Home Literary Studies Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth-Century Tibet
book: Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth-Century Tibet
Book Open Access

Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth-Century Tibet

The ‘Sutra of Limitless Life’ and its Dunhuang Copies Kept at the British Library
  • Brandon Dotson and Lewis Doney
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

About this book

Open Access

The result of the authors’ painstaking documentation of over 1,500 Tibetan copies of the Sutra of Limitless Life from Dunhuang, now kept in the British Library’s Stein Collection, this book provides a detailed study of the sutra copies, how they were produced for the Tibetan emperor in ninth-century Dunhuang, and how they were conserved in twentieth-century England. It explores the lives of Dunhuang’s multi-ethnic scribes, editors, and administrators and reveals how their practices changed in a short period of time during the 820s. In addition, the book surveys the significant differences across the multiple Tibetan and Chinese versions of the Sutra of Limitless Life (Tib. Tshe dpag du myed pa’i mdo; Ch. Wuliangshou zongyao jing; Skt. Aparimitāyuḥ sūtra) circulating in Dunhuang at this time, and introduces a previously unknown Tibetan version. Through working with such a large cross section of the Stein Collection, and by coming to terms with one of the single largest groups of Dunhuang manuscripts, the book provides new insights into how these manuscripts were documented and conserved, on their way from Dunhuang through Khotan to London and at the British Museum, India Office Library, and British Library.

Author / Editor information

Brandon Dotson, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., USA; Lewis Doney, Universität Bonn, Germany.

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 16, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9783111569550
Hardcover published on:
December 16, 2024
Hardcover ISBN:
9783111569307
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
12
Main content:
408
Illustrations:
2
Coloured Illustrations:
83
Tables:
8
Downloaded on 24.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111569550/html
Scroll to top button