374 sven bretfeld
monasteries of the country. The process of unifying these materials
in a grand collection is very complex, so I will not go into the details
here.^69 The enormous amount of Tibetan translations of Buddhist
scriptures produced during the “earlier spread” were for the most part
still available, and these were supplemented by the even greater number
of texts translated by the lo-ts-bas (“translators”) of the “later spread”.
It seems that rst some monasteries possessed individual collections of
texts gathered together from different sources cumulatively. Contem-
porary to the beginnings of Sa-skya-pa dominance, comprehensive
catalogues and classi cation systems were produced by Sa-skya-pa
scholars and later by inhabitants of the bKa’-gdams-pa monastery at
sNar-thang. This collecting activity nally resulted in the compilation
of the bKa’-’gyur, “(collection) of translations of the word (of the Bud-
dha)”, in sNar-thang in the early fourteenth century. This so-called
“Old Narthang bka’-’gyur” served as the conceptual prototype for a
large number of further bKa’-’gyur collections that were produced in
the course of time; the exact contents vary to a certain degree—some,
for example, include, others strictly exclude literature of rNying-ma-pa
af liation. The voluminous bKa’-gyur collections are believed to contain
the totality of the words spoken by the Buddha and translated into
the Tibetan language, additionally translations of commentaries and
treatises written by Buddhist scholars were collected in the, still more
voluminous, bsTan-’gyur, “translations of explanations”, collections.
The reasons why the production of these collections was undertaken
at this time are still not completely clear—nota bene, the collecting and
editing of bKa’-’gyur and bsTan-’gyur material was an extremely costly
enterprise. No doubt, the nancial resources and changes in Tibetan
infrastructure, that came together with the Mongol/Sa-skya-pa suprem-
acy, provided the most important material preconditions.
An important motive was most probably that at about the same time
the Buddhist traditions of India had vanished completely, due to several
reasons—destructions of some of the great Buddhist monasteries by
invading Muslim troops being one of them.
Perhaps, the project was strongly in uenced by the notion that with
the “earlier” and “later spread” of Buddhism Tibetans had inherited
the most valuable cultural asset available on earth, and had become
responsible for its complete preservation and further continuation
(^69) An excellent survey can be found in Skilling 1997.