གླེགས་བམ། glegs bam

“To be sure, the perhaps more common Tibetan words for “book” are glegs bam, pod and po ti – pod is a derivative of po ti, just as deb is derived from deb gter / ther / ter – or, somewhat metaphorically, gsung, “statement.” As for the first and third, Chos dpal dar dpyang states the following in the biography of his teacher, the well-known Sanskritist Chag lo tsā ba II Chos rje dpal (1197-1264): [He] said [that the term for “book”] is in the religious [classical] language [Sanskrit], pustaka; in the vernacular language [?Prakrit, ?Apabhraṃśa, ?...], po ti [< ?poṭhi]; in Tibetan, glegs bam. Though written in [regular] ink, [the books] not being [written with] gold [ink], they [still] were glegs bam. (chos skad du pusta ka ’phral skad du po ti | bod skad du glegs bam | gser gyi ma yin pa snag tshad bris kyang glegs bam yin gsungs so ||)” (van der Kuijp 2006: 5).

Nor brang o rgyan makes several important points in connection with the term glegs bam. He juxatposes glegs bam (“book”) to shog dril (“scroll”) and suggests that the transmission from the tradition of scrolls to the tradition of books gave rise to the term glegs bam. According to him, the term may have come into existence during the time of Khri srong lde btsan. Similarly, he also suggests that the Tibetan books were initially held together with strings that ran through two holes on the page, traces of which can still be seen. He does not consider the possibility that the holes were mere imitations of string holes found in Indian palmleaf manuscripts. The custom of binding loose folios between two wooden slabs is said to be have been initially introduced as a means of “punishing” (khrims btang ba) the books during the time of Glang dar ma. Such an account, he states, is based on oral tradition (rgan rabs kyi gsung rgyun). See the Nor brang gsung rtsom (pp. 471–272). [DW]

A somewhat detailed description of glegs bam can be found in Pad ma bkra shis’s gNa’ dpe’i rnam bshad (pp. 9.8–11.15). DW