Tibetology

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Tuesday, 24 September, 2002, 08:01 GMT 09:01 UK

Tibetan culture finds digital saviour

 

By Alfred Hermida

BBC News Online technology staff

 

 

Thousands of historical Tibetan books are going digital in an attempt

to save Tibet's rich Buddhist-influenced literature.

At the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center in New York, a non-profit

organisation, workers are scanning hundreds of millions of pages onto

a computer.

 

The works are being made available on CD-Rom and, eventually, also on

the internet, so that everyone can have access to them.

 

"They represent a history and a wisdom literature that we are just

beginning to understand," explained E Gene Smith, founder and

director of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center.

 

Decaying pages

 

The organisation does not charge for its services, relying instead on

private donations

 

It has 12,000 volumes of Tibetan literature, possibly the biggest in

the West or even in the world.

 

Many of them came from refugees who carried them over the Himalayas

when they fled from the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s.

 

The collection includes works of Buddhist philosophy, mathematics,

alchemy and ancient exotica.

 

As there were no printing presses in Tibet, the books were either

handwritten or printed from wooden blocks.

 

"Our project is largely a preservation one because the paper on which

they were printed is decaying," Mr Smith told the BBC programme Go

Digital. "It's falling apart literally."

 

Cultural heritage

 

Scanning the volumes is a mammoth task, so the centre is being helped

by other organisations such as the Himalayan Art Project, the

University of Virginia and the Tibetan Knowledge Consortium.

 

 

Mr Smith estimates that by the end they will have 8.4 million

individual digital images of the texts.

 

"What we're doing is creating a database. We will provide it

initially on CD-Rom and we hope that we can eventually have a website

so that the images are available anywhere in the world," he said.

 

Mr Smith became interested in Tibetan history and culture in the

1960s. Aged 65 years old, he now has an encyclopaedic knowledge of

Tibet's literature.

 

"There's more interest now in the philosophy and the science that's

enshrined in these documents," he said.

 

"These documents will be of enormous importance, not only to the West

but also Tibetans themselves as they reconstruct their culture."