Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tories that told of the exploits of early kings, the spirits and the origins of the Tibetan
people. Some of these oral traditions were later recorded using the Tibetan script.
But for the most part, literature in Tibet was dominated by Buddhism, first as a means of
translating Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Tibetan and second, as time went by, in
association with the development of Tibetan Buddhist thought. There is nothing in the
nature of a secular literary tradition - least of all novels - such as can be found in China or
Japan.
One of the great achievements of Tibetan culture was the development of a literary lan-
guage that could, with remarkable faithfulness, reproduce the concepts of Sanskrit
Buddhist texts. The compilation of Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionaries in the early 9th century
ensured consistency in all subsequent translations.
Through the 12th and 13th centuries, Tibetan literary endeavour was almost entirely
consumed by the monumental task of translating the complete Buddhist canon into
Tibetan. The result was the 108 volumes of canonical texts (Kangyur), which record the
words of the Historical Buddha, Sakyamuni, and 208 volumes of commentary (Tengyur)
by Indian masters that make up the basic Buddhist scriptures shared by all Tibetan reli-
gious orders. What time remained was used in the compilation of biographies and the col-
lection of songs of revered lamas. Perhaps most famous among these is the
Hundred Thou-
sand Songs of Milarepa
. Milarepa was an ascetic to whom many songs and poems con-
cerning the quest for buddhahood are attributed.
Alongside Buddhist scriptures exists an ancient tradition of storytelling, usually con-
cerning the taming of Tibet's malevolent spirits to allow the introduction of Buddhism.
Many of these stories were passed from generation to generation orally, but some were re-
corded. Examples include the epic
Gesar of Ling
and the biography of Guru Rinpoche,
whose countless tales of miracles and battles with demons are known to peoples across the
entire Himalayan region. The oral poetry of the Gesar epic is particularly popular in east-
ern Tibet, where a tiny number of ageing bards just keep alive a tradition that dates back to
the 10th century.
Wood-block printing has been in use for centuries and is still the most common form of
printing in monasteries. Blocks are carved in mirror image; printers then work in pairs put-
ting strips of paper over the inky block and shuttling an ink roll over it. The pages of the
text are kept loose, wrapped in cloth and stored along the walls of monasteries. Tibet's
most famous printing presses were in Derge in modern-day Sìchuān, at Nartang Monastery
