The Language of the Kangyur and of Daily Practice

Classical Tibetan is not only a canon language but the working register of Tibetan Buddhist life. Daily liturgies, monastic textbooks, the vast terma literature of revealed treasures, philosophical commentary, biography and pilgrimage guides were all composed in it, and Tibetan authors kept producing major works in the classical register into the twentieth century and beyond. Monks and nuns memorize liturgical texts in Classical Tibetan from childhood, and lay practitioners recite prayers and mantras in it whether or not they read it fluently.

The register travelled with the religion. Mongolia adopted Tibetan Buddhism from the sixteenth century, and Tibetan became the sacred and scholarly language of Mongolian monasteries, with Mongolian lamas composing original treatises in Tibetan, much as medieval Europeans wrote in Latin. Himalayan peoples from Ladakh to Bhutan likewise pray in it. In the twentieth century the tradition crossed into exile and then worldwide, so Classical Tibetan is now taught in universities and dharma centres on every continent, and large digitization projects have placed the Kangyur, Tengyur and thousands of other volumes online. For a language whose homeland is remote and whose speakers are few, its liturgical reach is remarkable, sustained entirely by the religion it was built to carry.