Library

Texts from the Palri Parkhang printing house collection.

Texts from the Vajra Vidya collection.

Texts from the Tulku Sangag collection.

Assorted Tibetan Buddhist texts that belong to no single lineage or print collection.

A general collection of Tibetan Buddhist texts circulated for study and practice.

The Tibetan Buddhist canon is two large collections. The Kangyur holds works attributed to the Buddha and to Indian masters, in translation; the Tanjur holds the commentaries and treatises that explain them. Different editions — Derge, Pedurma, Narthang, Lithang and many others — contain slightly different selections, so the same text often survives in several recensions. Editions overlap; a volume count is not a text count.

Bon is Tibet's pre-Buddhist religion, which survives as a living tradition with its own canon — a Bon Kangyur and a Bon Tanjur — structured like the Buddhist ones but with distinct scriptures and lineages. Frequently left out of Tibetan Buddhist bibliographies entirely, which is why it has a top-level category here.

Tibetan Buddhist texts translated into Mongolian, printed in editions such as the Peking and Ulaanbaatar Kangyurs. Useful independently: a Mongolian translation sometimes preserves a reading lost from the Tibetan witnesses.

Manuscript collections, regional canons and fragmentary survivals that are not one of the major editions — monastic library holdings and archaeological remains. Often the oldest surviving witnesses to a text, and often the least studied.

A collected edition of guru-related liturgical and instructional literature, digitised by BDRC.

A Karma Kagyü collection: liturgies, sadhanas and instructional texts of the Karma tradition.

Texts associated with the Drikung Kagyu lineage and its Chetsang holders.

Texts for which at least one English translation is recorded in this database. Sourced from the 84000 catalogue and from evidence found in Harvard Hollis.

Texts with no English translation recorded. Treat this honestly: for many of these the correct statement is 'not established' rather than 'none exists' — no systematic search has been run against them. The distinction is preserved in the database rather than flattened.