Printing Tibetan Epistolaria: A Bibliographical Analysis of Epistolary Transformations from Manuscript to Xylograph

Abstract

In Tibetan tradition, letter writing is a sophisticated art in which the material aspects of a letter––paper format, script style and size, text spacing and layout––are integral to the letter's semantic content. What meaning is lost and gained in the transformation from manuscript original to printed edition? What scribal and editorial decisions are at play in this textual transformation? My aims in this article are twofold: to introduce scholars of global epistolary literatures to the Tibetan epistolary tradition, and to examine the ways in which editing and printing epistolaria can thoroughly transform letters’ materiality and meaning. This study not only contributes a bibliographical analysis of printed Tibetan epistolaria, but also offers a model for investigating how woodblock printing or other printing technologies can change the way epistolary texts both look and function.