Status and value of Tibet's Cultural Heritage

The people of the Tibetan cultural sphere carried into the modern world, intact, one of world’s most vibrant and
continuously sustained ancient classical cultures. The source of this legacy, the intellectual and artistic insights
and skills of the great classical Indian monastic universities, was largely lost in India by the end of the twelfth
century. However, between the 8th and 12th centuries these knowledge traditions took root in Tibet: the classical literary corpus was translated into Tibetan and the oral commentarial lineages transferred from Indian to Tibetan scholars, poets and artists. This rich cultural legacy then evolved and flourished amongst the peoples of the Tibetan cultural sphere, undisturbed, until the mid 20th century, when the libraries, monastic universities and the artistic heritage of Middle Asia were largely destroyed and the living traditions were suppressed and dispersed.

Up until the last forty years Tibet’s knowledge traditions were passed down uninterrupted from generation to
generation of great masters, scholars, poets, artists and physicians for more than twenty-five centuries. Now,
much of the surviving textual materials are in a fragile condition, many of the classical texts survive only as single copies, and the oral commentarial lineages of explanation to sacred texts, which are the living heart of the culture, have been profoundly fractured.