E. Gene Smith ran the Library of Congress' Tibetan Text Publication Project of the United States Public Law 480 (PL480)- an effort to salvage and reprint the Tibetan literature that had been saved by the exile community or by members of the Tibetan speaking communities of Sikkim, Bhutan , India, and Nepal. Smith wrote prefaces to these reprinted books to help clarify and contextualize the particular Tibetan texts: the prefaces served as rough orientations to a poorly understood body of foreign literature. Originally produced in print quantities of twenty, these prefaces quickly became legendary, and soon photocopied collections were handed from scholar to scholar, achieving an almost cult status. "Among Tibetan Texts" collects these essays, presenting them together for the first time.
The essays span a vast range of Tibetan literature, covering Buddhist texts from all lineages, histories, biographies, and literary arts. They provide historical context for the origins of the various traditions, with helpful lineage charts and overviews of the literature and the great figures that shaped those traditions. The impact of Smith's essays on the academic study of Tibetan literature has been tremendous, both for their remarkable ability to synthesize diverse materials into coherent accounts of Tibetan literature, history, and religious thought, and for the exemplary critical scholarship Smith brought- and continues to bring- to this field.

Among Tibetan Texts, E. Gene Smith, Wisdom Publications, Hardcover, 384 pages, $39.95

Ellis Gene Smith (1936-2010) did his graduate work in Seattle in the early 1960's, a period when lamas from the recently exiled Tibetan community were first arriving in America. He studied Inner Asian Studies under Turrell Wylie at the University of Washington while simultaneously living with and receiving instruction from the late Deshung Rinpoche, chief tutor of the Sakya lineage and a master of the nonsectarian tradition. While subsequently researching Tibetan Buddhism in India, he landed a job with the Library of Congress there in 1968, eventually becoming director of the New Delhi Field Office, with subsequent postings in Jakarta and Cairo.

After a thirty-year overseas career with the Library, Gene became Executive Director of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The TBRC is working to make available Gene's comprehensive collection of Tibetan texts in digital format so that scholars and Buddhists worldwide can have access to this vast but disappearing literary heritage. More information about the TBRC can be found at www.tbrc.org.

	Contents: AMONG TIBETAN TEXTS: History & Literature of the Himalayan Plateau
	Foreword by Jeffrey Hopkins	ix
	Preface by E. Gene Smith	xi
	Introduction by Kurtis R. Schaeffer	1
I.	THE RNYING MA SCHOOL
	1. The Autobiography of the Rnying ma pa Visionary Mkhan po Ngag dbang dpal bzang	13
	2. Klong chen Rab 'byams pa and His Works	33
II.	THE BKA' BRGYUD SCHOOLS
	3. Golden Rosaries of the Bka' brgyud Schools	39
	4. The Shangs pa Bka' brgyud Tradition	53
	5. The Life of Gtsang smyon Heruka	59
	6. Padma dkar po and His History of Buddhism	81
	7. The Diaries of Si tu Pan chen	87
III.	THE SA SKYA SCHOOL
	8. The Early HIstory of the 'Khon Family and the Sa skya School	99
	9. Glo bo Mkhan chen and Buddhist Logic in Tibet	111
IV.	THE DGE LUGS SCHOOL
	10. The Autobiography of the First Pan chen Lama	119
	11. The Life of Lcang skya Rol pa'i rdo rje	133
	12. Philosophical, Biographical, and Historical Works of Thu'u bkwan Blo bzang chos kyi nyi ma	147
	13. The Life of Ye shes rgyal mtshan, Preceptor of the Eighth Dalai Lama	171
V.	LITERARY ARTS AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS
	14. Buddhist Literary and Practical Arts According to Bo dong Pan chen Phyogs las rnam rgyal	179
	15. A Tibetan Encyclopedia from the Fifteenth Century	209
VI.	THE NONSECTARIAN MOVEMENT
	16. Mi pham and the Philosophical Controversies of the Nineteenth Century	227
	17. 'Jam mgon Kong sprul and the Nonsectarian Movement	235
	Notes	273
	Bibliographies
	I. Tibetan Works	341
	II. Secondary Works	345
	III. The Works of E. Gene Smith	348
	IV. Recent Research	350
	Index	357