New Delhi, Nov 19 (IANS) Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will give the valedictory address at a conference on Tibetan history and culture at Delhi University Saturday in which more than 40 scholars from across the world are participating.
Dalai Lama will return to Delhi after his trip to Italy Friday and participate in a series of programmes.

While he is expected to take part in a talk, ‘Women and Peace’, at the Siri Fort auditorium Friday evening, on Saturday he will give address the three-day international conference, which started Thursday, on Tibetan history and culture.

Organised by Delhi University and the Central University for Tibetan Studies, Varanasi, the conference will see scholars from Britain, the US, Europe and Asia.

Tsering Tsomo, official at the Dalai Lama’s office in Delhi, said: “The political history and status of Tibet is interpreted in different ways by the Tibetans and Western writers. Even the work of Chinese writers before the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1912 and those after the fall of Manchu dynasty is different.”

“Hence Tibetan studies have become as important and popular as other civilisations of the world in the last three decades,” he said.

Heavily influenced by Indian culture, Tsomo further said the Tibetans have reproduced a large number of translations of Indian literature.

The Tibetan religious texts called the Tripitaka preserves over 5,000 titles of ancient Indian literature whose Sanskrit versions have been lost, he added.

“Tibetan Tripitaka, known as Kagyur and Tangyur, preserves over 5,000 titles translated from Indian languages, mainly from Sanskrit on grammar, poetry, rhetoric, logic, politics and social ethics, medicine, astrology, chemistry, art and iconography, biographies of saints and Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy,” Tsomo said.

“Most of the above mentioned Indian literatures lost in its original form can be reconstructed from its Tibetan translation,” he added.