Arura donation of medical works to Bodleian

On Thursday 16th Feb, Oriental Institute Oxford had the pleasure of welcoming members of the Arura medical group, who kindly had brought from Xining 89 published works on Tibetan medicine as
a donation to Bodleian Libraries' Tibetan Collection.

Dr Dorje, Mr Gonthar, Dr Evison and Dr Tsokchen

The donated works currently await cataloguing before being placed in the library - a listing of the works will follow on this blog when ready. Some samples:

 

(a single left-click on an image enlarges it nicely)

We were able to inform the doctors that Bodleian holds 2 notable Tibetan medical manuscripts: 

'Di na dug nad gso ba bal po sman dkar gyi gdams pa dpa' bo chig thub zhes bya ba bzhugs 

'Di na dug nad gso ba bal po sman dkar gyi gdams pa dpa' bo chig thub

pp. 1b & 2a

MS.Tibet.c.29

and the Sman dpyad zla ba'i rgyal po zhes bya ba'i rgyud :

Sman dpyad zla ba'i rgyal po zhes bya ba'i rgyud

MS.Tibet.c.19 (b)

MS.Tibet.c.19 (b) outline from JESD-DB catalogue 

Drs Dorje and Tsokchen expressed considerable interest in the former manuscript, a work they had not seen before - there will be further collaboration.

We are most grateful for the timely and generous donation -  

Thugs rje che!

*****************

May 2012

        Two very useful and illuminating comments have been made on MS.Tibet.c.29 by Yonten Gyatso, currently of Chicago. To see the comments, click on the 'comments' link just below here.

       In order to help illustrate the comments Yonten-la makes, below is a photo of the colophon of the text.

MS.Tibet.c.29 colophon, page 9v (left-click once to enlarge image)

       [Also added today, further above, is a link to the relevant pages in John Stapleton Driver & David Barrett's A descriptive catalogue of the Tibetan manuscripts held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford  for the text MS.Tibet.c.19 (b). The 3 pages give an outline of the contents of that manuscript, the Sman dpyad zla ba'i rgyal po zhes bya ba'i rgyud.]

Srid pa rgyud manuscript @ Bod

Late last year (2011), Dr Nathan Hill wrote from Munich to enquire if Bodleian might possibly have Richardson's manuscript copy of the
Srid pa rgyud kyi kha byang chen mo. Snellgrove had made references
in a few footnotes in Nine Ways of Bon (see pp.15, 16, 17)
to 'Richardson's MS.' of the work. Richardson had mentioned a Srid pa rgyud kyi kha byang chen mo several times in his 1954 article on the stele inscription at Rkong po (JRAS 1954, v.86, no. 3/4), but gave no bibliographic reference for it.
So I looked for any evidence of the manuscript in the catalogue, but no joy. Then it occurred to me that on a shelf behind me were several
as-yet-uncatalogued blockprints which had once belonged to
H. E. Richardson. After a careful look through the pile, eventually
I came across the pertinent manuscript, or so it seems.

Srid pa rgyud kyi kha byang - as found Dec. 2011

 We got the manuscript copied full-size onto A3 paper (with thanks to Angie Goodgame), and Nathan scanned the paper copy as a PDF file. The text scan is now available here , at the Srid pa rgyud link at the bottom of the ensuing webpage.

The full title is Srid pa rgyud kyi kha byang chen mo zhes bya ba bzhugs pa dbu yi gzigs phyogs so.

Title page

 There are 111 ff., ie 221 pp. (final page is blank).
The script is dbu can.

pp.1b and 2a sample

(a single click on the images brings them up large nicely)

*   *   *

 As to other copies entitled Srid pa rgyud kyi kha byang chen mo, Tenzin Namdak published a copy from
'a rare manuscript from Western Nepal' in 1976, see a reference to it in the PL-480 collection here . It is  a book of 140 pp., with reproduction of a 200 folios Srid pa rgyud therein.

The script is dbu med.

Title page - Tibetan dbu med

Title page

 Bodleian has the microfiche PL-480 collection of Tibetan works.
Search for < P.L. 480/SFC > on Oxford's SOLO for the catalogue reference to the PL-480 microfiche collection, click on the title result and then click on the 'locations' tab for location detail of the PL-480 collection. We also have the hardcopy, see here .

page 1a

page 1b

*   *   *

R. A. Stein refers in his Antiqua Tibetica V, 1988, to a Srid pa rgyud kyi kha byang manuscript (see here for the references in McKeown's translation into English, and here for the full original article, freely available), where Stein mentions the manuscript is stored in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Earlier, in his 1971 article entitled La langue žan-žun du bon organisé (on p. 241, n.6) Stein had referred to the manuscript as ' ms. Bibl. Nat. n° 493 '.
I haven't found a reference to the manuscript in the BNF catalogues online, but may be able to find it during a visit vers la fin de Mars. We'll see...

************

And a note from 2021 (Oct)...

2018 book published with Srid pa rgyud in it (pages 82-236), printed in dbu can:

see ISBN 9787570002054