A PDF of the full publication is found on academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/38194237 (accessed: 2019-10-26)
Introduction
The Tibetan materials in the office of the Bihar Research Society have long been one of the poorest known and least utilized of any of the major Tibetan literary holdings in the world. They were brought out of Tibet on the backs of mules in the early 1930s by the dauntless Indian savant Rahula Sankrityayana and were handed over by him to the Bihar Research Society, Patna, in 1936. In those days, and indeed even as late as the 1960s, these books formed one of the half-dozen or so most important collections of Tibetan writings outside of Tibet and Mongolia. But since they were never catalogued in detail, they have virtually remained "sealed books" to scholars for the last fifty years. Several attempts have been made by the Bihar Research Society to make these materials better known and more accessible. As early as 1937 the society engaged the services of the outstanding Tibetan scholar Dge-'dun-chos-'phel, a friend of Rahulji who was then in India, to compile a catalogue.(1) He is said to have done this work under the supervision of Dr. A. P. Banerji-Sastri, and he did complete a catalogue of sorts which remained in manuscript for many years.(2) Apparently Dge-'dun-chos-'phel or one of the later Tibetan scholars had also prepared a number of cards describing the contents of bundles (while going through the collection I occasionaly saw such cards still pinned to the outside of a few bundles). A second attempt at cataloguing the collection was begun nearly ten years later in 1946 by S. C. Sarkar, who noted in his introduction that Dge-'dun-chos-'phel's listing was "inadequate for the purpose of research students in India and elsewhere, as the Roman script transliterations are not accurate, no English and Sanskrit translations of titles and names are given, and the numerous sub-sections under the general titles are not noted."(3) Sarkar mentions that he himself collaborated with the Tibetan scholar dge-bshes Tsang-po [?] in this second attempt. Unfortunately this project made even less headway than the first: they only managed to present a more detailed description of the first two bundles of the collection.(4) The sole published guide to the whole miscellaneous series appeared in about 1965. It was entitled The Catalogue of the Tibetan Texts in the Bihar Research Society, Patna. Volume I (Miscellanous Series), and was the compilation of Mr. G. R. Choudhary and Prof. Tadasu Mitsushima. In a perceptive review of this publication J. W. de Jong observed: "According to the introduction, a Lama had been engaged for the preparation of a detailed catalogue but unfortunately no concrete work could be done in this respect until now. It is not clear from the introduction how far the present catalogue is based upon the work of this lama. In any case, from the catalogue itself one obtains the impression that the descriptions have
Introduction
The Tibetan materials in the office of the Bihar Research Society have long been one of the poorest known and least utilized of any of the major Tibetan literary holdings in the world. They were brought out of Tibet on the backs of mules in the early 1930s by the dauntless Indian savant Rahula Sankrityayana and were handed over by him to the Bihar Research Society, Patna, in 1936. In those days, and indeed even as late as the 1960s, these books formed one of the half-dozen or so most important collections of Tibetan writings outside of Tibet and Mongolia. But since they were never catalogued in detail, they have virtually remained "sealed books" to scholars for the last fifty years. Several attempts have been made by the Bihar Research Society to make these materials better known and more accessible. As early as 1937 the society engaged the services of the outstanding Tibetan scholar Dge-'dun-chos-'phel, a friend of Rahulji who was then in India, to compile a catalogue.(1) He is said to have done this work under the supervision of Dr. A. P. Banerji-Sastri, and he did complete a catalogue of sorts which remained in manuscript for many years.(2) Apparently Dge-'dun-chos-'phel or one of the later Tibetan scholars had also prepared a number of cards describing the contents of bundles (while going through the collection I occasionaly saw such cards still pinned to the outside of a few bundles). A second attempt at cataloguing the collection was begun nearly ten years later in 1946 by S. C. Sarkar, who noted in his introduction that Dge-'dun-chos-'phel's listing was "inadequate for the purpose of research students in India and elsewhere, as the Roman script transliterations are not accurate, no English and Sanskrit translations of titles and names are given, and the numerous sub-sections under the general titles are not noted."(3) Sarkar mentions that he himself collaborated with the Tibetan scholar dge-bshes Tsang-po [?] in this second attempt. Unfortunately this project made even less headway than the first: they only managed to present a more detailed description of the first two bundles of the collection.(4) The sole published guide to the whole miscellaneous series appeared in about 1965. It was entitled The Catalogue of the Tibetan Texts in the Bihar Research Society, Patna. Volume I (Miscellanous Series), and was the compilation of Mr. G. R. Choudhary and Prof. Tadasu Mitsushima. In a perceptive review of this publication J. W. de Jong observed: "According to the introduction, a Lama had been engaged for the preparation of a detailed catalogue but unfortunately no concrete work could be done in this respect until now. It is not clear from the introduction how far the present catalogue is based upon the work of this lama. In any case, from the catalogue itself one obtains the impression that the descriptions have