Searchable Tibetan canons: ACIP & THL (2012)

The Asian Classics Input Project recently announced the “complete distribution of the long awaited Kangyur (བཀའ་འགྱུར་) and Tengyur (བསྟན་འགྱུར་) etext collections in Tibetan unicode script”. Big up to the ACIP: this is quite an achievement. It’s old news for some, but when I recently asked some colleagues about this, none had any inkling that etexts of the full bKa’ ’gyur were available.

Using the ACIP etexts requires working in Tibetan script and registration — the latter possibly encouraging lying (it’s doubtful that most registrants will have anything like formal permission to read the entire tantric corpus).

However, there is alternative online access to the same body of scripture — though not necessarily the same electronic corpus (THL’s bKa’ ’gyur is specified as sDe dge, rather than ACIP’s Lha sa) — at the Tibetan and Himalayan Library: http://www.thlib.org/encyclopedias/literary/canons/kt/catalog.php#cat=d/k. Type Wylie or Tibetan Unicode text in the search box and you’re away. (Thanks to J.)

Luczanits’ ITBA

Christian Luczanits. 2014&ndash. ‘Homepage of Christian Luczanits’ [before 2014: Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Art (ITBA) at the University of Vienna]. http://www.luczanits.net.

NB: a large and well-documented collection of photographs from sites in the Himalayas and South Asia including Alchi, Ladakh, Kanganhalli, Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti.