Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

Description: Creator's Description: This article traces the history and provenance of the missing volumes of the Berlin Wanli Bka’ ’gyur, which was described by Helmut Eimer as lost during World War II. Interdisciplinary research was involved in studying the physical corpus of books, such as the fragments of Bka’ ’gyur editions from the Jagiellonian Library (Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Jagiello?skiego) in Cracow (Kraków), Poland (the lost Wanli Bka’ ’gyur was recently re-discovered within the Pander collection), the Michigan University Library (Yongle Bka’ ’gyur), and the Harvard Yenching Library (supplement to Wanli Bka’ ’gyur). This preliminary examination attempts to authenticate the fragment of the Wanli Bka’ ’gyur in Cracow as the Berlin Wanli Bka’ ’gyur on the basis of the history and physical features of the books, and has allowed us to group particular Bka’ ’gyur volumes from the Pander collection in sets.

Technical aspects of Bka’ ’gyur manuscriptology are discussed. The results indicate the chronological as well as regional order of particular editions, and show that all material features of books are potentially meaningful and traceable.

Means of availability: Online