 in Kathmandu: Etched in Devotion: Dedicatory Texts and Religious Patronage in Tibet.
Interested contributors are invited to submit a 200–300 word abstract to the panel organisers (markus.viehbeck@univie.ac.at & yannick.laurent@unibe.ch) no later than August 15, 2025. Following the review of submissions, further information will be shared with selected participants in early September.
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.
A sample folio from the printed Narthang Tengyur
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.
Manual input of the Narthang Tengyur e-texts by female experts (image with permission of ALL)
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).
Sample of the Narthang Tengyur e-text as displayed on rKTs
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:
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.
rKTs start page for the Bon kyi bka’ brten collection
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.
Textual details of individual Bon works
A link connects the bibliographic data with the images of the primary sources, which can then be viewed directly in the rKTs viewer tool.
Display of the Bon gyi bka’ brten on the rKTs viewer
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.
Search results for Bon Kanjur titles
For each text, details can be displayed such as title, location in the Bon Kanjur, colophons and other notes.
Textual details of individual Bon Kanjur works
A link connects the data to the images. The images can then be viewed directly in the rKTs viewer tool.
Viewing images of the Bon Kanjur on the rKTs viewer
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.
