The many canons of Tibetan Buddhism

Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, 2002. 8vo, pp. vi, [2], 376; fine in original pictorial yellow cloth. Issued as volume 2/10 in Brill's Tibetan Studies Library series, edited by Henk Blezer, Alex McKay, Charles Ramble. Fourteen papers from PIATS 2000. This volume "is one of the first to include scholarship on both the mainstream Tibetan canons of translated Buddhist classics known as the Bka' 'gyur & Bstan 'gyur (section one) and the alternative canon of literature of the Rnying ma tantric traditions known as the Rnying ma rgyud 'bum (section two). The first section discusses various aspects of the formation and transmission of Tibetan (canonical texts, (truncated) but also includes important works of reference, such as a Bka' gdams pa handbook and several unique catalogues, and features a first report on Tibetan textual transmission in Mongolia. The second section presents interpretative analysis of one of the most important alternative canons in Tibet, the Rnying ma rgyud 'bum, but also discusses issues of legitimacy, authority and lineage during the period of the tenth to twelfth centuries which laid the foundation for the formation of all Tibetan canons over the ensuring centuries" (publisher's blurb). (Inventory #: 69137)