The result of the authors' painstaking documentation of over 1,500 Tibetan copies of the Sutra of Limitless Life from Dunhuang, now kept in the British Library's Stein Collection, this book provides a detailed study of the sutra copies, how they were produced for the Tibetan emperor in ninth-century Dunhuang, and how they were conserved in twentieth-century England. It explores the lives of Dunhuang's multi-ethnic scribes, editors, and administrators and reveals how their practices changed in a short period of time during the 820s. In addition, the book surveys the significant differences across the multiple Tibetan and Chinese versions of the Sutra of Limitless Life (Tib. Tshe dpag du myed pa'i mdo; Ch. Wuliangshou zongyao jing; Skt. Aparimitayuh sutra) circulating in Dunhuang at this time, and introduces a previously unknown Tibetan version. Through working with such a large cross section of the Stein Collection, and by coming to terms with one of the single largest groups of Dunhuang manuscripts, the book provides new insights into how these manuscripts were documented and conserved, on their way from Dunhuang through Khotan to London and at the British Museum, India Office Library, and British Library.

Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth-Century Tibet: The 'Sutra of Limitless Life' and its Dunhuang Copies Kept at the British Library, Brandon Dotson and Lewis Doney, De Gruyter, Hardcover, 420 pages, $120.99

Brandon Dotson is professor and Thomas P. McKenna Chair of Buddhist Studies. Besides Georgetown, he has taught and researched at Oxford, SOAS, UCSB, and Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. He has also enjoyed research stays in China and Tibet. His work concerns ritual, narrative, and cosmology and the interaction of Buddhist and non-Buddhist traditions in the Tibetan cultural area. In particular, he works closely with Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts to explore the history and culture of the Tibetan Empire (7th to 9th centuries CE).