Columbia University Libraries is pleased to establish the Tharchin Collection, dedicated to the memory of Gegen Dorje Tharchin (1889-1976), also known as “Tharchin Babu.” As founder of the Tibet Mirror Press in Kalimpong, India, Gegen Dorje Tharchin was the renowned editor of the Tibet Mirror and many other Tibetan-language publications which circulated among Tibetan readers on both sides of the Himalayas, and as far as New York, from the early 1920s through the late 1960s. The Tibet Mirror (Tib. Yul phyogs so so’i gsar ‘gyur me long) was published from 1925 to 1963 in Kalimpong, and chronicles the most dramatic social and political transformation to have occurred in Tibet during a time when vernacular writing was relatively scarce, and a Tibetan media practically non-existent. The paper also relayed information about World War II, the independence of India, and other global news to Tibetan readers in Lhasa, Gyantse, Kham, etc., and to traders and aristocrats who frequently traveled from Lhasa via the Chumbi Valley to Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Calcutta. In 2007, Paul Hackett (Ph.D., Religious Studies, Columbia University) and Christina Harris (Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology, City University of New York) donated to the C.V. Starr East Asian Library a total of 97 unique issues of the Tibet Mirror, representing nearly 30% of the paper’s full run. With assistance from Columbia University Libraries’ Preservation Department and Digital Programs Division, these holdings were microfilmed and digitally scanned for online public access. The cornerstone of the Tharchin Collection is comprised of the newspaper holdings and their digital presentation.
Access: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6981643_000/index.html