The Samantabhadra Collection of Nyingma Literature
The Samantabhadra Collection is a collaborative electronic project centered around the reproduction, analysis, interpretation, and translation of Tibetan literature in the Nyingma tradition. The Nyingma (rnying ma) schools of Tibetan Buddhism represent the oldest lineages of Buddhism in Tibet, dating back to the eighth century during the height of the great Tibetan Empire and continuing to thrive in the twenty-first century. The Collection is named after Samantabhadra (Tibetan, kun tu bzang po), the primordial Buddha understood as the ultimate source of these traditions. Our initial focus is on the various editions of the great canonical collection of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures known as The Collected Tantras of the Ancients (rnying ma rgyud 'bum).
The Collected Tantras of the Ancients
- mTshams brag Edition
- Bai ro'i rgyud 'bum
- gTing skyes Edition
- sDe dge Edition
- Rig 'dzin Tshe dbang nor bu Edition
The Collected Tantras of the Ancients (rnying ma rgyud 'bum) is a canon of esoteric scriptures revered by the Nyingma (rnying ma) or "Ancient" school of Tibetan Buddhism. The collection is unique in three important respects. First, its Tibetan translations are the only extant version of many Indian Buddhist texts otherwise unavailable. Second, the canon reflects a syncretic assimilation of literary influences from Buddhist traditions across India, China and Central Asia. Finally, The Collected Tantras represent an important body of indigenous Tibetan works that reflect original Buddhist literary traditions, including the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen), arguably the last great philosophical development of South and Central Asian Buddhism. There is recent consensus among a small but growing corps of modern scholars that this corpus contains materials vital for understanding Tibetan Buddhism from the eighth to fourteenth centuries and for reconstructing Buddhism's history in India and Central Asia between the eighth and tenth centuries. This latter period is one for which our knowledge from other sources is particularly fragmentary. Thus, The Collected Tantras of the Ancients comprises documents essential for research into ritual, contemplation, philosophy and literature. This section of the digital library contains information and scholarship on The Collected Tantras, including a comprehensive catalog of the texts contained in the corpus as well as scanned folio images for some editions.
All the details are at: online with more descriptions by David Germano at the University of Virginia.