Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Mongolian Kanjur and Tanjur

The Bavarian State Library received a large canonical collection of Buddhist texts from Inner Mongolia. The collection comprises 400 volumes in Mongolian language and is the only copy of this new edition of the Mongolian Tripitaka in Germany.

The voluminous work was donated by the venerable Master Chin Kung and complements the collection of Asian prints and manuscripts at the Bavarian State Library. The immense collection reached Munich in 41 packages and takes up about 12 meters in the book shelves.

This new edition of the Mongolian Tripitaka was produced between 2007 and 2010. It includes 108 volumes of the Kanjur and 226 volumes of Tanjur, as well as texts by two Buddhist masters and so-called "treasury books," from the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism.

The majority of the facsimile reproductions are based on the original prints of the 18th-century Mongolian canon, which was produced under the promotion of the two Chinese emperors of the Qing dynasty. At the behest of Emperor Kangxi (reign 1661-1722), the Mongolian Kanjur was made in 1718-1720 in a de-luxe edition, for which 45.000 printing plates were cut. His grandson Qianlong (reign 1736-1796) had the Tanjur, the collection of commmentarial treatises, translated from Tibetan into Mongolian in 1742-1749 and subsequently printed. Both editions were mammoth projects in intellectual, technical and financial terms.

For more information, see the detailed description from the Bavarian State Library here (in German) or here.

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