On the Editing of Orthography 2.2.­22 In the textual traditions of the past, there have been many dissimilar styles of orthography. It is said that Thönmi Sambhoṭa initially composed eight grammar treatises fundamental to the Tibetan language, yet during the later spread of Buddhism in Tibet only The Thirty Verses and The Application of Gender Signs remained. Later scholars [F.110.b] composed spelling treatises on the basis of those two texts and by consulting the ancient texts, but since they only had access to a trunk bare of its branches, certain topics were unclear or incomplete and they were not agreed upon in a definitive way. Instead, there were a variety of conflicting styles based on each scholar’s subjective reasoning. Within the Vinaya, Sūtra, and Tantra sections their own similar orthographic conventions were employed, but in their subsections there were also slight differences in orthography. Those variations that were deemed not to be erroneous were left as they stood. Thus, there was no attempt to create a singular uniform style. We eliminated any lapses into well-known dialects such as using mya for ma, stsogs for sa, and ral gyi for ral tri77, and so on, because these are not accepted by scholars. Even though the da-drag post-suffix was part of the system of The Thirty Verses and The Application of Gender Signs, later scholars such as Loden Sherab treated it as if it were assumed [and omitted it], in order to simplify the language.