The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism: PIATS 2000: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000.

• Author: Silk, Jonathan
• Position: Book review

The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism: PIATS 2000: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000. Edited by HELMUT EIMER and DAVID GERMANO. Brill's Tibetan Studies Library, 2, vol. 10. Leiden: BRILL, 2002. Pp. vi + 376.

For a long time scholars who cited Tibetan texts rested content, as it were, to take things as they came. Those interested in Indian literature in Tibetan translation, in principle materials contained in the Kanjur (bka' 'guyr) and Tanjur (bstan 'guyr) and very rarely those in other collections, usually "edited" texts using often only one, but at most three or four, xylographed editions of the Kanjur (in the case of Tanjur texts, usually but more justifiably two), without any regard for their mutual historical relations. That those days are well and truly over is attested by the studies contained in the present volume.

No one has done more to bring to light the historical complexity of the textual history of Tibetan translations of "canonical" literature than Helmut Eimer, who in his "Introductory Remarks" to the papers in the first half of the volume briefly places the current state of the field in perspective. One of the key practical lessons of his researches may be stated in a few words (p. 4): "editing a Kanjur text requires investigations in the transmission of that specific text using all accessible sources." On the one hand this might appear as a perhaps unnecessarily obvious stricture; yet it should also be mentioned that following this advice literally would make it very difficult actually to produce a critical edition of even a moderately sized text. As one of the great practical results of the work of Eimer and others, we are gradually gaining a better picture of the historical relations of the variously available textual witnesses. A clear understanding of these relations should allow a careful and judicious editor to make...