Opening page from A biography of Padmasambhava, revealed by Sanggye Lingpa, ཨུ་རྒྱན་གུ་རུ་པདྨ་འབྱུང་གནས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་ཐར་རྒྱས་པ་གསེར་གྱི་འཕྲེང་བ་ཐར་ལམ་གསལ་བྱེད། (གསེར་དངུལ་སྤེལ་མ།). View at W1LT0377One of BDRC's most productive partnerships is with the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA) in Dharamsala. LTWA's threefold vision of preservation, protection, and promotion of Tibetan cultural heritage is closely aligned with BDRC's mission to preserve Buddhist literature for the world. BDRC and LTWA have been collaborating and sharing texts for decades to the mutual benefit of both organizations.
Our most recent collaboration with LTWA is the digital preservation of hundreds of never-before-published texts from their renowned Manuscripts Division. Here we share exciting details about the collaboration and highlight some of the remarkable LTWA manuscripts that are now freely available on BDRC.
Head Librarian Mr. Sonam Topgyal displays a text from the LTWA Manuscripts Division. In Tibetan Buddhist teachings there is the notion that practice and conduct should be "virtuous in the beginning, middle, and end." Applying this triad loosely, the virtuous beginning – or foundation – of the project is the valiant effort by LTWA to gather, repair, catalog, and keep safe, thousands of Tibetan manuscripts and woodblock prints. The LTWA is a massive library with over 120,000 texts of all types and from all time periods, including tens of thousands of modern publications. Within this collection are hundreds of rare volumes that have not necessarily been reproduced before and which one can only view onsite in Dharamsala – until now.
Pages illustrating the careful conservation work carried out by LTWA. From W1LT2145: ཀླུ་འབུམ་དཀར་ནག་ཁྲ་གསུམ། A collection of ritual texts for the propitiation of the Nagas (mythical serpent-like beings in Buddhist and Hindu cosmology). Established in 1970, LTWA works to provide comprehensive Tibetan cultural resources and to promote research and the exchange of knowledge. It is one of the world's leading centers of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, and in 2006 was appointed as a National Manuscripts Resource Center by the Government of India. In 2017 the Mellon Foundation awarded a grant to LTWA "to support the preservation, digitization, and online publication of manuscripts from the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives." Several hundred volumes of texts from the LTWA manuscripts were digitized according to very high standards and a basic catalog was created of all of the titles scanned.
Digitization Officers at work in the Manuscripts Division of LTWA.The virtuous middle of this endeavor is the work undertaken to catalog, process and archive the images. BDRC staff first cataloged the texts according to our own system so that the works would be fully integrated into BDRC's massive database of texts, persons, and subject classifications. In addition, the scanned images themselves required significant post-processing work to make them more accessible, including cropping and quality control regarding the correct pagination.
BDRC staff have now completed the post-processing, along with a detailed catalog of the texts, and the full collection of 420 volumes containing 216,444 images has been published on BDRC's online library platform, and also shared with LTWA.
Opening page from the Collected Works of a 17th century Nyingma master, Tsewang Norbu, རིག་འཛིན་ཚེ་དབང་ནོར་བུའི་གསུང་འབུམ།. View at W1LT3414. These joint endeavors bring us to the virtuous end of the project: these amazing texts are now online, and users of both libraries have access to the upgraded manuscripts. This sharing of resources and expertise reinforces the security of this treasury of knowledge, and its accessibility for future generations.
We take the opportunity here to highlight some texts of particular interest, and hope you will explore the full LTWA collection on the BDRC archive.
The first manuscript to feature here is a copy of the Noble Great Vehicle Sūtra, The Good Eon, or Bhadrakalpika Sūtra. According to 84000's published introduction to this sutra, "The Good Eon recounts the names and circumstances pertaining to all the one thousand and four buddhas who will appear in our world during this current eon, which is commonly known among Mahāyāna Buddhists as the Good Eon." This is a luxury manuscript and exemplifies many of the most costly and sumptuous elements of Tibetan book making craft. Viewers of this text will immediately be struck by the illustrations. There are prominent images on the opening pages and the body of the text includes paintings of each of the 1004 buddhas. The paintings are in a provincial style and the second page contains a portrait of the Drukpa Kagyu lama Khedrup Jampa Phuntsok (16-17th cent.). The scan spans over 800 pages but sadly the final folia are missing including the colophon, which likely recorded information about the production of this work of book art. View on the BDRC archive at W1LT2287.
Many other manuscripts in this collection, however, do contain colophons that offer scholars detailed information about the patronage and production of a given text. These passages are of immense value to scholars of Tibetan local history, book history, and the lives of lamas. The appendix to this manuscript of the Prajñāpāramitā in 8,000 Lines is remarkably informative about the creation of this luxury manuscript with blue-black paper and golden ink. It was sponsored by the inhabitants of the Pukdrak Valley, home of Pukdrak Monastery and the renowned Pukdrak Kangyur. The colophon section is densely packed with 15 lines per page and runs for 4 pages. Scholars of this region and the Pukdrak Kangyur will be delighted by the availability of this document. View on the BDRC archive at MW1LT2289.
A page from the colophon of the Prajñāpāramitā from Pudrak Monastery described above. View the colophon here. 
This next manuscript highlights another important aspect of these scans of manuscripts from the LTWA. In the 1970s and 80s many texts from this collection were reprinted in Delhi using black and white photomechanical reproduction, and on many occasions the texts were in bad shape and needed to be copied by hand, often using tracing paper. Flattening a text to black and white or retracing its hundreds of pages unavoidably led to losses. But thanks to LTWA we can now see the originals manuscripts. A beautiful illustration is this rare manuscript of the Collected Works of Katok Rigzin Tsewang Norbu (18th cent.). The original text contains many passages in red ink, a traditional form of highlighting called rubrication. In the black and white reproduction of this manuscript the red passages were not maintained and so readers lost the benefit of the author's highlights. Through the LTWA's full color digitization the integrity of these texts has been restored for a new generation of readers. View on the BDRC archive at W1LT3414.
The LTWA collection also contains many rare texts that are completely unique or cannot be accessed elsewhere. An example we can cite here is text written by a lama to document that he received the reading transmission of the entire Tengyur (over 200 volumes). There are many details herein that researchers can explore in order to bring to life this particular event. It took place over many months in Drepung Monastery's Sang-ngak Podrang during a Dragon Year. Many of the high lamas in attendance are named and so it will be possible to determine the precise date and context of this transmission ritual. This work originated as a woodblock print and a printed copy is still present in the Drepung Library collection in Lhasa, but that library is off limits to most scholars. Fortunately the LTWA has a handwritten copy of this historical document. The colophon even mentions that there were numerous scribes and so errors have inevitably crept in. View on the BDRC archive at MW1LT3591.
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