Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth-Century Tibet

The ‘Sutra of Limitless Life’ and its Dunhuang Copies Kept at the British Library

Brandon Dotson, Lewis Doney

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9783111570099
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: Literature

The result of the authors' painstaking documentation of over 1,500 Tibetan copies of the Sutra of Limitless Life from Dunhuang, now kept in the British Library's Stein Collection, this book provides a detailed study of the sutra copies, how they were produced for the Tibetan emperor in ninth-century Dunhuang, and how they were conserved in twentieth-century England. It explores the lives of Dunhuang's multi-ethnic scribes, editors, and administrators and reveals how their practices changed in a short period of time during the 820s. In addition, the book surveys the significant differences across the multiple Tibetan and Chinese versions of the Sutra of Limitless Life (Tib. Tshe dpag du myed pa'i mdo; Ch. Wuliangshou zongyao jing; Skt. Aparimit?yu? s?tra) circulating in Dunhuang at this time, and introduces a previously unknown Tibetan version. Through working with such a large cross section of the Stein Collection, and by coming to terms with one of the single largest groups of Dunhuang manuscripts, the book provides new insights into how these manuscripts were documented and conserved, on their way from Dunhuang through Khotan to London and at the British Museum, India Office Library, and British Library.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Conventions
• Introduction
• Part One: The Sutra Copies, their Production, and Conservation
• Part Two: The Sutra Copies and our Documentation
• Appendix One: Transliterations of Sample Copies of the Tibetan A1 and C5 Versions of the Sutra of Limitless Life
• Appendix Two: Concordance of Tibetan Limitless Life Copies by Pressmarks
• List of Figures
• Abbreviations
• Index
• About the Authors