The Lost Sanskrit Treasues Of Tibet

How China is attempting to unravel the mysteries contained in 2,000-year-old forgotten Sanskrit texts, with little help from across the border
 

- Ananth Krishnan

When Ye Shaoyong, a prominent Chinese Sanskrit scholar, first came across the old yellowed palm leaves from Drepung, one of Tibet’s most important monasteries, he was intrigued by the letters on the page. The 14 palm leaves he found bore ancient writing, older than anything that the Sanskrit professor from Peking University had ever seen. That day in 2003, Ye stumbled upon one of the oldest undiscovered Sanskrit texts from India—a 2nd century text, the Mulamadhyamakakarika, one of the founding texts of Mahayana Buddhism that had, until Ye’s discovery, only ever been seen referenced in quotations in later commentaries.

Chinese scholars say this rare palm leaf is among hundreds—possibly thousands—that still lie in Tibet’s monasteries, carrying a trove of more than thousand-year-old information about Indian philosophical thought and history, from between the 2nd and 14th centuries. Ye spent a decade painstakingly translating the old manuscript, which was finally published four years ago and is among the first from this forgotten treasure to be made public. “Tibet might be the last treasure of Sanskrit manuscripts which has not yet been fully investigated,” he wrote in his book. “Nonetheless,” he lamented, “they are still gathering dust on the shelves of monasteries or in the drawers of museums.”