While it is common for glossy printed catalogues to accompany exhibitions of Tibetan artefacts, catalogues describing the inventories of museums and libraries are few in the field of Tibetan studies. There is a big difference between the exposition of chosen pieces for a wider audience and the meticulous listing of each and every item in the possession of an institution regardless of the interest of such an audience. Often after the acquisition of such items it might be simply a lack of financial support or qualified manpower that prevents the compilation of such catalogues, even in simple form.
The catalogue under review marks the third endeavour to register the inventory of the Tibetan collection of the Royal Library and the National Museum in Copenhagen, following on from, first, the Catalogue of Tibetan Manuscripts and Xylographs (COMDC 6.1 and 6.2) and, second, the metadata accessible via The Royal Library's Open Public Access Catalogue REX. The material presented in this catalogue was acquired from different sources, such as private collectors, mostly from the new millennium onwards but with the exception of some materials contributed between the 1960s and 1980s. Anne Burchardi has undertaken the work of carefully listing and describing all of these items, thus making them available to the wider public and hence to researchers around the globe.
All in all 174 entries are presented in this catalogue over four chapters: 1) Texts; 2) Block print images and diagrams; 3) Maṇḍalas and other ritual images; and 4) Tsak Li initiation cards. Each entry is provided with elaborate information on size, description, notes, provenance and, if available, further references. Furthermore many of the items are shown as coloured plates of high quality. The material shown within the catalogue is highly diverse in nature.
Among the texts in the first chapter, we find many types of material ranging from canonical texts, rituals, prayers, spiritual practices, etc. A particularly impressive entry here is the illustrated version of the Ārya-saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna-sūtra from Mongolia on pp. 15 ff. Pictures of the hand-coloured illustrations of the hell realms of Buddhist cosmology in this work take up the whole of pp. 33–56, one horrific scene ensuing after the other. They vividly show how a canonical text was used as a didactic tool for, I believe, rather uneducated folk in the framework of Mongolian Buddhist tradition. The topic of illustrated books on the hell realms has received widespread attention from academics already, and besides the sources quoted, A Tibeto-Mongolian Picture-Book of Hell introduced by Géza Bethlenfalvy and Alice Sárközi (Budapest: Institute of Ethnology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2010) could be added to the list of related publications here.
Another noteworthy item is a personal meditation Manual (pp. 65–7) in the form of an accordion-style folded booklet, named Chos byung sna tshogs rnal ‘byor sgom … authored by a certain dGe slong ye shes rab brtan. It contains short notes on the lineages and practice related to the transmissions found in the bKa’ bryud pa-school, along with eight maṇḍala-esque drawings relating to visualization practices used by the author. This is followed by a collection of sādhanas on pp. 68–75, authored by a certain Khyung ras, who can be identified as Khyung po ras pa ‘gyur med ‘od gsal (b. 1715), a treasure revealer (gter ston) who authored the work rJe btsun mi ‘gyur dpal gyi sgron ma'i rnam thar dad pa'i gdung gsal (Thimphu: National Library of Bhutan, 1984) and whose work rDzogs pa chen po a ti zab don snying po'i khrid dmigs zin bris su spel ba kun bzang dgongs rgyan has been included in the Rin chen gter mdzod (‘Jam mgon kong sprul: Rin chen gter mdzod chen mo. New Delhi: Shechen Publications, 2007, vol. 58, pp. 521–672). This conclusion is supported by the fact that the text depicted on p. 75 is marked with the “sign of treasure” (gter tsheg) at the end of each verse, thus defining the author as a treasure revealer. All in all eleven texts stemming from the collected works (bka’ ‘bum) of Khyung ras are listed here, none of which were available up to now.
In chapter 2 we see block print images and diagrams. Among these however are many xylographic prints of teachers and deities stemming from Nepal and showing rather generic depictions of those. This is simply due to the rather recent production and large distribution of those. Of interest here are the numerous prayer flags, protective seals and effigies (liṇga).
Chapter 3 shows the Maṇḍalas, the images for Fire Rituals, Smoke Offerings etc., for the larger part coming from Mongolia. Here in some cases, especially the maṇḍalas, further information such as the related tradition, deity and precise ritual practice that it was used for would be of great help for researchers to put those into the greater context of Tibetan Buddhism.
This is concluded with a set of initiation cards acquired mostly from Nepal making up chapter 4. Overall, this catalogue shows very diverse material and reveals some rare gems otherwise hidden in the gloom of the museum's archives. It makes relevant material known and thus accessible for future research.
