Early Buddhist Literary Works in Dunhuang Tibetan Texts

Along with the initiatives of translating and copying sutras, which were promoted as official projects by the Old Tibetan Empire, early Buddhists wrote literary works to explain the basic concepts of Buddhism in a simple way that was unfamiliar to Tibetans at the time. Although these early works were not included in the later Tibetan Buddhist literature, there existence can be found in some of the Tibetan manuscripts of Dunhuang.

We will review the outline of seven literary works by early Buddhists that I recently translated and published. After reviewing the contents of each work, we will examine the teachings of the early Buddhist missionaries as a clue to understand how Buddhism got started in Tibet.

Ai Nishida is a specialist in ancient Tibetan texts at Kyoto University. She is in Paris following an invitation from the Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l'Asie Orientale (CRCAO-UMR8155), as part of a project to study ancient Tibetan inscriptions from Ladakh in collaboration with Nils Martin and Quentin Devers (Exploration Archéologique du Ladakh research program).