[2] The Tibetans did not have a formally arranged Mahayana canon, and so devised their own scheme with two broad categories: the "Words of the Buddha" and later the commentaries; the Kangyur and Tengyur respectively.

Collections of canonical Buddhist texts existed already in the time of Trisong Detsen, the sixth king of Tibet, who ruled from 755 until 797 CE, in Spiti.

These include the Derge, Lhasa, Narthang, Cone, Peking, Urga, Phudrak, and Stog Palace versions, each named for the physical location where it was printed.

The Tibetan Bön religion also has its canon literature divided into two sections called the Kangyur and Tengyur, said to have been translated from foreign languages, but the number and contents of the collection are not yet fully known.

][clarification needed] Apparently, Bön began to take on a literary form about the time Buddhism entered Tibet.