ur and
six of the Kanjur are collections of special sutras. In both
compilations the tantric section appears to consist of later books
expounding ideas which are further from the teaching of Gotama than
the Mahayanist sutras.

To the great majority of works in both collections is prefixed a
title which gives the Sanskrit name first in transcription and then in
translation, for instance "In Sanskrit Citralakshana: in Tibetan
Ri-moi-mthsan-nid."[992] Hence there is usually no doubt as to what
the Tibetan translations profess to be. Sometimes however the headings
are regrettably brief. The Vinaya for instance appears to be
introduced with that simple superscription and with no indication of
the school or locality to which the text belonged.

Although the titles of books are given in Sanskrit, yet all Indian
proper names which have a meaning (as most have) are translated. Thus
the name Drona (signifying a measure and roughly equivalent to such an
English name as Dr. Bushell) is rendered by Bre-bo, a similar measure
in Tibetan. This habit greatly increases the difficulty of reading
Tibetan texts. The translators apparently desired to give a Tibetan
equivalent for every word and even for every part of a word, so as to
make clear the etymology as well as the meaning of the sacred
original. The learned language thus produced must have varied greatly
from the vernacular of every period but its slavish fidelity makes it
possible to reconstruct the original Sanskrit with tolerable
certainty.

I have already mentioned the presence of translations from the Pali.
There are also a few from the Chinese[993] which appear to be of no
special importance. One work is translated from the Bruza language
which was perhaps spoken in the modern Gilgit[994] and another from
the language of Khotan.[995] Some works in the Kanjur have no Sanskrit
titles and are perhaps original compositions in Tibetan. The Tanjur
appears to contain many such.

But the Kanjur and Tanjur as a whole represent the literature
approved by the late Buddhism of Bengal and certain resemblances to
the arrangement of the Chinese Tripitaka suggest that not only new
sutras but new classifications of sutras had replaced the old Pitakas
and Agamas. The Tibetan Canon being later than the Chinese has lost
the Abhidharma and added a large section of Tantras. But both canons
recognize the divisions known as Prajna-paramita, Ratnakuta,
Avatamsaka, and Mahaparinirvana as separate