Continuing Revelations: Patronage, Place, and Printing Enchantment in the Publication Histories of Modern Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Literature

Abstract

Treasure (Tibetan: gter ma) lineages are distinctive forms of visionary Buddhist practice found throughout the classical Tibetan literary world. Treasures are revealed by tertön (gter ston), Buddhist masters with karmic connections to the Tibetan past who have been preordained to recover treasures at the right time and place. There has been rich scholarship on the processes of treasure discovery and communities that have been inspired by treasure literature, but the publication and distribution histories of treasure texts have been comparatively understudied. Drawing on the work of historian Nile Green related to the mass production of Islamic texts produced in Mumbai that circulated through the modern Indian Ocean world, I will examine how the political and economic changes of the twentieth century impacted and transformed the promulgation of visionary literature in classical Tibetan language, and the circumstances that allowed for ‘printing enchantment’, and the power of the book, to remain intact.