I could find next to nothing in 'western' media about the book treasure found recently at
Sa skya. Last time I visited
the place (these are pictures from one year before that) there were major renovation works going on and someone told me there that a new building is being raised not very far away from the 'Southern Fortress' to house the monastery library, "in order to make it available to scholars". It is a bit difficult to imagine how moving the books a few hundred yards away is going to solve that problem and I still don't know of anyone having produced an overview of this collection, let alone seen it.
The English sites produced in China (see
this for an example) praise the collection as a 'second Dunhuang'. Although there is nothing to suggest that there are Old Tibetan documents here as well, the comparison might be apt if one is to believe the information about the sheer size of the hoard.
Among the long forgotten books I mentioned yesterday I also found this
gnas yig of the
Sa skya monastery, published in 2004:
The contemporary author,
Sa skya Blo gros rgya mtsho, includes this picture of the little known library (apparently still in the state that Sankrtyayan might have seen it):
The meticulous description of sacred items found in the monastery follows the old tradition of
gnas yig's and
dkar chag's (as of places). While these modern descriptions can be of a lesser quality than the classical ones, they are nevertheless immensely useful, if only to establish what has gone missing. On the subject of books (under a heading "
Sgo rum dpe khang chen mo") our author says i.a. (p.63.):
gzhan yang gser chos skya chos 'dres pa sogs pod sum brgya | Ba ri ba | Mal lo | Dkon mchog rgyal po | 'Khon dge bcu pa | Gnam kha'u pa | Sa chen yab sras | chos rje Sa paṇ rnams kyi gzigs dpe rgya dpe 'dres pa stong phrag gcig dang gsum brgya so bzhi bzhugs |
Furthermore, there is a medley of three hundred golden-letter and ink-letter religious volumes and [another] medley of one thousand three hundred and thirty-four, personal books (gzigs dpe?) and Indian manuscripts (rgya dpe) of Ba ri [lotsā]ba, Mal lo[tsāba], Dkon mchog rgyal po, 'Khon dge bcu pa, Gnam kha'u pa, the great Sa skya patriarchs and their descendants, and the lord of the doctrine Sa[ skya] paṇ[ḍita].
What is interesting about this passage is the
exact number '1334'. Someone must have counted it, otherwise there would be something like 'about a thousand'.
Here is but a mere fragment of the books collected at Sa skya from the chapel where the patriarchs' remains are kept:
Labels: gnas yig, manuscripts, Sa skya
