Introduction

The Swiss chemist Prof. Dr. Richard R. Ernst, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 for his pioneering contributions to the development of high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, had a deep interest in Tibetan art since a brief stay in Nepal in 1968. He discovered Tibetan thangkas at the market in Kathmandu, and ever since then he has been captivated by these works of art, which were initially very foreign to him but nonetheless inspired him with their “fantastic colorfulness” (Ernst 2018, 8). Not only did he start collecting Tibetan thangkas, but his passion for Tibetan artwork led him to study Tibetan Buddhist religion and philosophy in depth¹ and to become committed to social engagement in the Tibetan exile-institutions, in particular the monastic Tibet Institute in Rikon, Switzerland. In later years, he began to study the Tibetan culture of the book. As he told me in a conversation in 2003, the inspiration stemmed from an elaborately carved wooden Tibetan book cover that he had acquired. He began collecting Tibetan manuscripts and printed scriptures many of which he acquired via the Internet since the late 1990s. Although it is difficult to establish the provenance of the more than 800 individual Tibetan texts, in manuscript and xylograph formats, most of them probably originate from Mongolia. At any rate, this can be concluded from the large number of texts written or printed on paper that was produced in the paper mills situated in the Vyatka province in the north of the European part of the Tsarist Empire and imported into Mongolia. But we also find xylographs from Beijing and works bound in the Chinese style of double-leaved books in the collection, and even European notebooks.

Among the offers that reached Professor Ernst via the Internet were Mongolian illuminated manuscripts. They provided the initial spark for his fascination with Mongolia and all things Mongolian. Of the Mongolian manuscripts and xylographs, which he now acquired alongside the Tibetan ones, he was particularly interested in the jiruγ-tu nom, illustrated stories, the majority of which depicted the numerous Buddhist hells with powerful imagery. The Mongolian part of the collection therefore contains a whole series of illuminated manuscripts. However, the Mongolian part is considerably smaller than the Tibetan one. It contains a total of 201 units, some of which comprise more than one work. In total, the Mongolian part consists of 275 individual works. The relatively small proportion of Mongolian-language works compared to the Tibetan texts of the collection tells us something about the character of the collection as a whole: Many of the works are religious, and the language of Buddhism in Mongolia has been predominantly Tibetan since the late seventeenth century. As a result, the demand for religious texts in the Mongolian language was relatively low.

The present catalogue describes the Mongolian part of the collection assembled by Richard Ernst. In it, the translation literature from the Tibetan Buddhist canon, the Kanjur, forms the most substantial category with fifty works. The outstanding importance of the Vajracchedikā-Prajñāpāramitā for the Mongols is reflected in the fact that this work is represented in a total of eighteen copies. The collection contains seven copies of the Thar pa chen po and two editions of the Pañcarakṣā. Buddhist parables were immensely popular in the Mongolian regions, so it is not surprising that the Ocean of parables (M. üliger-ün dalai) is represented by three copies of two translators. Non-canonical religious texts include two gZungs bsdus editions, one of which has already been described in detail elsewhere (Kollmar-Paulenz 2015). The importance that Buddhist ideas on rebirth must have played in the Mongolian regions becomes clear from the fact that the Mongolian version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is represented six times. This impression is reinforced by the total of twelve texts that deal exclusively with Buddhist hells and peregrination motifs. The collection is also rich in ritual, prayer, divination and astrological texts. These categories comprise a total of sixty-two texts.

Narrative works form a further focus. Among them we find the translation of the Mani gambum prepared by Manju siri darqan blam-a as well as the hagiography of Milarepa and stories from the cycle of Vikramāditya but also translations of Chinese novels such as The Tale of the Three Kingdoms.

Linguistics makes up many secular works. They mostly include bi- and quadrilingual terminological dictionaries such as the famous Tibetan-Mongolian Dag yig mkhas pa’i ’byung gnas, which exists in three, albeit incomplete, editions. The bilingual dictionary composed by the A la sha lha ram pa Ngag dbang bstan dar in 1838 is also represented by three copies. The well-known quadrilingual (Manchu-Mongolian-Chinese-Tibetan) dictionary Duin hacin-i hergen kamciha buleku bithe/ Dörben jüil-ün üsüg qabsuruγsan toli bičig is represented by four (incomplete) copies. There is also a bilingual Manchu-Mongolian dictionary.

The collection also includes a few historical and biographical works, as well as official documents. There are two volumes from the Iledkel Šastir, and the well-known biography of Tsong kha pa is represented by a few incomplete copies, as well as some official documents from the time of the theocratic government and the socialist period before the scriptural reform in 1941.

In addition to the works written in Uighur-Mongolian script, there are also a number of Oirat works written in the “clear script”. Most of them are copies of canonical works. We also find several bilingual Tibetan-Mongolian works.

As already mentioned, Richard Ernst acquired most of his extensive collection of Tibetan and Mongolian manuscripts and xylographs via the Internet, as I learned from conversations with him. However, he was always reluctant to reveal his individual retailers so that, as in the case of the Tibetan works, the exact provenance of the Mongolian works cannot be determined in most cases. He also purchased some books directly on site in Ulaanbaatar when he visited Mongolia on his lecture tours. For example, he once told me by email from Mongolia about the purchase of the above-mentioned Mani gambum which he had bought in a store near Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar. He informed me that the work was now on its way to Switzerland by post, directly to the Institute for the Science of Religion.

From the mid-2000s, the majority of Ernst’s manuscript and xylograph collection was kept in the Bern Institute for cataloguing. Daniel Scheidegger, the then Tibetan lecturer at the Institute for the Science of Religion, compiled a title list for the Tibetica in the collection. This list was later supplemented by the author of this catalogue. In 2021 Richard Ernst passed away, and in 2022 his widow, Magdalena Ernst, donated the Tibetica in the collection to the monastic Tibet Institute in Rikon. The list of titles can be found on the library's homepage (https://tibet-institut.ch/content/tir/de/library_content.html, under “Bequests and donations”: Tibetica Richard R. Ernst), and the works can be viewed on site. The Tibetan part of the collection also contains a few Mongolian-language texts. They are mentioned here for reasons of documentation. The Mongolian texts in Rikon include an illustrated Molom toyin text (coll. call number ET 973), an incomplete bilingual edition of the Dran pa nyer bzhag (coll. call number ET 976) and a manuscript of the canonical Thar pa chen po (coll. call number ET 880). Most remarkable, however, is the Beijing xylograph in two volumes of the Mani gambum in the translation of the Rab ’byams pa Chos rje Jaya Paṇḍita of the Erkečüs, which the latter had prepared during his stay at the Öljeitü monastery on the banks of the Irtysh river “on the western side of the richly forested Altai Qan” (vol. 2, fol. 274r) from 1643 to the winter of 1644 (coll. call number ET 972). However, the work was not printed until 1712. The text in the Tibetan part of the Ernst Collection is the reprint from 1736 (vol. 2, fol. 275r). This Mongolian Beijing xylograph, which is now kept in Rikon, had been stored separately from the other books in the collection by Professor Ernst in his home, carefully wrapped in airtight plastic wrap. The reason for this separate storage became apparent when the librarian in Rikon, Renate Koller, and I unpacked the first volume: the first fifty or more folios had been literally eaten away by mold in the upper right half. This volume is in a very poor state of preservation and requires careful restoration.

Magdalena Ernst generously bequeathed the Mongolian part of the collection to the Institute for the Science of Religion. As the professional storage of such a collection exceeds the possibilities of an institute, the University Library of the University of Bern has kindly agreed to include the Mongolica in its Special Collections.

Beyond the attempt to acquire as many illuminated manuscripts as possible, Richard Ernst did not collect according to a recognizable system. He apparently bought whatever was offered to him and aroused his interest. As a result, the collection also includes rarities such as a Manchu language manual of human physiognomy. Although Chinese language manuals of this kind are known (Kohn 1986), I am not aware of any Manchu ones. As the contents of the manual could not be identified more precisely, I have classified this rare book among the unidentified works.

During the cataloguing of the Mongolica, it turned out that two works, an old manuscript of the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa and a print of the Gesar Epic from the Kangxi era, contained stamps from two Mongolian libraries. These books were almost certainly removed from the respective libraries and sold via the Internet. It was therefore decided that these works should be restituted to Mongolia and the appropriate steps were taken. Although they are no longer part of the current physical collection, they are described in the catalogue as they built part of the original collection.

In the catalogue, the works are assigned to the following categories:

A	Buddhist canonical works
B	non-canonical upadeśas
C	history and biography
D	narrative literature
E	Buddhist commentary
F	didactic works
G	ritual
H	prayer
J	descriptions of Sukhāvatī
K	guidebooks to holy sites
L	descriptions of Buddhist hells and peregrination tales
M	divination and astrology
N	epic and tales
O	epistles and prophecies
P	medicine
Q	language
R	official documents
S	miscellanea
T	unidentified works

The assignment of individual works to the categories used here is not always clear-cut. A ritual work may, for example, contain divinatory traits or aspects of a prayer. In some cases, the decision as to which category a work is assigned to is therefore somewhat arbitrary. However, since there is no standard classification system for catalogues of Mongolica, the assignment of individual works to the different categories should be treated with leniency.

Richard Ernst has often acquired bundles of works and assigned them a uniform call number. During cataloguing, it turned out that some of these bundles contained works of different categories. However, as the storage of the collection in the Special Collections holdings reflects the original unity, such bundles are consistently described under “Miscellanea”. Among the Miscellanea is one bundle of a total of 42 individual texts, many of them prayers or short ritual texts. This bundle, wrapped in a cloth (Khalkh.-M. barintag), represents a collection that was compiled in the Mongolian regions either by laymen or monks and used in daily liturgical practice. Their practical size made it possible to always carry the texts with them. They were traditionally worn under the deel, the Mongolian garment, on the bosom and are therefore also known as “bosom books” (Khalkh.-M. övör nom).

Two illuminated manuscripts (ET 427 and ET 325) are the only works (apart from the Mongolian books mentioned above, which ended up in Rikon) that were not brought to the Institute for the Science of Religion for cataloguing because they were in an extremely poor state of preservation. They remained with Professor Ernst. In the meantime, Magdalena Ernst has donated the collection of Mongolian thangkas, tsaglis and other art objects, including the two manuscripts, to the Museum der Kulturen in Basel. Both manuscripts will be integrated into the Ernst Collection of Mongolian Manuscripts and Xylographs at a later date. In the meantime, photographic illustrations are available as substitutes.

Some selected texts are made available online as PDFs.

Layout of the catalogue

The description of the works is arranged as follows:

Running number of the catalogue.
Title of the work, if available. In the case of canonical works, the Tibetan and Sanskrit titles (if available) are also given.
Library signature.
Old coll. call number.
Technical description: manuscript or xylograph, type of book, format, number of folios/pages, number of lines per folio/page, marginal title and pagination. The technical description also contains special features such as double pagination, illustrations, glosses, etc. and, if deemed important, comments on the condition of the work.
Cover title (if available), incipit and terminatur. If a colophon is available, in most cases the colophon is given in transcription, or at least the relevant data contained therein is given in English summary. For some works a detailed table of contents is provided. If it seems necessary, a brief characterization of the work is given.
References to copies held in other libraries are provided only sparingly. A complete list of references would have exceeded the scope of the catalogue. For technical reasons, the references are given in the notes.

The indices contain the titles or, in the case of untitled works, the incipit. The bibliography includes only the works that have been cited.

A Note on Transliteration and Transcription

The transliteration of the Tibetan follows Wylie. Classical Mongolian is rendered in the transliteration by Mostaert/Vladimirtsov with one exception: ǰ is transcribed as j. Manchu follows the transliteration of Jerry Norman. Chinese is rendered in Pinyin. The transliteration of Sanskrit follows the internationally established standards. Tibetan and Mongolian terms that have become part of everyday language, such as Kanjur or Milarepa, are rendered in their simplified form.