A Tibetan sutra printing house has released 1,700 sets of the Tibetan Kagyur of Tripitaka, the Tibetan word for Buddha, since it was set up nearly two decades ago at Muru temple in Lhasa, capital of southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region.

"This basically satisfies the demands of lamaseries and disciples in Tibet," said Dazhag-Dainzin Gelie, a living Buddha of Tibetan Buddhism on Friday.

As the bible of Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan Tripitaka was chiefly translated from the Sanskrit edition from the 8th to the 13th century, while some was rendered from the Chinese edition.

The Tibetan Tripitaka comprises two parts, namely Kagyur and Tangyur. Kagyur, in its 1,108 volumes, was taken as the orthodox bible of Tibetan Buddhism since it records the saying of the Buddha. Tangyur is the translated version of the commentary of the sutra and has a total of 3,461 volumes.

"The Tibetan edition of Tripitaka is the essential sutra in Tibetan Buddhist temples," said Dainzin Gelie. "But as the volume is too huge, the printing of the sutra was suspended for a time."

In 1984, to rescue the sutra from disappearing and to cope with the demands of lamas and disciples, the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region allocated a special fund to establish the sutra printing house.

"Things have been changed since the founding of the printing house," said Dainzin Gelie, who takes charge of the printing house. "Now, nearly every temple or lamasery in Tibet owns a Tibetan Kagyur."

According to Dainzin Gelie, since 1990, the printing house has bought 87,000 printing plates to inscribe Tangyur. By now, 42,000 of them have been inscribed so that 125 volumes of the Tibetan Tangyur have been issued.

The Tibetan Tripitaka carries not only essays of Buddhist tenets, but works relating to knowledge in various fields including logic, linguistics, medicine, mathematics and astronomy.

"It can be cited as an encyclopedia," said the living Buddha. "Therefore, printing the Tibetan Tripitaka will not only carry forward the spirit of Buddhism, but help to protect the scientific and cultural relics of humans."

(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2003)