This book is a prescriptive “case study” of some uses of methodology in the study of manuscripts in which the authors claim “innovated results-driven methods in codicology, paleography, orthography, and lexicography” (p. 15) and to “unite in a single template the most important features for identifying scribes and schools, and for dating Tibetan writing” that “allow us to move beyond idiosyncratic and vague descriptions” to a “balance between comprehensiveness and ease of application [which] … constitute a teachable method” (p. 171). However, a more instructive case study is this book itself and how it falls short of its stated goals.
The methods presented here were developed over five years by the “Kingship and Religion in Tibet” research group in Munich and in collaboration with a wider community of scholars. Half of the book is devoted to defining the “fields” or types of information to be “united in a single template” and the other half is the presentation, including a comparative table, of information about the selected manuscripts through the lens of the template. It is the authors' hope that their methods will be more widely applicable than their study consisting of a Dunhaung scroll of the Old Tibetan Chronicle with comparisons to “Old Tibetan” “R ā m ā ya ṇ a” manuscripts, two Dunhaung “Chronicle fragments”, and The Dbon zhang pillar inscription. The authors have included twelve pages of reference bibliography and 154 figures, often small or close-cropped, illustrating whatever is being explained.
While the authors' template may be “teachable”, their book is not introductory. In the name of “practicality” (p. 22) the authors do not provide basic or encyclopaedia-style explanations of the disciplines listed in the title and thereby limit visibility to any “innovated results-driven methods” within them. They do mention, only once, the ground-breaking study of Tibetan manuscripts which does concisely define these disciplines along with their roots in Biblical and Classical scholarship: C.A. Scherrer-Schaub and E. Steinkellner (eds), Tabo Studies II, Manuscripts, Texts, Inscriptions, and the Arts (Rome, 1999).
The authors often address those who may share their assumptions while they criticize, without evidence, straw “opponents”. For example, they write that “some scholars allow themselves remarkable leeway … a scattershot philology that produces insights mostly by accident, and one that flies in the face of fundamental principles such as that of lectio difficilior” (p. 30). This is their only mention of scribal error or correction. Similarly unmoored from their template, the authors do not actually explain in their conclusions how they identified the “features” which “are given to vary over the course of a single scribe's career” (p. 173). In this book there is little or no consideration of compilation and editing of a text over time, multiple authors and scribes, borrowing, paraphrase, or other conditions that result in parallels or variants; in short the features typical of many “author-less” Tibetan and Indian manuscripts.
The authors seem primarily concerned with “filling out” their template according to simplistic instructions that often begin with “we must…” but also may include unexplained references to complex issues as if the authors were overheard midway in a conversation. Entire categories in the template remain unexplained. It is recommended to transcribe any words in seals but drawings are merely to be scanned without further description. And, along with the entirety of information science concerned with the use of documents, our authors ignore the cataloging of manuscripts except to recommend recording the catalogue number or advise that “shelfmark is not always the same as a catalogue number” (p. 33).
Other methods are imported, apparently uncritically, and presented still too briefly to be deployed using this book alone. The list of features in the orthography section include no sources for what the authors label “well known,” “traditional,” “archaism,” “prevalent,” etc. Regional differences are not addressed nor are characteristics of Tibetan language in texts with possible relationships to other languages such as the R ā m ā ya ṇ a manuscripts central to this study. For methods of paleography there is full reliance upon Sam van Schaik's studies of Tibetan paleography including his assigning of manuscripts to time periods identified for Tibetan culture.
In contrast, the illustrated descriptions of the physical formats of Dunhaung documents and of paper, ink and writing implements, including how they were made, is consistent with co-author Helman-Ważny's thorough work elsewhere.
In spite of the authors' hopeful praise for their template, the conclusions of this study are so preliminary that it did not seem fair to present them earlier in this review. The authors confess that the study of so few manuscripts shows “the wisdom of refraining from gross generalizations about the features of early Tibetan writing” since “very few features are shared by all of the documents in our sample.” (p. 162) However, they were able “to date the R ā m ā ya ṇ a, version E (and version C), to the late Guiyijun period and to provenance the paper of the pothī-format ‘Chronicle Fragments' from central Tibet, and to effectively date it to the Tibetan imperial period” (p. 171). As for dating their principle manuscript, “we cannot fix the Old Tibetan Chronicle in time” although the ratio of separated to attached ‘i “aligns it with late Guiyijin writings” (pp. 162–3). As for scribes and schools, the authors claim their methods “constitute a powerful tool” which will “soon allow us to assign date ranges” (p. 173). Lastly, since R ā m ā ya ṇ a A and the Old Tibetan Chronicle appear to be written in the same scribal hand, our authors make a leap to “we catch a glimpse of a creative intelligence that leads us to wonder if our scribe was not also making his own contributions to a narrative already adorned with popular motifs.” (p. 169)
Overall, this unevenly argued book stands in sharp contrast to any of the codicological studies in Orna Almogi (ed.), Tibetan Manuscript and Xylograph Traditions (Hamburg, 2016) where the precise applications of various methods, including digital, produce more exemplary contributions to our understanding of Tibetan manuscripts.
