Dolpo manuscript Kanjur

Description:

The "Dolpo Kanjur" consists of volumes preserved at Nesar Monastery (gnas gsar dgon pa), located at Bicher village, Upper Dolpo, Nepal. This monastery houses an incredible treasure of ancient manuscripts, consisting of 642 volumes with altogether some 160,000 folios, 150 of them illuminated. A first rough handlist of these volumes was produced by Amy Heller ((Heller 2007 and 2009). As outlined by Heller, the volumes stem actually from three different monastic collections. Most of the volumes belonged originally to Nesar, but one collection of 98 volumes was relocated from nearby Lang Monastery (glang dgon pa) and another collection of 71 volumes from nearby Serkhang Temple (gser khang). The close connections between these monasteries were studied by Klaus-Dieter Mathes (Mathes 2003). In 2014, Tenzin Gyaltsen (bstan 'dzin rgyal mtshan), the head lama of Nesar Monastery, kindly provided us with photographs of a complete Kanjur set from Nesar. It is these 88 volumes which are here refered to as "Dolpo Kanjur". During recent field work in 2018, it was understood that these 88 volumes stem actually from all of the three collections of Nesar, Lang, and Serkhang, and are in that sense an artificial collection, even though we have to assume close connections between textual sources from these monasteries. The images of all of these volumes are accessible in our database, and a first draft catalogue was produced. However, due to the artificial nature of the collection we will in future produce separate datasets for all of the individual collections of Nesar, Lang, and Serkhang, starting with Lang (Lg).

Location:

Nesar Monastery (gnas gsar dgon pa), located at Bicher village, Upper Dolpo, Nepal.

Bibliography:

Heller, Amy. 2007
Heller, Amy. 2009
Mathes, Klaus-Dieter. 2003.


Samples:

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