

ie ee 
1922.) | A Contribution to the Bibliography of Tibet. 453 
subject and can only serve as a very slight preliminary sketch 
of it. 
Now we have still to consider the question of publishing 
or printing centres and the locality of the presses. Publishing 
in the European sense of the word is unknown in Tibet. No 
wholesale editions are ever printed off at once and distributed 
through selling agencies. As said before, the normal practice 
is to print each copy for the customer who wants it. An ex- 
ception is formed by the small popular prints kept for sale by 
the little book stalls in Lhasa, or those hawked about the 
country by bagmen. But even these are probably ordered by 
these booksellers in small batches and not kept in stock at the 
presses. Tibet is a country of travel and pilgrimage. A vast 
number of travellers are always on the road from the remotest 
corners of the country to its centre, Lhasa, and from there 
back again. These travellers, whether traders or monks, are 
the distributors of the printed literature. A man going to 
Lhasa, or elsewhere, may be commissioned by his friends to 
bring back such and such works, or having the opportunity at 
some monastery to acquire such works and having still room 
for an additional load on his yaks or mules, he may take books 
as balast, either for his own use or as a speculation. Often, 
also, a pilgrim may invest in a spare volume or two carried home 
on his back with his personal effects in the hope of some gain 
by their sale when he has returned to his dwelling place. Hrom 
time to time I saw a few isolated volumes appear in this way 
on the benches of some shop in the Ghum bazar, which usually 
disappeared quickly. And then no one knew how they had 
come or when other copies would again arrive. This kind of 
book was usually not very valuable. Yet I have often picked 
which are only delivered to the specially privileged. There are 
Such works as are judged in the eyes of the authorities to be 
own to me. I believe they deal as a rule with the higher 
arcana of tantrik philosophy. The matter deserves further 
n 
the Volumes delivered to the ordinary public the part corres- 
Ponding to these titles is not included. In our lists here 
