Zorin A.V. Lines of Development of the Tibetan Editions of Gzungs Bsdus Collection First Printed in the Rtag Brtan Monastery Founded by Tāranātha // Vestnik RUDN, Philosophy Series. 2014, No. 1. P. 40-52.
The paper is devoted to the collection of canonical, apocryphic and post-canonical texts known under
the brief title Gzungs bsdus which was first printed at the Rtag brtan monastery founded by the famous
figure of Tibetan Buddhism Tāranātha in 1619 as a monastic center of Jonangpa school later converted
to Dge lugs pa and renamed to Dga’ ldan phun tshogs gling after Jonangpa was crushed by the government
of the Fifth Dalai Lama in the mid of the 17th century. The paper is based on an unique collection of various
editions of Gzungs bsdus kept at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The author discovered some editions which had never been introduced to the academic work, including
the possibly oldest one printed in Mongolia and most close to the original edition (non-available) and two
early Beijing editions, one of which is also close to the Rtag brtan edition while the other one was probably
made right before the first official edition made in 1674 in Beijing for Kangxi, the Manchu Emperor of
China. Some other sources, primarily later Tibetan editions of Gzungs bsdus available at the TBRC e-library,
were also used. On the basis of comparison of all the editions found, from the earliest ones to the last Lhasa
edition made in 1947, the author could present the first rather valid, from textological point of view, picture of
development of this colelction of texts with two major lines clearly ascertained — the Original Tibetan one
and the Imperial Beijing one.
The 3rd International Academic Conference “The Written Heritage of the Orient” dedicated to the 140th anniversary of B.Ya. Vladimirtsov (1884–1931) will take place at the IOM RAS on April 22–24. The conference program is now available.
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