Connecting Buddhist literature with the world.
Connecting Buddhist literature with the world.
Discover millions of pages of texts from the major Buddhist literary traditions.
BDRC's Buddhist Digital Archives (BUDA) provides digital research tools and provides access to millions of pages of Buddhist texts contributed by BDRC and its many partners. Read the user guide here.
BDRC's Buddhist Digital Archives (BUDA) provides access to more than 17 million pages of Buddhist texts and offers digital tools to support research.
Our team of scholars, technologists, librarians, and project experts enact BDRC's mission with a passion for preserving and sharing Buddhist cultural heritage.
09 May 2023
Given a large collection of 1.4 million scanned images of 5,000 text volumes and a catalog of 84,000 text titles, how can AI help us map the titles to their corresponding images? This article is an account of a successful project that used AI with humans in the loop to map these titles to...
Read more27 April 2023
Through a recent interview with Geshe Monlam, of the amazing Grand Monlam Tibetan Dictionary, we learned that the man behind this terrific work is a modern day Renaissance man. Read on.
Read more27 April 2023
Our Executive Director Dr. Jann Ronis gave a book talk at the U.S. Library of Congress on Friday, March 31st. Dr. Ronis presented the Gene Smith photography book "Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom," and spoke about Gene Smith and his organization's Buddhist digital preservation as well as innovations and technologies for Buddhist digital humanities for...
Read more13 April 2023
The greatest Tibetan dictionary, the Monlam Grand Tibetan Dictionary, is now available on BUDA where it can be used to look up the meaning of every word in our vast e-text archive.
Read more28 March 2023
We are delighted to announce that BDRC Senior Librarian Kelsang Lhamo has published "The White Lotus Biography of Jamyang Gene Smith," her long-awaited Tibetan language biography of our founder Gene Smith.
Read more10 February 2023
Dafna Yachin is the indomitable director of Digital Dharma, the documentary, and now co-author of Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom, the companion photo book. Her deep friendship with our founder Gene Smith (1936-2010), who became her mentor, is what drove the first project.
Read more08 February 2023
སྤྱིར་བོད་ཀྱི་ས་མིང་ལ་རིགས་མང་ཞིང་རྒྱ་ཆེ་ལ་ཞིབ་འཇུག་བྱེད་པར་ཡང་མ་མཐར་ས་ཁམས་རིག་པ་དང་། ལོ་རྒྱུས་རིག་པ། སྐད་བརྡ་རིག་པ་སོགས་ཆེད་ལས་སྣ་ཚོགས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་བཤད་བྱེད་ཕྱོགས་ཕུན་སུམ་ཚོགས་པ་ཞིག་ཡོད་པ་གོར་མ་ཆགས་མོད།
Read more24 January 2023
On Tuesday, Jan 17th, BDRC launched a public event series with a book talk by Charles Manson about Buddhist master Karma Pakshi, advisor to the Mongol Khans and the founder of the Karmapa lineage.
Read more01 December 2022
The Dakinis' Great Dharma Treasury, or མཁའ་འགྲོའི་ཆོས་མཛོད་ཆེན་མོ། as this small library of 53 volumes of texts by and about Tibetan women is known, showcases the overlooked brilliance of Buddhist female masters from Tibet through the centuries.
Read more15 November 2022
On Tuesday, November 1, friends and supporters of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center gathered together in New York City to celebrate the publication of a beautiful photography book, on Gene Smith, called Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom.
Read more30 August 2022
This rare manuscript copy of Bod Khepa's Collected Works showcases the kind of work that BDRC does, seeking and making available these rare collections from masters whose works would be lost or inaccessible otherwise.
Read more09 July 2022
The Buddhist Digital Resource Center is at the 16th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies—the IATS conference currently underway at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic! The majority of the text-based papers presented at the conference were enabled by BDRC's archive.
Read more23 June 2022
Mingyur Rinpoche spent two hours with BDRC staff, board members and friends discussing BDRC's essential work and the importance of textual preservation for the living Buddhist lineages.
Read more25 May 2022
We made a major new addition to BDRC's geo-data for Buddhist sites in the Inner Asian world, thanks to generous data sharing by the "Documentation of Mongolian Monasteries" project and Dr. Isabelle Charleux. Over time these new sites will become even more dynamic as we begin to link them with texts written or printed...
Read more15 April 2022
At the Library of Congress, she gave life to the Tibetan Collection, shaping and defining it into one of the most valuable collections at the Library. Because of her, what began as unidentified texts collecting dust deep in storage is now a treasure that draws researchers from all over the world.
Read more29 March 2022
Dr. Petra Kieffer-Pülz is a scholar of Pali literature who has been studying a monastic boundary dispute in Sri Lanka for the past five years. Texts made available by BUDA allowed Dr. Kieffer-Pülz to study previously unsurfaced material that shed new light on this dispute.
Read more21 January 2022
BDRC is proud to announce a new collaboration on a scholarly project: The Authors and Translators Identification Initiative. The goal of ATII is the creation of an open source collaborative database of authors, translators and other figures involved in the creation of Indic Buddhist texts and Buddhist canons – including particularly the Tibetan and...
Read more14 January 2022
On February 1, 2022, our old library website at tbrc.org will go offline and our new library website at the Buddhist Digital Archives will become the sole gateway into our extensive digital archive. BUDA, the result of years of effort and innovation, unifies the diverse array of Buddhist texts in our library on a...
Read more29 December 2021
The Buddhist Digital Resource Center was recently honored, on November 30, with a personal visit from His Holiness the 42nd Sakya Trizin, Ratna Vajra Rinpoche, the head of the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Our Executive Director Jann Ronis and our expert librarians gave Sakya Trizin Rinpoche...
Read more23 December 2021
Our library platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives, is a vast ocean of Dharma texts. Please enjoy browsing a selection of our collections on BUDA. These collections are groups of texts that are part of the same preservation project, the same library, or come from a single BDRC institutional partner.
Read more29 October 2021
BDRC is pleased to announce that we have successfully added Tibetan Collation Rules to the CLDR. This step will bring Tibetan closer to being fully supported on websites and smartphones, and will improve the digital experience of Tibetans worldwide.
Read more07 October 2021
One of our priorities in developing BUDA was to create a great reading room experience for our users, many of whom are practitioners, researchers, and translators who spend a great deal of time poring over these Buddhist materials.
Read more21 September 2021
As part of the University of Vienna-Tibetan Manuscripts Project and the Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies project, Helmut Tauscher, Bruno Lainé and Markus Viehbeck have documented, and made accessible, valuable manuscripts from the western and southern Himalayas, including rare editions of the Kangyur and Tengyur.
Read more31 August 2021
The site was down. That's how Chris Tomlinson first became connected with Gene Smith and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center in 2000. She would spend the next two decades as a key technologist for BDRC, helping share the Dharma globally and transforming the way people access Buddhist literature.
Read more20 August 2021
Our new website includes improvements to both the user interface and the architecture of the data. In this post we will introduce one of the changes to our data architecture and how this change will affect your searches.
Read more28 June 2021
For many, translations of Buddhist texts are their first or main way of studying the Dharma. Translators rely on BDRC, and many readers of Buddhist texts rely on translators.
Read more06 May 2021
Long-time friends of BDRC will know of Peter Gruber: founder of the Gruber Foundation Science Prizes, friend of Gene Smith, and a major benefactor of Buddhism in America who played an important role in bringing Buddhist teachings to the West.
Read more19 March 2021
While we have partnerships around the world, today we want to highlight and celebrate our partnerships with major institutions in India, which is in many ways the birthplace of TBRC/BDRC. Recently we have released online hundreds of volumes of significant works provided to BDRC by our long-time partners.
Read more03 March 2021
Search is how most of our users interact with our library and database. As fast and intuitive as the search on BUDA is, we continue to refine and improve it in order to offer our users the most seamless search experience. So we are happy to share the news that BUDA's search has been...
Read more26 January 2021
A major update to BDRC's search engine was released in 2014 and today we are releasing a second major improvement to the search engine.
Read more13 January 2021
BDRC's Executive Director Dr. Jann Ronis and technical lead Élie Roux present an online demo of our new website and library platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives (BUDA), providing tips and tricks for the new user.
Read more17 December 2020
Even as BDRC builds on Gene's legacy and expands its holdings from Tibetan into Sanskrit, Nepalese, Chinese, Khmer, Pali and Burmese, the heart of our ever-expanding library remains our Tibetan texts.
Read more02 November 2020
Tibetan texts can be tricky to work with. Publication information is often missing or unstandardized, with some works lacking titles entirely while others have author information buried in the colophon. That's why BDRC has expert librarians with the specialized knowledge needed to catalog these challenging works.
Read more08 October 2020
With generous support from Khyentse Foundation, the Buddhist Digital Resource Center invites applications for a fellowship in Southeast Asian manuscripts, to begin 1 January 2021.
Read more26 August 2020
With libraries and archives closed around the world, the value of BDRC's online platform has gained new significance as the most comprehensive collection of Buddhist writings in classical Asian languages.
Read more25 May 2019
Today we're featuring new acquisitions of texts from the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. BDRC founder Gene Smith championed Kagyu literary heritage and had fruitful relations with many Kagyu lamas.
Read more17 May 2019
BDRC has an excellent collection of Nyingma texts as a result of its close connections with Nyingma lamas. For decades, BDRC's founder, Gene Smith, was both a student and friend of H.H. Dilgo Khyentse (1910-1991), who was the head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism from 1987-1991.
Read more10 May 2019
With support from the BDRC community and our generous funding partners, BDRC has been expanding its collection of Tibetan texts through new digitization efforts in Tibet and Mongolia, as well as through our long-term operations in India
Read more07 March 2019
Join the BDRC team and help us preserve and share Buddhist literary heritage!
We're seeking three technology and design experts—a UI developer, a UX expert, and a graphic designer—to help us finish our next-generation archival platform, the Buddhist Universal Digital Archive (BUDA).
05 October 2018
The Buddhist Digital Resource Center's Board of Directors has selected Jann Ronis to lead BDRC as its new Executive Director.
Read more11 September 2018
With support from Khyentse Foundation, the Asian Classics Input Project and the Buddhist Digital Resource Center have partnered to digitize, catalog, and make accessible all Tibetan manuscripts and xylographs held at the National Library of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar.
Read more13 August 2018
BDRC collaborates with many partners in Asia who are right at the source of important collections of Buddhist literature. With support from our local partners and generous sponsors, BDRC is able to digitize those collections and make them freely available in our online archive.
Read more28 June 2018
BDRC, with the generous support of the Khyentse Foundation, has been working with the Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation since 2016 to preserve their massive collection of palm leaf Buddhist manuscripts.
Read more30 April 2018
Your generosity during BDRC's end-of-year appeal raised well over $15,000 to help support the ongoing development of our new online education platform—which has just launched its first courses! Thank you for helping make this possible!
Read more05 April 2018
BDRC has been diligently seeking new collections of important Buddhist texts for preservation and archiving. The results of this work are coming to fruition as BDRC launches a new digitization initiative: the Nepalese Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscript Scanning Initiative.
Read more26 March 2018
After 17 years at the Buddhist Digital Resource Center, BDRC's Executive Director Jeff Wallman is stepping down. It is our priority to find the best individual to lead BDRC and the qualities and qualifications we seek in our next Executive Director are described in the announcement below.
Read more19 March 2018
BDRC has recently opened a new office in Munich, Germany, which will serve as the central hub for all of BDRC's European activities and operations.
Read more12 February 2018
The Fragile Palm Leaves collection includes over one hundred Kammavācā manuscripts, dating from the later 18th century through the early 20th century.
Read more08 January 2018
It may be a new year but it's not too late to reflect on what happened in 2017. The last 12 months was a busy time for BDRC, and we reached a number of significant milestones.
Read more27 November 2017
BDRC was visited by Khenpo Sodargye, one of the most eminent contemporary Buddhist teachers.
Read more17 November 2017
In collaboration with Buddhist Research and Resources Center of Zhejiang University, BDRC is thrilled to announce two significant product offerings: the launch of BDRC's online library for users in China and the release of its free mobile app, "BDRC Lib."
Read more27 March 2017
BDRC is pleased to announce the Fragile Palm Leaves Digitization Project. This vital project is made possible by the gracious funding support of the Khyentse Foundation.
Read more20 March 2017
We are pleased to announce the addition of two new members to BDRC's Board of Directors: James Robson, of Harvard University, and D. Christian Lammerts, of Rutgers University. The knowledge and expertise of these two new members will vitally benefit BDRC as we develop our programs in East Asia and Southeast Asia.
Read more01 March 2017
We are pleased to announce the expansion of our institutional mission to include the preservation of texts in languages beyond Tibetan, including Sanskrit, Pali and Chinese.
Read more20 May 2016
We were honored and pleased to host Venerable Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche at TBRC this week.
Read more17 May 2016
David Weinberger's talk, "The Future of Digital Libraries," surrounded importance of digital libraries as spaces in which the identities and values of communities can be expressed through data.
Read more18 April 2016
Khenpo Karma Jamyang Gyaltsen visited TBRC on Friday afternoon, touring the TBRC office and joining us for lunch. Khenpo la took time to visit TBRC before giving a talk at Harvard University later in the afternoon; it was an honor for us to host him.
Read more13 April 2016
We are thrilled to announce that TBRC Board President Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp has been awarded a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship for his outstanding scholarship and contributions to the field of Religious studies.
Read more21 March 2016
During his time in the United States, Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche visited TBRC, touring our Cambridge office and discussing TBRC's work and mission with staff amongst the manuscripts in our library.
Read more07 December 2015
Please join us in our end-of-year push to raise $18,651 for a much-needed scanning equipment for our Cambridge office and our fieldwork in India!
Read more18 November 2015
Using scans from the TBRC archive, a new project in Chengdu, China, the Ragya Grant Kanjur Republication Initiative (RGKRI), is printing 1,000 copies of the Ragya Kanjur and distributing them to monasteries across Tibetan cultural areas of China.
Read more28 October 2015
Beloved Buddhist monk, scientist, photographer, author, and humanitarian Matthieu Ricard made time on Friday to visit the TBRC office, sharing stories, memories, and tea with TBRC staff.
Read more08 August 2015
Her Eminence Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche visited TBRC last week, touring the Cambridge office and discussing TBRC's work with staff and TBRC Executive Director Jeff Wallman.
Read more06 June 2015
We are pleased to announce the arrival of the TBRC exhibition space on the Google Cultural Institute (GCI) platform, online and via mobile device. The TBRC partnership with GCI will allow people worldwide to intimately explore and interact with high-resolution images from select manuscripts in our digital archive.
Read more23 April 2015
In collaboration with monks from Ragya Monastery in eastern Tibet, TBRC has digitally preserved an extremely rare woodblock printing of the Tibetan Buddhist canon: the Ragya Kangyur.
Read more07 April 2015
On Thursday, March 26 2015, the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center had the great honor of hosting His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa in our office for lunch.
Read more06 March 2015
With the gracious support of The Library of Congress Asian Division Tibetan Collection in Washington D.C., and in cooperation with the University of Virginia (UVA), TBRC is making available for download a digital version of the Tibetan Kangyur from the Rockhill collection at the Library of Congress.
Read more20 February 2015
Our new campaign, Unlock the Backlog, gives friends of TBRC the opportunity to discover unseen texts, wear wisdom in the form of a beautiful treasure pendant, and donate directly to support the dissemination of little-seen manuscripts.
Read more29 January 2015
A delegation of researchers from SOAS, University of London, visited TBRC for two weeks this autumn to learn about the inner-workings of the TBRC's data management, search mechanism, and the new eText collection.
Read more19 December 2014
After working with Gene for many years, and since his death, continuing his vision, I am amazed at where are today.
Read more16 December 2014
Last week, the Wikipedia fundraising campaign inspired us to copy their year-end effort. And why not? TBRC has millions of pages of Tibetan texts that are readily available to individuals – TBRC is a huge public resource of Tibetan texts .
Read more15 December 2014
An article about Gene Smith's life story was published in a prestigious Chinese Magazine called "Xin Zhi" in November 2014.
Read more29 October 2014
Negation and Verb Stems Classification
With Dr. Nathan Hill, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
29 October 2014
It is with great sadness I announce that our beloved friend Peter Gruber (1929-2014) passed away on Saturday October 18, 2014. Peter passed away peacefully at his home with his beloved wife Patricia by his side.
Read more17 October 2014
Lama Migmar Tseten has kindly offered to share his personal recollections of Dezhung Rinpoche and Gene Smith. This is a unique opportunity to hear, in an informal setting, about two extraordinary people who established the vision that is TBRC.
Read more08 October 2014
Leveraging Computerized Tools for Navigating an Uncharted Tibetan Buddhist Philosophical Corpus
Demo and discussion with Dorji Wangchuk & Orna Almogi
24 September 2014
The following are entry points into the Tibetan eText Repository.
Browse eTexts /
Global Search eTexts /
Advanced Search eTexts /
Intra-Work search
15 September 2014
Work that led up to the recent release of the Lineage records in the TBRC Library goes back ten years. This project to record Lineages from Tibetan gsan yig literature started with work that was done by Ralf and Jowita Kramer within a project originally devised by Jan-Ulrich Sobisch.
Read more09 September 2014
As part of our ongoing work in the Research Department, we are building a database of Lineage records in the TBRC Library.
Read more28 August 2014
We are systematically researching and tracking tulku lines (skye brgyud) to build successive multi-generational networks of incarnation relations amongst Person records in the TBRC Library.
Read more07 June 2014
I am over thrilled to announce a historic partnership between Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center and Harvard University. The Harvard Library and Harvard Digital Repository Services will support the long-term preservation of our entire digital collection. Please see the article in Harvard Magazine.
Read more02 May 2014
TBRC has just released on its online library, enhancements for Tibetan language searching.
Read more20 March 2014
We are pleased to announce the first in a series of phonetic name imports into the TBRC Library. This first import is of over 1700 new phonetic Tulku Titles, corresponding to Person records.
Read more12 March 2014
Though the oral precepts of the Nyingma were introduced from the time of the imperial period, it was not until Minling Terchen Rigzin Gyurme Dorje (1646-1714) and his younger brother Minling Lochen Dharmashri (1654-1718) wrote a series of commentaries on these teachings that the kama (bka' ma) or collection of oral transmissions were created.
Read more05 March 2014
We're happy to share this interview by Marco Werman, host of PRI's The World.
Here, he talks with New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs about TBRC's founder Gene Smith.
20 February 2014
If you are a major donor seeking to understand the incredibly rich opportunities that we have and the extraordinary impact potential of our organization – please read and reflect upon this quote of Jeff Wallman, TBRC's Executive Director, to the magazine "Buddhadharma: The Practitioners Quarterly" about the bright outlook of TBRC's future on Harvard...
Read more16 February 2014
We are thrilled to post this article about TBRC and Tibetan text-preservation in China, which ran in the New York Times on February 15, 2014.
Read more13 February 2014
A terrific conversation covering all things TBRC – from great insights about Gene Smith, to how the TBRC Library is essential today.
Read moreOur international team carries out BDRC's mission with ingenuity and dedication, using its skills to make BDRC the online home for Buddhist literature.
Khyentse Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 2001 by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche to support all traditions of Buddhist study and practice. Since 2001, the foundation has supported individuals and institutions in more than 30 countries and has directly affected the lives of people around the world. Khyentse Foundation activities include major text preservation and translation projects, support for traditional monastic colleges in Asia, a worldwide scholarship and awards program, academic development of Buddhist studies in major universities, training and development for Buddhist leaders and teachers, Buddhist education for children, support for individual study and retreats, and more.
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation is an independent philanthropic organization based in Hong Kong. The Foundation's dual mission is to foster appreciation of Chinese arts and culture to advance global learning and to cultivate a deeper understanding of Buddhism in the context of contemporary life.
BDRC's Sanskrit and Chinese Digital Library Network program is supported by a grant from the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation.
A Khmer Buddhist Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the lives of the Khmer people and preserving their rich traditions and culture.
Cambridge, MA
USA
Ulaanbaatar
Mongolia
Hangzhou
China
New Delhi
India
Bangkok
Thailand
Phnom Penh
Cambodia
Cambridge, MA
USA
Ulaanbaatar
Mongolia
Hangzhou
China
New Delhi
India
Bangkok
Thailand
Phnom Penh
Cambodia
The Buddhist Digital Resource Center shares over 35 million pages of Buddhist texts with the world, for free.
As a nonprofit organization, BDRC relies on the donations of scholars like you.
If you believe that the Buddhist scriptures should be accessible for generations to come, please make a tax-deductible donation to BDRC.