The Transmission of Buddhism to Imperial Tibet

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The discovery of the Dunhuang manuscript cache in 1900 provided scholars with an unprecedented collection of sources pertaining to imperial Tibet and the Buddhist traditions that it encountered, adopted, and promoted. Historians of early Tibet spent much of the twentieth century surveying, sorting, and digesting these finds. A hundred years later, in his The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism, Matthew Kapstein offered an example of how this foundational and often piecemeal work could nourish our reflection on larger historical processes. The past twenty-five years have seen a continued deepening and maturing of our knowledge about the empire, along with further additions to our source materials—including the digitization of Dunhuang materials and Old Tibetan inscriptions; the publication of the Dba’ bzhed and the ’Phang thang ma catalog; and new finds like the Dga’ thang ’bum pa manuscripts. It thus seems timely to take stock of the field’s progress and consider anew the grand questions concerning the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet.