The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue

Berkeley: U of California Press, 1979. The Hae-in Sa (Temple) in southern Korea houses some 81,000 xylographic woodblocks of the Buddhist canon in Chinese script, dating to the 13th century. Korea is thus home to one of the earliest complete surviving libraries of the Chinese Buddhist canon, a source that the Chinese themselves drew upon to recover much of the Buddhist literature that they had lost in war and religious purges. The present catalogue provides bibliographic detail of all 1,514 titles, within over 1,300 volumes in the Korean canon. Each entry includes titles in Chinese and Korean script, as well as Romanized Chinese, Korean, Sanskrit and Tibetan, followed by a full bibliographic annotation in English. The catalogue thus contains much material that is found nowhere else in the English language, and is an essential reference tool for any student of the Buddhist canon, regardless of tradition. Includes Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Korean and Tibetan indices of titles, Romanized and Chinese indices of authors/translators, 'case character' index indicating the location of a given text within the Hae-in Sa collection, index of correspondences between the present work and Japanese catalogues (Taisho, Nanjio, Tohoku) and bibliography. xxiii, 724 pp. Dust jacket has minor wear and a couple of small tears, now repaired and in mylar. Former owner's stamp on FFEP, blind stamp on title page; otherwise book is tight and very clean throughout. . First Edition. Hard bound. Very Good +/Good. 25 x 18 cm..