part on just the Tibetan titles. In the meantime I also attempted to verify the identities and dates of some of the authors I was not familiar with. For authors' dates I had to rely on the few sources readily available to me: E. G. Smith's University of Washington Tibetan Catalogue (Seattle: University of Washington, 1969), T. G. Dhongthog's Important Events in Tibetan History (New Delhi: T. G. Dhongthog, 1968), Jampa Samten's Catalogue of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Vol. 1 Historical Works (Dharamsala: 1983), The Mi rigs dpe mdzod khang gi dpe tho las gsung 'bum skor gyi dkar chag shes bya'i gter mdzod [part I] (Chengdu: 1984), the library of the Tibet House, and the card catalogue of the U. S. Library of Congress Office in New Delhi. I was not able to identify some of the authors, and I did not have the time to trace most of the works back to the oeuvres of their authors. Those tasks were beyond the scope of this preliminary report. But I did think that indexes were indispensable, and accordingly compiled both author and title indexes arranged in Roman alphabetical order. This order was chosen in preference to the Tibetan order because it can be readily used by non-specialists. I regret any slight inconvenience to specialists, but they can be expected to find their way through either system.
I must stress that this is a preliminary and provisional description, with no pretensions to being a proper catalogue. Unavoidably some oversights have occurred when I was taking notes by hand, and no doubt new errors have crept in during typing. I have not been able to verify many doubtful points or to fill in the various gaps that became obvious at the later stages. But I think that the importance of the Patna materials warrants the presentation of a hurried (which is to say a necessarily imperfect) report such as this. It is my hope that this new description will induce other scholars to visit Patna, to investigate these texts in more detail, and in the not-too-distant future to publish some of the more important works in collaboration with the Bihar Research Society.
In conclusion I would like to indicate my gratitude here to the American Institute of Indian Studies for the research fellowship which enabled me to visit Patna in the first place, to the officers and staff of the Bihar Research Society for their kind help and cooperation at every stage, and to the acquaintances I made in Patna for the cordial reception they gave me during my stay in their venerable but surprisingly friendly city.
New Delhi D. P. J. 14th August 1987
Notes
(1) For mentions of the cataloguing work undertaken for the society by Dge-'dun-chos-'phel, see for instance the Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. 23 (1937), pp. 155, 160, and 389. See also Heather Stoddard, Le Mendiant de l'Amdo (Paris: Societe d'Ethnographie, 1985), pp. 198 and 350, no. 5. (2) S. C. Sarkar, "Catalogue of the Miscellaneous Tibetan Xylographic Works in the Bihar
(1) For mentions of the cataloguing work undertaken for the society by Dge-'dun-chos-'phel, see for instance the Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. 23 (1937), pp. 155, 160, and 389. See also Heather Stoddard, Le Mendiant de l'Amdo (Paris: Societe d'Ethnographie, 1985), pp. 198 and 350, no. 5. (2) S. C. Sarkar, "Catalogue of the Miscellaneous Tibetan Xylographic Works in the Bihar