On the production of the Nartahng Kanjur (14 CE)

"The production of a handwritten Kanjur was an enormous enterprise, which would not have been possible without the resource and expertise of mChims 'Jam dpal dbyangs, who served as the chaplain to Buyantu-qan (1311-1320) and used his position at the Yuan court to solicit substantial donations. It necessitated the collection of Buddhist manuscripts from many monasteries across Tibet, and the expertise of religious specialists who had to ascertain the authenticity of the texts and supervise their distribution in the Vinaya ('dul ba), Sutra (mDo), and Tantra (rGyud) sections that commonly comprise the Kanjur. The making of the first Narthan collection was an impressive endeavor, as Eimer (1988, 66) explains:

A learned monk needs about five months in order to copy one volume of the Kanjur. The task of revising the manuscript copy takes an additional month. Here one has to bear in mind the fact that [a] full set of the early version of the Kanjur consist of 111 volumes. Therefore a great number of well-trained monks were assembled at Narthang monastery. All these scribes needed housing, food and assistance, not to mention paper and ink; and they were not only engaged in copying the Kanjur, but they were also busy preparing exemplars of the Tanjur with its more than 200 volumes."


Georgios T. Halkias in Luminous Bliss: A Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet. (p.87-88)