The Transmission of Sanskrit Manuscripts from India to Tibet: The Case of a Manuscript Collection in the Possession of Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (980–1054)

Hardly any Sanskrit manuscripts of Buddhist scriptures remain in India today, even though such manuscripts have been discovered in surrounding regions. Tibet in particular is one of the richest treasuries of precious Sanskrit manuscripts from as early as the 8th century. These became widely known to the scholarly world in the 1930s thanks to discoveries by Rāhula Sāṅkṛtyāyana (1893–1963) in monasteries of Tsang (Tib. gTsang) province, in the Western part of Central Tibet. He had little success, however, in accessing Sanskrit manuscripts in monasteries of Ü (Tib. dBus) province, in the Eastern part of the Central Tibet among which