A five-member team headed by Pempa Dorjee, head, restoration department, Central University of Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, said the Tibetan text, ‘Suvarna Prabhash Sutra’, a collection of Buddha’s teaching, is one of the most rare Tibetan manuscripts written with gold and silver ink in the world and is nearly 400-500 years old.
Dorjee told TOI that these manuscripts were gifted to Rahulji by the monks of Nalanda mutt in Tibet during his visit. It is a prized collection of Patna museum. Rahul Sankrityayan, after his visit to Tibet (between 1929 and 1938), had brought all such documents and donated a large number of rare Tibetan manuscripts and other items to the BRS. “It needs immediate preservation and this prized collection should be displayed properly at the Patna museum,” Dorjee told TOI before leaving for Sarnath.
The team, during its 10-day visit, took up the task of cataloguing and classifying nearly 7,000 Tibetan documents brought here by Sankrityayan in early 1930s.
“During our stay, we have catalogued 13 albums of manuscripts written in Sanskrit. Seventy-five new sections in the manuscripts were brought to light during our stay,” Dorjee said.
Altogether 593 bundles of Tibetan texts and Tibetan scholars’ collection (Sungbum) were classified. “We will submit a detailed report to the VC of the central university with certain recommendations,” he said. He said there was an urgent need of digitization and microfilming of these documents. Talking about the rare Tibetan Thanka paintings, Dorjee said that an expert of traditional paintings should be engaged to preserve these paintings.
The other members of the five-member team were: Banarasi Lal, associate professor of rare Buddhist text research, T R Shashni and Lobsang Dorjee, (both research assistants) and N G Negi, a Tibetan monk and resident of Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh.
Print
Email