Tibetan Buddhist canon

• 1. Introduction

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  The Tibetan Buddhist canon gathers every sacred text that the many schools of Tibetan Buddhism recognize as scripture. Tibetan translators produced the first versions of these texts in the 8th century, work later remembered as the Ancient Translation School of the Nyingmas. Centuries of kings, scholars, and editors then argued over which teachings belonged inside the canon and how best to organize them. Who decided which texts counted as the Buddha's own words, and which were merely commentary? And how did a project begun by translators working from Sanskrit, Pali, and Chinese manuscripts end up producing so many competing printed editions?

• 2. Two Baskets One Canon

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  Buton Rinchen Drub (1290-1364) reorganized the canon in the 14th century, again splitting it into two categories. The Kangyur, or Translated Words, gathers works said to have been spoken by the Buddha himself. Tibetan translators presumed each text had a Sanskrit original, though many were rendered from Pali, Chinese, or other languages instead. The Tengyur, or Translated Treatises, collects commentaries and treatises, including abhidharma works from both Mahayana and non-Mahayana schools. This second basket runs to 3,626 texts spread across 224 volumes.

  Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana teachings all sit inside this same canon, covering what Tibetan tradition calls the three vehicles, or yanas. The Kangyur pairs sutrayana material from early Buddhist schools, mostly the Sarvastivada, with Mahayana sources and a body of tantric texts.

  Inside the Kangyur, texts fall into sections on Vinaya, the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, Avatamsaka, Ratnakuta, other sutras, and tantras. Its sutra portion splits roughly 75 percent Mahayana and 25 percent Nikaya, or Hinayana, material. No fixed number of texts exists, since each editor has added translations or removed ones judged spurious. Helmut Eimer, Paul Harrison, Peter Skilling, and Helmut Tauscher are among the scholars who have studied the canon closely. Eimer and Harrison, in particular, have traced the textual lineage connecting different Kangyur editions.

  Collections of these canonical texts already existed by the time of Trisong Detsen, Tibet's sixth king, generations before any single Kangyur took its later shape.

• 3. A Royal Order for Catalogues

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  From the seventh century onward, Tibetan literature was gathered, catalogued, reorganized, and reissued in shifting sets of collections. The 39th Tibetan king, khri-lde srong-btsen, also called sad-na legs-mjing-gyon, ruled from 776 to 815 and ordered the first true Tibetan catalogue. His decree required every translation made from an Indian original to be catalogued, reviewed, and checked against standardized terminology. That task went to a team of Indian and Tibetan scholars.

  In the Tibetan horse year, corresponding to 814 CE, that team finished the Mahavyutpatti, a bilingual glossary meant to standardize translation terms. The translator Bande sKa-ba dpal-brtsegs then supervised a catalogue of collections held in three royal palace libraries. He worked with colleagues Bande chos-kyi snying-po, Lo-tsa-wa Bande debendhara, Bande lhun-po, and Bande klu'-dbang-po.

  The earliest catalogue was recorded at the palace pho-brang phang-thang ka-med kyi gtsug-lag-kang in the Tibetan dog year, 818 CE. It became known as dkar-chag phang-thang-ma. Two more catalogues followed for the libraries at pho-brang bsam-yas mchims-phu-ma and pho-brang stong-thang ldan-dkar, called dkar-chag mchims-phu-ma and dkar-chag ldan-dkar-ma. The ldan-dkar-ma catalogue was completed in the dragon year, 824 CE.

  Only the ldan-dkar-ma catalogue, preserved in the sna-tsogs volume of the sde-ge bka'-bstan, was long believed to survive at all. A manuscript of dkar-chag phang-thang-ma has since been rediscovered and published, listing 961 titles under 34 subject headings. The ldan-dkar-ma catalogue itself lists 735 titles grouped under 27 subject headings, alongside physical details like word, verse, and folio counts for each text.

  According to Dharma Publication's edition, the bKa'-gyur holds 1,115 texts across 65,420 folios, amounting to 450,000 lines or 25 million words. The bsTan-gyur, by the same count, holds 3,387 texts across 127,000 folios, amounting to 850,000 lines and 48 million words. Together the two collections total 4,502 texts. That scale let Tibetan editors check each work for interpolation or alteration by matching its verses and words against the record.

  Bande sKa-ba dpal-brtsegs is remembered as the pioneer of this system, and later compilers built directly on his team's work. That first chapter closed abruptly under King glang-dar-ma, who reigned from 803 to 842, before Tibetan translators resumed the work in the 11th century.

• 4. A Second Wave of Cataloguing

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  Since the start of the 11th century, Tibetan translators working alongside Indian panditas launched what became known as the era of new translation. By the 13th century this second wave had produced such a volume of literature that a fresh, comprehensive catalogue was needed to track it all.

  'Jam-gag pak-shi, also known as mchims 'jam-dpal dbyangs and state priest to the Mongol emperor Ching Tsung, died in 1267. In the mid-13th century he gathered writing materials scattered across Tibet and sent them to his teacher, bcom-ldan rigs-ral. He asked bcom-ldan rigs-ral to organize and catalogue the material.

  bcom-ldan rigs-ral, working with pupils dbu-pa blo-gsal byang-chub ye-shes, lo tsa-wa bsod-nams 'od-zer, and rgyang-ro byang-chub 'bum, surveyed central and western Tibet. They authenticated and arranged old and new translation manuscripts, compiling a proto-Kangyur and Tengyur catalogue in two parts. The two parts were titled dkar-chag bstan-pa rgyas-pa and dka'-'gyur gyi dkar-chag nyi-ma'i 'od-zer. Tibetan tradition's basic division of the canon into bka'-'gyur and bstan-'gyur classes traces back to this catalogue.

  Neither the catalogues nor the hand-written volumes of this oldest snar thang edition survive today. Its name would later attach itself to one of the printed Kangyur editions that followed.

• 5. A Family Tree of Editions

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  About a dozen Kangyur editions exist today. They include the Derge, Lhasa, Narthang, Cone, Peking, Urga, Phudrak, and Stog Palace versions, each named for where it was printed or copied. Most of these trace back to the so-called Old Narthang Kangyur, though the Phukdrak and Tawang editions are thought to sit outside that lineage. Additional canonical texts turned up at Tabo and Dunhuang, offering earlier versions of passages later included in the Kangyur.

  The Tshal-pa lineage consists entirely of woodcut editions, starting with the Yongle Kanjur of 1410, which survives only in fragments. The Wanli Kanjur of 1606 is likewise largely lost, though a manuscript copy made in Berlin in 1680 preserves its content. The Lithang Kanjur followed between 1608 and 1621. The Kangxi Kanjur appeared between 1684 and 1692, with several corrected reprints. The Cone Kanjur followed between 1721 and 1731, then the Qianlong Kanjur in 1737. The Narthang printing of 1730-1732 and the Derge printing of 1733 both carry contamination from the Them-spangs-ma line. The Urga and Lhasa Kanjurs carry multiple contaminations of their own.

  The Them-spangs-ma lineage, by contrast, survives only in manuscript form. The Shel-dkar version is known through a London manuscript copy made in 1712, and a Tokyo manuscript Kanjur dates from 1858 to 1878. The sTog Palace Kanjur manuscript dates from roughly 1700 to 1750, alongside an Ulan Batur manuscript Kanjur.

  Local Kangyurs also survive from Bathang and Mustang, alongside a Phug-drak manuscript copied between 1696 and 1706. Two copies of the Tawang Kangyur still exist, while the Tabo manuscript fragments preserve individual texts rather than a complete Kanjur.

  Scholars now refer to these editions by single-letter sigla: D for Derge, Q for Peking, S for Stog, and so on. That shorthand lets a single footnote point to one edition's exact wording.

• 6. Public Teachings and Guarded Ones

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  In Tibetan tradition, the sutra tradition holds teachings the Buddha delivered in public, taught openly to any student. The tantra tradition, by contrast, is generally shared only in intimate settings, with teachers who judge a given student capable of using it well.

  The Nyingma, or Ancient Translation school, groups its tantras, known collectively as the Nyingma Gyubum, into three outer tantras: Kriyayoga, Charyayoga, and Yogatantra. Three inner tantras follow, corresponding to the Anuttarayogatantra: Mahayoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga, which Tibetans also call Dzogchen. Dzogchen itself splits into three further classes: Mental Semde, Spatial Longdé, and Esoteric Instructional Mengagde.

  The Sarma, or New Translation schools, meaning the Gelug, Sakya, and Kagyu, sort tantras into four hierarchical categories instead of the Nyingma's six. Those four are Kriyayoga, Charyayoga, Yogatantra, and Anuttarayogatantra, with the last further split into mother, father, and non-dual tantras. Later commentators labeled the Yoginī Tantras as Mother Tantras. Tantras such as the Guhyasamāja, once classed simply as Yoga Tantras, came to be called Father Tantras within the Unexcelled Yoga Tantra class.

  The non-dual, or Advaya, class includes texts such as the Manjushri-nama-samgiti and the Kalachakra Laghutantra. Those tantras sit alongside a separate body of commentary credited to named Indian scholars.

• 7. Indian Authors of the Canon

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  Asanga, founder of the Yogacara philosophical school, and Nagarjuna, founder of the Madhyamaka school, are honored as the Two Supremes. Tibetan tradition ranks them as the foremost commentators within the Tengyur.

  Aryadeva, foremost disciple of Nagarjuna, continued the Madhyamaka school as one of Six Scholarly Ornaments credited alongside the Two Supremes. Dharmakirti, a logician and author of the Seven Treatises, reportedly debated the Hindu scholar Adi Shankara. Dignāga was another noted logician, while Vasubandhu, Asanga's own brother, rounds out the group alongside Gunaprabha and Sakyaprabha. Gunaprabha, Vasubandhu's foremost student, wrote the Vinayasutra, and Sakyaprabha became a leading exponent of the Vinaya.

  Nine more scholars, including Atiśa, holder of the lojong teachings, join these eight as the Seventeen Great Panditas. Bhāviveka pioneered the Svātantrika reading of Madhyamaka, and Buddhapālita pioneered its Prāsaṅgika counterpart. Candrakīrti is considered the greatest exponent of that Prāsaṅgika approach, while Haribhadra and Vimuktisena both wrote commentaries on Asanga's Ornament of Clear Realization. Kamalaśīla wrote important 8th-century texts on meditation, and Śāntarakṣita, abbot of Nalanda, founded the Yogācāra-Svātantrika-Madhyamaka school, reputedly helping Padmasambhava bring Buddhism to Tibet. Shantideva, also active in the 8th century, later gave his name to one of the tradition's most-studied texts.

  Monastic study of the canon centers on Five Topics, each anchored to specific Indian source texts. Abhidharma study draws on Asanga's Abhidharma-samuccaya and Vasubandhu's Abhidharma-kośa. Prajnaparamita study centers on the Abhisamayalankara and Shantideva's Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra, the same text that anchors part of Madhyamaka study as well. Madhyamaka study also works through Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Aryadeva's Four Hundred Verses on the Yogic Deeds of Bodhisattvas, Candrakīrti's Madhyamakāvatāra, and Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamākalaṃkāra. Pramana study relies on Dharmakirti's Pramāṇavarttika and Dignāga's Pramāṇa-samuccaya, and Vinaya study relies on Gunaprabha's Vinayamula Sutra. All four schools of Tibetan Buddhism follow largely the same curriculum using these Indian root texts. Since the 19th-century Rimé movement, led by scholars Jamgon Kongtrul, Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso, and Khenpo Shenga, Kagyupas and Nyingmapas have shared many Tibetan commentaries.

  A separate set, the Five Treatises of Maitreya, forms the heart of Shentong-Madhyamaka and Yogacara thought. Tradition holds that the future Buddha Maitreya, said to reside in Tushita Heaven, taught these texts directly to Asanga. They comprise the Abhisamayalankara, Mahayanasutralankara, Ratnagotravibhāga, Dharmadharmatavibhanga, and Madhyantavibhanga, texts every Tibetan Buddhist scholar still studies. Some scholars, among them Frauwallner and Tucci, argue Maitreya was a historical figure who taught Asanga in person, a question the tradition leaves open.