Book Reviews

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

Page 38

264 REVIEWS titles given in the margin in Tibetan, the Chinese characters in the margin of Peking blockprints and, finally, the catalogue numbers of the texts in the libraries. It would have been useful if Taube had added a list of the places in which the texts were printed. In order to know, for instance, which texts were printed in Peking one is obliged to go through the entire catalogue. It is only in recent years that the enormous extent of Tibetan literature has become obvious. Probably no other literature in the world is still so unexplored. It will take a long time before a history of Tibetan literature can be written. It is above all necessary to catalogue and describe the existing collections. At present this is a difficult and time-consuming task because only very few Tibetan texts have been adequately studied and analyzed. Even to indicate briefly the contents of a Tibetan text is often far from easy. However, Taube's catalogue will be of very great use in the study of other collections which contain the same editions as those described by him. It is to be hoped that more collections will be described in the same careful and detailed way but it will be difficult to find scholars willing to spend so much time and energy on the cataloguing of Tibetan texts. We must be extremely grateful to Manfred Taube for having undertaken this laborious task and for having carried it out in such an exemplary manner. [Note. The publication of a review in 1980 of a work published in 1966 is not due to any fault on the part of the publisher or the reviewer but is due to the fact that the copy sent to the reviewer in 1966 never reached him.] Australian National University .J. W. DE JONG