Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth-Century Tibet : The ‘Sutra of Limitless Life’ and its Dunhuang Copies Kept at the British Library

Abstract

In Dunhuang in the 820s, scribes, editors, and administrators produced thousands of Tibetan and Chinese copies of the Sutra of Limitless Life. Drawing on the 1,500 such Tibetan copies now kept at the British Library, this study explores the people and practices that created these manuscripts, surveys the various Tibetan and Chinese versions of the sutra, and documents how they were employed, stored, conserved, and catalogued up to the present.