INNER ASIA
|
Tibet Studies: A Current Tibetan Periodical.
|
The turbulent history of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the
People's Republic of China since 1950 has complicated the Library's
efforts to build its holdings of modern Tibetan publications.
Fortunately, the Library's New Delhi Field Office was well positioned
to take advantage of the upsurge in Tibetan publishing in India,
Nepal, and Bhutan following the flight of the Dalai Lama to India
in 1959 and the subsequent refugee influx. As a result, the majority
of the Library's books in the Tibetan language are reprint editions
purchased by the New Delhi Field Office since 1962. Of the Library's
approximately 7,700 Tibetan volumes, about 5,500 were purchased
by the New Delhi Field Office.
With normalization of relations between the United States and
China that began in 1972 and with the end of China's Cultural
Revolution in 1976, Tibetan language publications from the People's
Republic of China became increasingly available to the Library.
Exchange agreements with scholarly institutions in China and
three procurement missions to Tibet by Library staff in the 1990s
have helped the Library obtain current Tibetan publications,
including new printings of old woodblock texts as well as modern
Tibetan literature. About a thousand of the Library's Tibetan
volumes are modern publications from the People's Republic of
China. In 1990, the Library acquired 340 volumes of woodblock
texts, recently printed in monasteries in Tibet. A donation from
Alo Chhonzed, a former Tibetan government official and politician
now living in Australia, is of special value for the study of
modern Tibetan history. In addition, the Library has about 40
serial titles, 200 reels of microfilm, and 1,300 microfiche of
Tibetan material.
|
Tibetan Books Starting the
Journey to the Library of Congress, 1926. At the request
of the Library of Congress, Joseph Rock bought complete
sets of the Kanjur and Tanjur, the Tibetan
Buddhist canon, at the monastery of Choni in western Kansu
province (China). Rock had the books packed in ninety-two
boxes and loaded on mules, seen here as they began the
seven-day journey from Choni to the provincial capital
of Langchow. Later trapped in the town of Sian during a
lengthy siege, the books eventually reached Shanghai after
more than a year. They arrived in Washington in 1928 and
are now part of the Asian Division's Tibetan collection. (Rock
Collection, Prints and Photographs Division)
|
The Library's Archive of Folk Culture has an interesting
set of wire recordings made in 1950 in Kalimpong, northeastern
India's "gateway" to
Tibet, by the anthropologist Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark.
The recordings include recitations of traditional Tibetan stories,
such as "The Story of the Rabbit" and part of the epic "History
of King Gesar," as well as esoteric Lamaist ceremonies. When
Prince Peter was making his recordings, Kalimpong was a major
center for Tibetan political activity, intensified by the People's
Liberation Army's ongoing occupation of Tibet. Prince Peter made
an especially timely recording of a November 15, 1950, luncheon
conversation among senior Tibetan officials, Chinese scholars,
Indian and Chinese diplomats, and the sister of the Dalai Lama.
Besides the 2,000 photographs taken by Joseph Rock in western
China, many of which are of Tibetan lamas and monasteries, the
Prints and Photographs Division has a collection of "Scenes of
Tibet" from the 1930-1933 German expedition led by Ernst Schaefer.
The Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division
holds a large collection of recorded Tibetan music and many films
and videos of Tibet. Among the latter is the exhaustive film
record of the German-Tibetan expedition of 1938-1939 that began
in Darjeeling, India, and continued on to Lhasa. The film footage
contains some interesting scenes of a Tibetan New Year's festival
in Lhasa and shots of various Tibetan officials.
Mongolian: With the opening up of the Mongolian political
system in the early 1990s, the Library's New Delhi Field Office
began acquiring a small but increasing number of modern Mongolian
publications.
|