| TIBETOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES SERIES This article on the Bon Virtual Library Project, written by Henk Blezer, is the fifth contribution to a series devoted to important projects on cataloguing, 'computerization' (inputting and scanning), editing, and translation of important Tibetan language text-collections and archives. In this Tibetological Collections and Archives Series various colleagues briefly present their initiatives to a larger public, or update the scholarly world on the progress of their already well-established projects. Some are high-profile projects, of which at least Tibetologists will generally be aware, yet some may also be less well known. Nevertheless, I trust that it will be useful to be informed or updated on all these initiatives and I also hope that the projects presented will profit from the exposure and the response that this coverage will engender. If you are interested in any of the projects described, feel free to contact the author of the article. In case you would like to introduce your own (planned) work in the field, please contact the editors of the IIAS Newsletter or the author of this introduction. We should very much like to encourage our contributors to keep us informed on the progress of their projects by regular updates. HENK BLEZER Research fellow at the IIAS |
Monks & Lamas on the Electronic Highway
The 'Bon Virtual Library Project'
Tucked away in the rolling foothills of Eastern Himachal Pradesh lies
a small Tibetan Bon monastery, safely out of reach of Indian hill-station
tourists and backpackers. The monastery continues the tradition of Menri,
which has virtually ceased to exist in Tibet. Started by Lopon Tenzin Namdak,
the former head-teacher of Menri monastery in Tibet, Menri, from 1967 onwards,
was re-established in India. Remoteness and modest facilities notwithstanding,
Menri in exile is in fact the main seat of Tibetan Bon traditions. The abbot
and Menri's 33rd throne-holder, Menri Trizin Lungtok Tenpe Nyima
Rinpoche is head of all Bonpos (followers of Bon religion) in South- and
Central Asia.
By HENK BLEZER
Savants of Bon culture may perhaps appreciate finding the centre of Bon to be in the middle of nowhere. To anyone interested in Menri's Bon culture, certainly those who have taken chances on Himalayan mountain roads, it will be of great interest to learn that we may soon be able to gain easier access to Menri through new technology. Phrased in twenty-first century bumper sticker format: your favourite Bonpo Lama just a click away.
This article reports on the inception of a private initiative called
the Bon Virtual Library Project (BVLP) to preserve Menri's Tibetan Bon
culture and render it more accessible. Presently still in its planning
stages, it involves the religious community but also several academic
and commercial partners. The main thrust of the project is the dissemination
of Bon literature in electronic formats. A broader scope, targeting cultural
heritage encoded in audiovisual data, is also envisioned.
HENK
BLEZER, MENRI 1998
The 33rd abbot and throne-holder of Menri, Menri Trizin Lungtok
Tenpe Nyima Rinpoche, caught at an informal appearance.
The BVLP is unique in several ways. Having been initiated by Bonpos, from its inception, the project was intended to serve both the religious and academic communities. Hoping on a sustained bilateral transfer of knowledge and know-how over several decades, we expect that the injection of technical expertise will establish a lasting capacity at Menri to preserve, publish, and otherwise disseminate Bon cultural heritage through modern media at its own pace and discretion. On the other hand, the project will facilitate public access to those Bon source materials that are considered suitable for open display. This would make the BVLP a modernized and more autonomous variant of the American PL480 acquisition project (in which Gene Smith, the contributor to the previous article in this series about 'The Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center', played a seminal role - as did the Menri community). The BVLP is also exceptional in that it largely focuses on one specific tradition and monastery only, albeit a central one. Menri will be the first Tibetan monastery to become accessible through digital media and, perhaps, IT.
The BVLP bears much resemblance to a project initiated by David Germano at Virginia University, which, in the first contribution to this series, has been introduced as the Samantabhadra Archives and has recently been expanded to the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library. It stands to reason to try to link these projects. Both projects were presented at the Ninth seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (Leiden, June 2000). Two-hundred copies of a sample CD-ROMs for the BVLP, edited by Gregory Hillis of the Virginia project, were distributed at that occasion.
Further on, I will also have to address some of the realities and 'virtualities' that we encounter when entering further dimensions of the Bon realm of virtual reality, in particular the monastic institution and its patronage, an old leitmotiv in Tibetan religious and political history.
'I have a little idea'
Menri Monastery, winter 1998: it was the evening before the abbot had indicated that he had some 'nice idea' to discuss. Early the next morning during breakfast, while I was still rubbing sleep from my eyes, I noticed the familiar sound of Rinpoche approaching and sitting down at the breakfast table, beaming and obviously wide awake: 'You eat, eat' he gesticulated. After a brief silence, he calmly raised his big hand to measure the size of a pea between his thumb and index finger, meanwhile slightly lowering his head and squinting his eyes in appreciation: 'You know, yesterday I was thinking ... I had a little idea, very nice, do you want to hear?' Out came a plan for a computerized version of the Bon canon including a commitment from the monastery to provide the necessary labour for many years. The abbot wants this to become a more exclusive and traditional edition than the recent Lhasa and Chengdu printed versions and base it moreover on collation of all available versions of the included texts. Such a project requires sufficient access to textual material, labour, funding, computers, and technical training. The first two are available in abundance at Menri monastery. Before I had finished breakfast I had already promised to explore possibilities for funding and alliances with existing projects. Generous donations from two private sponsors have enabled the abbot to start printing the collected works of three important Bonpo masters for monastic use; e-versions of these publications will become the first part of the Menri canon project.
A new library
In Menri, monks referred me to blueprints for a new library and research centre that they hoped to build on the monastery compound. The library should primarily provide better storage facilities for the precious Menri textual heritage. Books and manuscripts are now scattered over several locations in the monastery, all of which are ill equipped for preserving often old and fragile texts in subtropical conditions. The new 'library' is further designed to accommodate research, teaching, and seminar activities, a small museum and a multimedia lab, to mention but a few of the more important functions, providing facilities for Tibetan scholars, visiting scholars, and students alike.
The Menri monks informed me that they had approached a Dutch businessman to help raise the sum needed for the library project. The main financial responsibility rests with a small-scale US-based charitable organization that has been raising funds for projects and individuals at the monastery for many years, the Yungdrung Bon Temple foundation. Not long after I returned home from Menri, the 'Dutch' liaison showed up at my office. The abbot had referred him to me to discuss fundraising strategies. Briefly put, his plans entailed raising money for the library facilities through creating and marketing a virtual library:
- Create a virtual library/monastery to Menri on the Internet.
- Get commercial partners interested in associating their enterprises with these Internet pages and other publicity regarding the project and its spin-off and invite them to make a long-term financial commitment to the project.
- Use the money generated to fund this and other projects in the Menri community, first of all the construction of a library and research centre.
- Use the virtual library material for academic research projects and further publications, which may generate additional funds, e.g. the preservation and distribution of Menri literature on CD-ROM for academic libraries and private parties.
It soon became apparent that there is sufficient common ground to combine the Menri (electronic) edition of the Bon canon with the BVLP. At the time that we developed these plans there was already a business partner interested in committing himself to the project for several years, which would cover the costs of the construction of library facilities and the computer lab.
Other virtual realities
A virtual library involves the highly labour-intensive task of making texts available on CD-ROM and the Internet in the form of cross-linked catalogues, scanned images, e-texts and eventually also as synopses and translations. We will have to consider constraint in its scope or at least a clear phasing in implementation, in accordance with the priorities of the Menri monastic authorities, participating scholars' research focus, and occasional requests from scholars and other interested parties.
For Internet publication it is advisable to add audiovisual features to the textual data. It would probably be best to develop these as coherent and more or less complete units. One may also consider opening the monastery to a certain extent to the community of sponsors and supporters, showing pictures of day-to-day life and important public religious rituals and festivals, or document the progress of projects at Menri. Perhaps it would also be useful to create a virtual guesthouse, where students and scholars can submit their questions and concerns to monks and scholars at the monastery. This will make the Internet site more useful and attractive and may serve to secure support for ongoing and future projects at Menri.
HENK
BLEZER, MENRI 1998Inside the Labrang temple, view of the traditional storage of Tibetan books around the main shrine.
Lamas, patrons,& protectors
Some may now wonder why the project is announced being in its planning stages, as so much seems to have been accomplished already. The main reason is that there are implications to the project that need further consideration. Anyone familiar with Bon traditions will appreciate that there are sections in Bon literature that by their esoteric nature resist publication and would definitely be out of place on the Internet. Moreover, introducing a computer resource centre into a traditional Bonpo community, training monks and students of the Bon dialectic school to use it, and involving them in the production of electronic versions of their literature for a very long period will not be without consequence for the community and its traditional objectives. Furthermore, it seems advisable carefully to consider, and continuously reconsider, all possible consequences of commercial sponsorship and large-scale exposure for the monastery as a religious institution. Lastly, there is the difficult issue of the continuity of funding, which tends to overshadow any long-term initiative in the 'charitable' sector. How to combine the necessity of a sustained budget, ensuring that the project may run for the required amount of time, with the unpredictability of commercial sponsoring? We have discussed these issues at great length with the Menri authorities. We found them extremely perceptive and acutely aware of the possible dangers. They have reassured us that they feel confident that the first three issues can be dealt with, since Menri will obviously be in full control of each and every step of the project. The last point, however, remains a source of worry to all concerned.
Much to our surprise, however, the first major objections - a veto in fact - did not come from our commercial or academic partners, nor from the Menri community, but from the US-based charitable Temple Foundation, responsible for funding the library facilities. They basically share our worries, but apparently to a greater extent. The fact that the project would be funded by commercial rather than charitable money and would give explicit credit to the sponsors seems to have been particularly objectionable. However, in Tibetan religious traditions there is ample historical precedent for commercial sponsoring, it is not uncommon for the publication of religious literature or the construction of religious edifices to be sponsored by wealthy businessmen and the like. Patrons are explicitly mentioned in the sponsored texts or in inscriptions. Nonetheless, we had to appreciate that we not only need to deal with Tibetan custom but also with American religious sensitivities. Moreover, there may well be a difference between advertising a sponsor on a website, however discretely implemented, and those traditional credits in a colophon to a text or in an inscription. But I am not sure whether that difference justifies obstruction of a project that was initiated on request of the Menri religious community and is primarily designed for its benefit. The idea of making the monastery more accessible on the Internet also met with significant resistance from the Temple Foundation - again a worry all of us share. Needless to say, such fundamental objections from an important partner forced us to reconsider the project.
All things considered, we had to opt for a separation of the building from the virtual projects, as much as they can be separated, that is. Moreover, out of respect for the involvement of the Temple Foundation, we chose to put Internet publication on hold and to concentrate on the CD-ROM series. However, this also implied declining the generous offer from our commercial sponsor. On the other hand, disconnecting the virtual and real libraries reduced the cost of the BVLP considerably, to the extent that the BVLP may now be able to finance itself.
The project must presently await the funding and building of library facilities through the Temple Foundation's mediation, which may take a year or more. Meanwhile we keep working at the infrastructure and business-plan for the virtual library behind closed doors and we intend to start testing hardware and software in Menri shortly; we expect to be fully prepared by the time the library facilities are completed. It is up to the discretion of the Menri authorities to decide when and how to open the doors and officially launch the project in the newly acquired facilities. At that point they are expected to get in touch and solicit help from the European and American partners ... and all is ready for an auspicious start. *
Dr Henk Blezer is affiliated fellow at the IIAS and advisor to the Bon Virtual Library Project.
E-mail: h.w.a.blezer@let.leidenuniv.nl