Tibetan Literature

Literature in the Tibetan language received its first impetus in the 8th century with the establishment of the monastic university Samye for the purpose of the translation of the voluminous Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into the vernacular. In their final form, established in the 14th and 17th centuries respectively, they comprise the 108-volume Kangyur, and its 224-volume commentary, the Tengyur. Because of the destruction of the monastic universities of India by the Mughals, the Tibetan versions of some works are the only extant ones. Around 950, a secret library was created in the Mogao Caves near the oasis of Dunhuang to protect Buddhist scriptures, and it is by this means that we possess many of the oldest versions of some Tibetan, Chinese and Uighur texts.

Throughout most of its history, Tibet has been dominated by lamaseries, and consequently the majority of Tibetan works are strongly marked by Buddhist thought: they are mostly religious, historical, and biographical texts, or a mixture of these genres. There are also collections of folktales (for example, those involving the trickster figure Uncle Tompa) and works dealing with the ancient Bön religion. Particularly well-known in the West are the Tibetan Book of the Dead, translated into English in 1927, the 120-volume Epic of King Gesar, one of the few living epics, and The Tale of the Incomparable Prince by Tshe-rin-dban-rgyal (1697-1763), translated into English in 1996.