


GA ceo Me eae eee na 
Poet EA i) = i 2 ia 
1922.] A Contribution to the Bibliography of Tibet. 455 
at the end of the volume, and are to be found on pp. 109 and 
110. He writes :— 
Tibet. Outside the country Tibetan books are printed in 
Peking (Sung-chu ssi), Urga, etc. In smaller printing houses, 
usually mere printing shops, only the common religious books 
and other works of small size are printed. In the larger 
establishments, too, usually the same kind of literature is 
dealt with, except when special orders are given. 
In the time of the fourth Urga Khutuktu the Urga print- 
ing house began to cut the wood-blocks for a Tibetan Kanjur, 
and 72 volumes of the 108 were finished when at the death of 
Khutuktu the work was discontinued. So the Urga Kanjur 
remains incomplete till the present day (1892, the time when A. 
Pozdneyey visited Urga). Many of the blocks that had been 
prepared have since been damaged or lost, and others have 
ecome worn out through printing. The Urga edition of the 
Kanjur may therefore be regarded as non-existent, though 
some of the poor Khalkha monasteries buy it and complete 
the missing parts in writing. 
The high cost of Tibetan works is chiefly caused by their 
length. Especially the collections of the Kanjur and the Tan- 
jur are very bulky and represent quite a capital. (Cf. Wassiliev, 
Notice, etc., pp. 375-376.) 
Nn most cases the purchaser who wants to buy a book, 
addresses himself to the nearest printing house where the 
blocks are kept of the book required by him, and orders a 
copy to be prepared for him. Kawaguchi acquired in this 
manner the greater part of the books he brought with him from 
fibet. As he told Walsh (Walsh, List of Tibetan books 
brought from Lhasa by Ekai Kawaguchi, 119-120), he had 
Wise it is a very common form of fraud to leave out a large 
number of leaves.” 
The rest of Kuehner’s note consists of extracts from 
Walsh’s introductory note to the list quoted, which, as bearing 
on our subject is mentioned below in its place under II, 1, 14, on 
P. 465. As this introductory note contains some details not 
a 
should likewise see Kawaguchi’s remarks on books and print- 
mg in a “Three Years in Tibet” (Adyar, Madras, 1909), 
4, 3 ae i 
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