The Tibetan alphabet is syllabic, like many of the alphabets of India and South East Asia.The most unusual genre of Tibetan literature is that of gter-ma or 'rediscovered' texts - reputedly the work of ancient masters which have been hidden in remote caves for many centuries. There are also literary works about the Bon religion, a pre-Buddhist religion indigenous to Tibet. Tibetan literature is mainly concerned with Buddhist themes and includes works translated from Sanskrit and Chinese and original Tibetan works. Wood block printing, introduced from China, was used in Tibet from an early date and is still used in a few monasteries. The first Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary, Mahavyutpatti, appeared in the 9th century. The new Tibetan alphabet was used to write Tibetan translations of Buddhists texts. The minister then reputedly devised a script for Tibetan based on the Devanagari model and also wrote a grammar of Tibetan based on Sanskrit grammars. During the 7th Century AD Sron-btsan sgam-po, a king in southern Tibet, sent Thon-mi Sambhota, one of his ministers, to India to gather information on Buddhism.
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