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Introduction to Tibetan Literary Genres

Tibetan literature is a vast topic with a wide variety of genres. Understanding these genres provides a unique glimpse into Tibetan Culture. Several resources for the study of Tibetan literary genres are available through this portal. With generous permission from the publisher, we have digitized the important work Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, edited by José I. Cabezón and Roger Jackson. This work provides an initial core of rich essays on specific genres, to which we are now seeking additional contributions. The Knowledge Map of Literary Genres provides an expandable-collapsible hierarchy of genres found within Tibetan literature. Ultimately, the categories in this hierarchy will be linked to further resources such as short summaries, extended essays, textual excerpts, translations, and audio or video versions of oral commentaries on each genre. In addition, we are filming exemplars of oral commentaries on these different genres by Tibetan scholars. These commentaries are then being translated and directly connected to the literary texts using our QuillDriver-Savant software suite.