Launching the Translation of the Ḍākī’ Great Dharma Treasury, May 15-17, 2026
The weekend of May 15-17, the translation project for the Ḍākī’ Great Dharma Treasury launched in 鶹ӰԺ, Colorado with a first gathering of the editorial team at the Tsadra Research Center. This ambitious project seeks to publish a ten-volume curated set of translations from the only Tibetan anthology dedicated to writings by, about, and for Buddhist women across historical periods, literary genres, and religious traditions.
Published in Tibet in 2017, Ḍākī’ Great Dharma Treasury (Mkha' 'gro'i chos mdzod chen mo) comprises 53-volumes. The compilers of this treasure trove are a group of classically-educated Tibetan nuns from the largest Buddhist monastic institution in the world, Larung Buddhist Academy (known as Larung Gar), in the Serta region of eastern Tibet, now part of Qinghai Province. The Ḍākī’ Great Dharma Treasury is a product of the intense commitment of these female cleric-scholars or Khenmos to preserve and promote the teachings and life stories of their Buddhist foremothers.
These Khenmos formed the Ārya Tāre Book Association Editorial Office at Larung Gar and searched across the Tibetan plateau for texts by, about, and for Buddhist women, and even then frequently only one copy of a manuscript could be found, often with archaic or inconsistent spelling as well as missing sections. Once the nuns did manage to collect texts about women, none of them were yet digitized, requiring the nuns first to teach themselves how to type and use computers, and then to painstakingly type the manuscripts into digital files by themselves.
It is among the most exciting publications coming out of modern Tibet because it contains a plethora of hitherto unknown and never-before-translated texts of myriad genres that enrich and expand the state of scholarship about historical women and the divine feminine in Buddhism. The Ḍākī’ Great Dharma Treasury contains sources that span two-thousand years, cross the full terrain of the Tibet plateau and, in a non-sectarian manner, feature women who practiced in varied lineages of Buddhism.
Inside its pages, we find accounts of the earliest Indian nuns drawn from Buddhist canonical sources, including the Vinaya and the Sūtras. There are also accounts of Mahāyana Buddhist goddesses from Indian and Nepalese Buddhism, as well as some drawn from the Chinese canon. That said, the majority of the volumes are comprised of biographies and teachings of Buddhist women in Tibet ranging from imperial queens, medieval and modern nuns, as well as yoginīs and ḍākinīs.
We are planning a ten-volume curated selection from the Ḍākī’ Great Dharma Treasury. The Khenmos at Larung Gar who we are working with have asked us to focus on translating exoteric material rather than esoteric. From there, we will choose texts that never before been translated into English with the exception of shorter translations that may have been published online. The ten volumes will be published in parallel text format, with Tibetan on the left page and the corresponding English translation on the right page. We are collaborating with Shambhala Publications on the book publication of these volumes and Lotsawa House on select online translations from the collection.
This translation project is spearheaded by Sarah Jacoby (Northwestern University), Padma'tsho (Southwest Minzu University), and Holly Gayley (CU 鶹ӰԺ), who invited volume editors and organized this weekend gathering. Over the weekend, the editorial team discussed the contents for the proposed ten volumes of translations and tackled a range of issues related to translation and editorial process. We look forward to reaching out to scholars and translators to work with us on the translations of the remarkable texts found in this collection.
Thanks to the sponsors for this gathering: Tsadra Research Center, Lenz Foundation, Northwestern University, and the Tibet Himalaya Initiative.
