Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union

The Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union (Tangut: 𘀄𘓄𗄊𗫡𗋈𘜼𗰜𗺓 Gyu̱²-rjur¹ Źji²-njɨ² Ngwu²-phjo̱² Mər²-twẹ²,[note 1] translated into Chinese as Jíxiáng Biànzhì Kǒuhé Běnxù 吉祥遍至口和本續[note 2]) is the title of a set of nine volumes of Buddhist printed texts written in the Tangut language and script which was discovered in the ruins of the Baisigou Square Pagoda in Helan County, Ningxia, Northwest China in 1991 after it had been illegally blown up.

[4] The Baisigou Square Pagoda was situated in a remote location in the Helan Mountains, about 10 km from the nearest road.

[1] The Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union found in the ruins of the pagoda is incomplete, comprising three complete volumes from the main text, and four complete and two partial volumes from supplementary parts of the book: The book is printed on paper, and the paper for the main body of text is made from ramie and hemp fibres.

Even more tellingly, characters are sometimes inverted, which is typical of books printed with movable type, but cannot accidentally occur in woodblock editions.

[8] Nevertheless, it is thought that the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union is earlier in date than any of the other surviving Tangut books that may have been printed using movable type.

However, Tibetologist Shen Weirong has suggested that the Tangut title of the book is a translation of the Tibetan dpal kun-tu kha-sbyor zhes-bya ba'i rgyud དཔལ་ཀུན་ཏུ་ཁ་སྦྱོར་ཞེས་བྱ་བའི་རྒྱུད (Glorious Tantra of Everlasting Union[note 4]).

Front cover of Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union: Supplementary Explanations volume 5
An open folio from the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union , showing gaps in the perimeter lines at the corners that are typical of movable type printing.
Detail of a page from the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union showing an inverted Chinese characters 十四 "fourteen" in the centre fold.