Tibetan Materials
The Younghusband Collection of Tibetan books and manuscripts contains six canonical corpuses and several hundreds of miscellaneous titles.
| Repository | Canons | Miscellaneous Works | |
|---|---|---|---|
Print | Manuscript | ||
| Cambridge | 104 vols. sDe dge bka' 'gyur | 237 titles | 157 titles |
| Oxford | 91 sNar thang bKa' 'gyur | 86 titles | 54 titles |
| British Library | 106 vols Shel dkar bka' 'gyur | 348 titles | |
The main focus of the TMRBM project is the collection obtained during the Younghusband mission. For over 100 years these books and manuscripts have remained obscure and unopened, an under-exploited treasure house of Edwardian scholarship that was never properly catalogued. In addition to cataloguing and conservation, one of the aims of the project has been to re-establish the integrity of the Younghusband Collection in a virtual form. This will also allow the works involved to be reunited with companion works still held in Tibet and facilitate the reconstruction of incomplete texts or series by giving access to relevant fragments and volumes. In addition to the books procured by the Younghusband mission, the project has also documented and catalogued a significant amount of other Tibetan books held in the University Library, Cambridge. Together these collections contain a great number of unique manuscripts and ancient prints of woodblocks which have since been lost.