Sakya Monastery preserves relics and ancient texts

Since the launch of a digitization project for the protection and utilization of ancient texts in the Sakya Monastery of the Xizang autonomous region in 2012, significant efforts and achievements have been made in ancient text preservation.

Located in the Sakya county of Shigatse, the monastery was built by Khon Konchok Gyalpo in 1073 and was expanded in the 13th century. It is the ancestral monastery of the Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism.

There is a "great wall" at the monastery that holds more than 84,000 volumes of ancient Tibetan manuscripts, covering various fields such as Buddhist scriptures, literature, history, astronomy, medicine and mathematics.

With a length of nearly 60 meters and a height of 10 meters, the library is considered one of the largest repositories of Tibetan and Sanskrit manuscripts in the world, revealing thousands of years of human history.

According to the monastery, it established a manuscript digitization group in 2012, with the main goal of preserving these valuable texts.

According to Kunga Trinley, a monk and ancient-text digitization specialist at the Sakya Monastery, the overall architecture of the building was largely expanded around 1268 during the regime of the great master Drogon Chogyal Phakpa.

"Later during the great master Sakya Kunga Gyaltsan, a large quantity of dharma scriptures was created, eminent monks from India were invited to present-day Sakya county to spread Buddhism, resulting in the prosperity of different cultures," says Kunga Trinley, adding that the monastery was honored with the title of "Bodh Gaya of the Snow Land" at that time.

"Honored with the title of 'the Second Dunhuang' today, the Sakya Monastery shows the nature of ancient Tibetan cultures and arts. Therefore, it is very essential to preserve it, and that's why it receives protection efforts from all levels of governments," says Kunga Trinley.

"We maintain a principle of restoring the cultural relics in their original forms with minimal intervention, but we also borrow the means of modern technology," he says.

Seven monks of the monastery have been working nearly seven years on this project. Nearly 3,000 volumes, approximately 7,000 pages, of the ancient texts have been digitized.

"I think it's good for the monks to carry out the digitization of ancient texts, because they consider the work as doing good deeds or as part of their religious practice. In this way, I believe they can do a better job," he says.

Apart from the digitization of ancient documents, his team started other work which is the digitization of the cultural relics in the monastery, such as the thangka paintings, the fresco and the stupas.

According to the monastery, out of its 200 monks, nearly 60 monks have been engaged in cultural preservation works, their work includes fire and theft prevention, chapel cleaning, the restoration of thangka paintings and fresco, and the count of cultural relics.

"Our monks have been sent to attend different training to learn how to use modern tools, and this will help them use modern technology in their work," says Kunga Trinley.

According to the Culture and Tourism Bureau of Sakya county, the county has 120 immovable and more than 87,700 movable cultural relic sites. The county invests nearly 2.2 million yuan ($306,000) every year in cultural relics protection.

Sonam Tashi, head of the bureau, says the county's financial department funds an average of 500,000 yuan to the Sakya monastery separately on various protection needs.

Affected by the Dingri earthquake in January, some walls and part of its roof developed cracks or caved in, and some frescoes also suffered various degrees of damage, he says.

"The government invested 1.8 million yuan for emergency restoration right after the disaster, and the monastery is under the process of applying for more funds from the government for further restoration."