PHASE THREE
Once the texts have been typed into computers the critical phase of editing them begins. The editing work is very important but also very difficult.
It is a well-known fact that critical editing is difficult work. The general level of difficulty that already exists is compounded for us for two main reasons. Firstly, Tibetan texts historically are error prone and removing these errors is not easy. Secondly, it is very difficult to obtain people who are capable of doing this kind of editing, let alone find anyone who knows the tradition so well that they would be the kind of great scholar required for this work.
Although we have been able to obtain copies of about 80% of the texts that Adeu Rinpoche wanted in the collection, many are in poor state or are not "clean" copies to start with. Many of them are hand-written copies which lack the clarity of wood-block prints. Editing a text so that it contains no errors is an almost impossible task to begin with, but our work is made considerably more difficult by the fact that many of the texts that we have to work from are corrupt to one extent or another. We have put considerable effort into finding "clean" copies of the texts that we need and have had some success in this. However, for the reasons mentioned in phase one, it is almost impossible to find a complete set of perfectly error-free copies of most texts.
Therefore, the editors are crucially important to the process. Historically speaking, the Tibetan population was not well educated in letters with the result that there were very few people at any given time who were capable of doing this kind of work. In addition, on the one hand, the Drukpa Kagyu tradition was always renowned for meditators rather than scholars so these days it is quite hard to find scholars of any sort in the tradition. On the other hand, given the fact of the Communist invasion of Tibet and the resulting destruction, there are only a handful, literally, of old scholars left who do know the material thoroughly.
PHASE FOUR, PUBLICATION ON PAPER
Once the texts have been typed in and corrected, the next step is to do the page layout. We wanted to
produce very authentic pecha, so we used software specially made for the purpose by Lotsawa Tony called Tibetan! 4.
(This software is now out of date and has been supplanted by a new software that makes pecha-making push-button
simple. The new software is called TibetDoc; you can read about it and see pictures of it at
here.)
The work of page layout and printing on paper was started in 2000. We wanted to print the texts on the best
paper possible. Our original plan was to use paper and materials with a view to longevity since our aim was
to have a collection that would serve the next one thousand years, at least. We planned to use the highest
quality of acid-free paper or, if possible, Tibetan paper, for the production. Tibetan paper has some excellent
qualities to it that cannot be found in Western paper. There are three in particular: firstly, the paper is
very light in weight compared with Western paper; secondly, it resists tearing to a remarkable degree; and
thirdly, it has an extremely long life-span, probably significantly longer than the best Western
paper. Unfortunately, traditionally made paper also suffers from some faults. The main fault is that it
tends to be quite uneven and the second that it tends to have small wood-slivers in it, both of which make it
unuseable for use in a modern printing press. Fortunately, the Japanese Government has helped to Bhutanese
people to advance the science of traditional paper-making to the point where a very even, sliver-less paper
which retains its very light and tear-resistant qualities is available. We had planned to print the collection
on paper from Bhutan. There is yet another quality to Tibetan-style paper that makes its use very desirable
which is that it does not reflect light from its surface in the same co-ordinated way that Western paper does,
making it much easier to read from that Western paper.
In the end, we were not able to obtain the funds needed to print on Tibetan paper and Adeu Rinpoche,
unfortunately, was pushing us to finish the work. Because of Adeu Rinpoche's lack of interest in high
quality work and lack of understanding in general, we had to lower our goals in various ways. One was that
we had to abandon the idea of using Tibetan paper and shift instead to the very good quality (acid-free)
parchment available in India called "Lucky Parchment". This parchment is made for government purposes
and has excellent longevity, a buff-colour, and is moderately resistant to tearing. It is now the
standard paper used for all local Tibetan publications.
After the page layout was done, we printed 500 sets of the final collection which came to one 101 volumes
in total, with 1,536 individual titles in the collection. The printing was done in Delhi, India, with the
help of Tsondru Senge, an older Tibetan who has tirelessly given his time and expert knowledge to the re-printing
of Tibetan texts since the early days of refugees coming from Tibet. The work was completed in 2002.
PHASE FIVE, DISTRIBUTION
The 500 printed sets were distributed by Adeu Rinpoche and Tsognyi Rinpoche to Drukpa Kagyu monasteries in
Tibet, mainly, and also in India and Nepal. Unfortunately, Adeu Rinpoche had no interest in making copies available for the Western world.
Lotsawa Tony was very concerned at this short-sightedness. Accordingly,
he developed new software specifically so that the collection can be published electronically and used by anyone
who needs it, Tibetan and non-Tibetan alike. A feature of the new software is that a person can re-size the texts
so that they can be printed on local paper, no matter what the size. The new software also has an advanced search
system built into it so that any term or phrase or title even, can be found almost immediately within the
collection. And, in addition, the new software lets a user click on a Tibetan word and look it up immediately
in any of the dictionaries that Lotsawa Tony has published. This last feature makes the electronic edition particularly
useful for non-Tibetans who want to understand the text.
