Around that time, as he began work on a doctorate at the university, he started studying Tibetan with a visiting lama, Deshung Rinpoche, and was entranced. Further study was hindered, however, by the lack of available texts.
“We had no Tibetan books,” Mr. Smith told The New York Times in 2002. “Deshung said: ‘Go and find them. Find the important books and get them published.’ ”
After advanced study in Sanskrit and Pali at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Mr. Smith went to India in 1965, spending several years studying with exiled Tibetan lamas.
Mr. Smith acquired as many Tibetan books as he could for the library, seeking out Tibetan refugees in India, Nepal and Bhutan and earning their trust. Most of the books he collected were either hand-lettered manuscripts or had been printed in the traditional manner, using carved wood blocks. (Tibet had no printing presses.) Often, a book he obtained was the only known copy in the world.
In India, Mr. Smith began printing new copies of thousands of Tibetan books. As Mr. Smith noted, nothing in the law expressly forbade using the money to republish great works of literature. And so, book by book, he brought much of the Tibetan canon to light. His publishing project, which lasted two and a half decades, furnished books to libraries and Tibetan speakers around the globe, greatly augmenting the store upon which scholars could draw.
“Without his vision, many of us in the field would not be doing what we’re doing,” Leonard van der Kuijp, a professor of Tibetan and Himalayan studies at Harvard, said last week.
Interviewers often asked Mr. Smith what propelled his quest. His answer was simple, and Buddhist to the core:
“Karma, I guess.”
