448 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XVIII, 
The existing lists, like the present ones are all drawn up too 
briefly and summarily to justify as yet the compilation of a 
kind of Catalogus Catalogorum in connection with the three 
lists now presented. One of the previous lists gives no Sanskrit 
equivalents at all, even where these alternative titles are given 
in the books described. Another gives the original Tibetan titles 
only for some volumes and not for others. Another again tran- 
scribes only part of the titles, in arbitrary abbreviation, though 
the author has the actual books before him. My own lists 
are worse in a way, for they seem not even to have been copied 
from actual titles, however partially. I understand that they 
have been taken down from dictation, from memory, and re- 
present the current popular names by which the books are 
referred to in Tibet. From the standpoint of scientific biblio- 
graphy this may be sad, but from that of a study of the popular 
life it has its value. I do not think that the actual writers of 
the lists can have been very learned men ; they may have been 
practical booksellers. Uncertainties like those offered by 
No. 116 (AF for AS, etc.) seem to point to this conclusion. 
~ ~ 
But it is certain that the lists embody an unusual amoant 
of familiarity with book-names. I have not met with Tibetans 
ciable proportion of new material. Further, it seems to me 
that the value of these lists lies is the fact that they give us a 
picture of the literature affected by the modern Tibetan in- 
telligentsia. The Kanjur and Tanjur as such are excluded, 
but some parts of their contents are evidently still widely read 
and current in separate editions. The number of works on 
the educated and cultured Tibetan of to-day. The exceeding- 
ly numerous, in fact uncountable, little popular rituals, prayers, 
hymns, litanies and similar works which are to be met with in 
Tibet are altogether absent from our lists. Most of the works 

belief. A fact which seems very significant to me is that we 
meet with several titles wholly identical with, or at least 
similar to, those published in the old lists of Schmidt, Bohtlingk 
and Schiefner, about three-quarters of a century ago. Literary 
taste does not seem to have changed much in Tibet during all 
that time. Whether the cycle of Cathay will move as slowly 
in the future seems doubtful. Already there are rumours of 
telegraph line to Lhasa.!_ Uniformed soldiers, postage stamps 

| To-day the telegraph line has become a fact, and compliments have 
been exchanged over it between India and England, and agi 


