Covering a time span of more 1300 years of history, Tibetan historical documents record the political, economical, military, science and technology, religious, and cultural activities in Tibet throughout history. As carried either in the form of stone engravings or official documents, they started from as early as the Tubo period and as went on all the way to the present day.

So far as the identified items are concerned, the collection in the Archives of Tibetan Autonomous Region(ATAR) numbers up to more than 3 million items volumes, among which, 90 percent are historical documents, a couple of thousand items are from Yuan and Ming Dynasties, 2 million from Qing Dynasty, and over 60, 000 from Republic of China. According to the record of the catalogued files, the oldest ones date back to as early as Yuan Dynasty in the 13th century and were still in use all the way through Ming, Qing and Republic period, and well into the 1950s, covering a time span of as long as over 700 years. Its collection of documents covers a wide range of areas, ranging from politics, economy, military affairs, to language and writing, science and technology, astronomy, geography, medicine, almanac, handicraft, architecture, religion, literature, folklore, culture, history, art, etc, written on such materials as paper, wood, tree leaves, bones, gold, stone, silk, etc, with writing inks made from gold, silver, copper, emerald, coral stone, pearl and cinnabar as well as the usual type of Tibetan ink. With its long history, large quantity and varieties of forms and rich and valuable content, the ATAR collection is fully equivalent to an encyclopedia of the Tibetan people.

I. The Protection of Tibetan Historical Documents

The majority of the ATAR documents were taken over in 1959 by the Central Government from the collections of the Tibetan local administrations, the noble families and officials and monks in Lhasa region as well as the temples and high-ranking lamas throughout Tibet. Ever since then, the government has done a lot for the safekeeping of these documents. In 1984, to better preserve the historical and modern documents of immense value, a new ATAR site, covering an area of well over 30, 000 square meters, was constructed in the outskirt of Lhasa City with the support of 7 million RMB set aside by the government, in full capacity to accommodate the need for storing, safekeeping and managing files with the help of modern technology.

In the past decades, with the financial aids received from the central government, the ATAR has armed the store rooms with quite a number of modern equipment purchased from the UK, US, Japan and Germany and created a thermostatic, ventilated, fire-proof, burglar-proof, dustproof, moisture-proof, and mould-proof environment for the precious documents, thus eliminating any chance of possible damage to the collection and further enhancing their protection and management. In addition to the strengthened security of the stored items, the modern method of duplicating the files in microforms has been adopted, and the rescue, safekeeping and management of the archives have been fundamentally revolutionized. Traditionally, many ingenious methods were invented and used for the same purpose. For instance, a document can be rolled up in scrolls, mounted on silken cloth, or put in a bag-shaped cell, and sometimes some special types of Tibetan paper, writing ink, binding techniques and cases can be employed, well serving the purpose of safekeeping the document and at the same time, with their originality and national characteristics, becoming part of the value of the document themselves. To reinforce these traditional methods, The ATAR has its collection of documents stored in modern shelves, cases and boxes and its records are taken in modern scientific methods of classification, with the exception of the over 100, 000 pieces of wood-carved documents sculpted on pieces of fine walnut wood, which are put up on traditional scripture shelves, numbered in the traditional method and stored in the old site located at the foot of the Potala Palace.

Starting from 1988, in consideration of the uniqueness of the Tibetan documents, a special group of personnel have been trained and employed to clean, de-acid, reinforce, writing-restore and mount the files which are damaged or broken into pieces under natural or human causes, and are usually in various sizes and lengths, marking the modernization of the archive management in the ATAR. At present, the ATAR is well equipped with a series of advanced facilities and equipment, namely, a micro-copying system, a computer-aided archive management system, a store-room temperature and humidity monitoring system, a casing system, burglar alarm system and security monitoring system.

In the past few years, the ATAR has laid down and improved a series of rules and regulations for the timing, category and quality of the items to be collected and taken vigorous measures to organize collection teams to work in the grass-roots areas both inside and outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region to study, collect, purchase from various units and individuals, and managed to acquire over 10, 000 pieces of documents, including, for instance, some 1000 year-old religious classics, and extremely valuable photo pictures. In addition, some friendly units and organizations have handed over to them several thousand books and historical documents, 95 percent of which are historical documents in the Tibetan language. All these efforts have not only helped enrich their collection but also ensured the safety and integrity of those collected documents.

II. The Cataloguing of the Tibetan Historical Documents

Tibetan people are known for their love and care of classical books and documents. Such a social awareness of the importance of historical documents has played an inestimable role in the preservation of historical documents. Among them, the eminent monks and scholars throughout ages have systematically sorted the classical scriptures and had them catalogued. According to their method, the documents are folded into volumes and groups in categories and types and packed in cotton or silk bags, and special care is taken when it comes to important documents they would be first mounted into scrolls first before they are kept in boxes. These bags and boxes are further tagged with numbers and category index marked by Tibetan letters. Besides, there are several kinds of ways of cataloguing the bags and boxes, namely, 1) marking the category types with numbers according the institutions where the document was originally kept; 2) classifying the documents in terms of nature and region, and ordering them in the Tibetan alphabetical order; 3) putting the documents about the same matter or region into bags in temporal order; 4) grouping together documents of the same type on one single sheet in temporal order. In spite of their similarities to modern techniques of filing documents into types and volumes, the final outcome of all the above-mentioned traditional methods largely depend on the experience of the operating manager of the files and as a result, are neither systematic nor scientific in nature.

The cataloguing method the ATAR is now following is a combination of the traditional and modern techniques. After the classification, identification and grading are done as is usually practiced in the modern cataloguing technique, a gradual sorting process would be followed, first a sketchy one and then a detailed one as determined by the condition of the files in procedure, the entire-collection cataloguing principle is followed,; in contrast, for every specific document, one card would be established for every single text under the supervision of a three-man examination group. In full compliance with this method, four categories and nearly 4, 000 cases of ancient documents have been reclassified, newly catalogued and put back on new shelves. The entire collections at various levels of the Tibetan administration have all been re-catalogued, with additional abstracts and introduction written in both the Tibetan and Chinese languages. In 1997, the ATAR enacted the Regulations for Tibetan Historical Documents Cataloguing, which for the first time in history stipulated the entire collection cataloguing principle in a written form, making it imperative to clarify the origin, content, time and form of the document, and explain the indexing order the classification, grouping and numbering of files should follow. To better preserve the historical documents, the Regulation goes out of its way to specify the type of writing ink to be used for writing the indexes and filling out the cards. In the case of some important documents, it demands that part of the old catalogue be retained so that the historical significance of the file would be kept intact.

With the implementation of the Regulation, the documents at Tashilunpo Monastery, Tsekang Monastery, Gondelin Temple, Sayka Monastery and Sela Temple were re-catalogued, and up to 1,000 indexes drawn out. At Gondelin alone, more than 20, 000 documents were sorted out and examined and their digital photocopies are saved in computers, making them available via internet.

In 2005, to make the cataloguing more scientific, the ATAR laid down the Rules for Tibetan Historical Documents Cataloguing, and Byangspyi…the administration of Northern Tibet in former local government which is known for the varieties of forms and wide coverage of its documents, was chosen to try it out.

By the end of 2005, the ATAR has re-catalogued several hundred thousand pieces volumes of documents, with a complete introduction and index to every collection, every volume, as well as every file within the volume. All in all, 213, 427 pieces of documents of 5 collections have been microfilmed and over one thousand films have been made, dozens of which are classical Tibetan scriptures.

III. Utilization of Tibetan Historical Documents

In addition to the collection, safekeeping and cataloguing of documents, the ATAR makes great efforts to lend, print, sell, translate and exhibit the documents, thus not only bringing their potential value into full play but also satisfying the general public's need to access the collected documents. The most conventional way of facilitating access to the files is establishing reading rooms, by means of which the information contained in the files is spread in a most direct way and readers could enjoy the benefit of consulting the ATAR in face, so that the documents are more efficiently used and better protected. This is especially the case for the documents which are so rare that they are the only existing copy available. So far, well over 10, 000 copies of documents covering such a wide range of fields as history, religion, literature and art have been borrowed by personnel working in government departments, state-run enterprises, colleges and research institutes, journalists, as well as Buddhism monks and private individuals for more than 10, 000 persons-times, providing a large amount of historical information which is of inestimable value for the compilation and study of history and could not be found anywhere else.

In addition, the printing and selling of wood-carved documents have helped a lot in spreading and carrying on the Tibetan traditional culture. The wood-carved documents collected by the ATAR are all wood block printing tablets of historical, cultural and religious classics carved by some great masters during various periods of Tibetan history. They are usually finely made, various in form and size, and in most cases very rare or the only copy that could be found in the world. Every year, the ATAR would organize folk artists to manually print the classical scriptures for publication. Up to today, more than 30 volumes of Collected Works of Bustun, the Biography of Padmaasmbhava have been printed and sold. A Collection of Tibetan Historical Documents in the Tibetan, Chinese and English language has been compiled; a Tibetan-Chinese bilingual version of Detailed List of the checkur in 1830 has been produced; Records of Disasters in Tibetan Historical Documents(5 volumes), Tibetan Historical Data Translated, and A Collection of Disciplines in Buddhist Monasteries have been published. The ATAR has also co-authored Historical Records of Earthquakes in Tibet (seven volumes). It has provided the master copy for the publication of such rare books as Abridged Kagyur Index and An Overview of Tibet. After years of efforts, 400, 000- word History of the Documents in Tibetan Autonomous Region is being proof-read and about to be finished.

To invigorate academic research and exchanges in Tibetan document studies, the ATAR has founded the Association of Tibetan Document Studies (ATDS), established a restricted publication Tibetan Documents, sponsored sessions of academic meetings in Tibetan document studies, and raised funds for the editing and translation of A Collection of Tibetan Historical Documents of Qing Dynasty, the sub-project of the national project of A Collection of Historical Documents of Qing Dynasty.

Moreover, the document exhibitions sponsored by the ATAR, both large and small, permanent and temporary, on either specific or general subject, have demonstrated the richness of the Tibetan historical documents, the peculiarity of the their national flavor, and uniqueness of their writing technique and manufacturing materials,, and brought about a better understanding of the Tibetan historical documents among people in no time. Among these exhibitions, the displays of ATAR Collection and History in Miniature received hundreds of scholars and experts, government officials, diplomats, journalists coming from some 20 countries and regions, ----, the European Parliament, England, France, Italy, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, to name just a few, as well as over 10, 000 persons-times including delegations of the central government, members of the People's Congress of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, members of CPPCC, representatives from various local districts, students, Buddhist monks, and the general public.

What is more, the ATAR and Shanghai Archives, together with other departments and units, co-sponsored the exhibitions of Approaching Tibet - A World Revealed by Archives, The Best of Tibetan Documents, and Tibetan Mystery in Guangzhou and Shanghai City. In addition, a documentary film, The Memory of History, was produced with the cooperation of Tibetan TV, and such exhibitions as The Pearl in the Snowland - Tibetan Culture were staged in Beijing, arousing an enormous amount of interest in the Tibetan documents among the general public and attracting a lot of attention from all personalities of various circles.

IV. Conclusion

In this new era of information, the acquisition and utilization of the information is regarded as the motive power for the development of human society. Documents, the most primitive and most original records of valuable information, are attracting more and more attention and came to be treated as an indispensable data bank and propellant for the progress of human society. In recent years, rapid progress has been made in protecting, cataloguing and utilizing the Tibetan historical documents, thanks to the support of the government policies and its financial aids. It also owes much to the creativity and flexibility of the hard-working ATAR staff members.

in spite of all these achievements, the safekeeping of Tibetan historical documents is still to be improved, and there is still a long way to go before a satisfactory result could be reached. We are still faced with some especially daunting tasks 1) A lot of historical documents scattered in various parts of the region are still waiting to be collected and taken over, thus rendering our collection incomplete and fragmental. 2) Owing to the size and inability of the rescue team, the pace of the manual restoration and mounting is so slow that only a little over 10, 000 pieces of documents have been restored and rescued. 3) With the retirement of the senior Tibetan intellectuals, there is an urgent need of experts who have a good knowledge of ancient Tibetan writing and the formats of ancient official documents. Millions of pieces of broken documents are yet to be catalogued. 4) The slow speed in micro-copying makes it impossible to completely replace the original files in use. 5) The management of the historical documents has not been computerized. As a result, there is still a long way to go before we could completely resolve the problems in cataloguing, managing and searching the historical documents collected.

In view of all these difficulties, it is highly desirable for everyone of us to realize that Tibetan historical documents, as an important part of Chinese and world cultural heritage, is crucial to the understanding of Chinese history and the relationship between Tibet and the other parts of China, as well as the development of the civilization of the entire human race.

Traya Lozang Butri, Expert on Tibetan Files of Archives of Tibet Autonomous Region

Oct. 11, 2006