Analysis of The Kanjur

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

In 1834 Alexander Csoma de Koros published in Calcutta two books which laid the foundation for Tibetan studies. a grammar of the Tibetan language and a Tibetan-English dictionary. His third major project was an account of the Tibetan literature. During a period of eight years, from 1823 to 1831, Csoma de Koros studied the two great collections of Tibetan translations of Buddhist texts, the bKa'-'gyur and the bsTan-'gyur. After his arrival in Calcutta, in 1831 he prepared for publication his analysis of the bKa'-'gyur which was published in three articles in volume 20 of the ASIATIC RESEARCHES (Calcutta, 1836-1839), pp. 41-93, 285-317 and 393-552. The same volume also contains his abstracts of the contents of the bsTan-'gyur on pp. 553-585. Many catalogues of both bKa'-'gyur and bslan- 'gyur have been published since but Csoma de Koros's analysis of the bKa'-'gyur is still the only work of this kind. The first article contains an analysis of the Vinaya (Tibetan 'Dul- ba) section of the bKa'-'gyur. The second article, entitled "Notices on the life of Shakya extracted from the Tibetan authorities", describes the life of the Buddha according to the Tibetan translations of the Lalitavistara and of the Abhiniskramanasutra, the Sanskrit original of which has not been preserved. In an appendix to his article, Csoma de Koros translated the account of the death of the Buddha in the V inaya. The third article contains an analysis of sections two to seven of the bKa'-'gyur : Ses-phyin, Phal-chen, dKon-brtsegs, mDo-sde, Myan-das and rGyud. In the abstracts of the bsTan-'gyur, Csoma de Koros enumerates the Tibetan titles of some of the works contained in the bsTan-'gyur together with a translation of the titles. The most interesting part of this article is the list of twenty-four sections of the Tantra section which Csoma de Koros copied from the index voiume.

Csoma de Koros's work is based upon the Narthang edition of the Tibetan Tripitaka. Page-references to this edition are given in the catalogue of the Peking edition of the bKa' -'gyur published by the Library of the Otani University in Kyoto in 1930-1932: A COMPARATIVE ANALYTICAL CATALOGUE OF THE KANJUR DIVI- SION OF THE TIBETAN TRIPITAKA.

In 1881 Leon Feer published in the second volume of the Annales du MUSEE GUlMET (pp, 131-555) a French translation of Csoma de Koros's work. However, the original English text has never been published in a separate volume and undoubtedly this present edition of Csoma de Koros third great work will be very useful to all those who are engaged in Tibetan and Buddhist studies.