Logic and Epistemology in Tibet known as Bho-ta Desh are profoundly rooted in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy and it is no exaggeration that it occupies a distinctive position in the academic world. Tibet being one of the neighbouring countries which received Indian thoughts preserved the lost literature in translation. Specially, their preservation of all the major works on Buddhist Logic and Epistemology the most important contributions of the masters like Diṅnāga, Dharmakrīti and others along with commentaries is really of enormous value. Professor Hajime Nakamura spells out that, “The Tibetans translated a good number of Indian Buddhist works on logic (Nyāya). The Sde-dge edition of the Tibetan Tripiṭaka contains 66 works on Nyāya, some of which are quite voluminous. It is in remarkable contrast to the fact that the Chinese Tripiṭaka preserves only a few Nyāya texts, e.g., the Yin-mingchȇng-li-mȇn-lun (Nyāyamukha), the Yin-ming-ju-chȇng-li-lun (Nyāyaprabeśaka), all of which are simple textbooks. These Tibetan translations are indispensable for the study of Buddhist logic, in view of the fact that many Sanskrit originals are lost.”
According to Tibetan scholar Van der Kuijp, Tibetan writers on the culture of predominantly Buddhist history of their country, divided the period of Buddhist texts and the Buddhist experience became translated into Tibetan into two divisions, the early propagation or snga-dar and the later one, phyi-dar. The interim is engaged by the activities of Glang-dar-ma and his cohorts who sometime during the first half of the ninth century had managed to all but exterminate institutional Buddhism from what was then known as Tibet.
