Old Tibetan Chronicle

The Old Tibetan Chronicle is a collection of narrative accounts and songs relating to Tibet's Yarlung dynasty and the Tibetan Empire. The three manuscripts that comprise the only extant copies of the Chronicle are among the Dunhuang Manuscripts found in the early 20th century in the so-called "hidden library" at the Mogao Grottoes near Dunhuang, which is believed to have been sealed in the 11th century CE. The Chronicle, together with the Old Tibetan Annals comprise Tibet's earliest extant history.

An enormous number of early manuscripts in a variety of languages were collected by Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot at the famous sealed-up Library Cave (no. 17) of the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang and sent back to London and Paris respectively. The Dunhuang manuscripts in the Tibetan language include the Old Tibetan Chronicle, which was probably compiled in the early 9th century, and the Old Tibetan Annals, which have been described as "the first and single most important documents available on early Tibetan history."

The Old Tibetan Chronicle is extant in two manuscripts in the Pelliot Collection at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, and some manuscript fragments. The main scroll comprises Pelliot tibétain 1286 and Pelliot tibétain 1287. The Tibetan text is written on the blank verso sides of panels pasted together from Chinese scrolls. In the first critical edition of Pelliot tibétain 1286 and Pelliot tibétain 1287, Jacques Bacot and Charles Toussaint considered them to be represent separate texts and referred to Pelliot tibétain 1286 as "Principautés anciennes et généalogie des rois," but following the suggestion of Geza Uray, both are now considered to be two parts a single original manuscript and can be referred to together as the Old Tibetan Chronicle. In addition, two folios from a single original manuscript, Pelliot tibétain 1144 and IOL Tib J 1375, overlap with narratives found in the Chronicle, though differing in certain details.

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