The present article describes and examines the recent findings from The Official Buddhist Canon of the Yuan Dynasty(元官藏 He Yuan guan zang). It comprises the following five sections : (1) A historical sketch of the research on the Yuan guan zang. The identification of the Yuan guan zang was a relatively late event in the history of the modern studies on the Chinese Buddhist Canon :大藏經. The exact determination of its title actually occurred at an even later date. Actually, the historical records concerning this Canon are extremely scanty, and the research on it is even scarcer. Among the latter, the following studies can be mentioned. Any survey of this field must start with the essential contribution brought by the Japanese scholar Ono Gemmyo 小野玄妙. Actually, it was Ono who first pointed out the existence of this Canon and determined that it was an officially-sponsored edition. He also showed that the Yuan guan zang represents an edition different from the Qisha 磧砂 and Puning 普寧 Canons printed during the same Yuan 元 Dynasty. More recent studies undertaken by Chinese scholars such as Dong Wei a 〓, Fang Guangchang 方廣〓, and Jin Zhiliang 金志良 have shed light on the characteristics of the Yuan guan zang from the viewpoint of the traditional woodblock research, on the official sponsors and historical background of its printing, on the probable date of its beginnings, and on the structure of its catalogue. Regarding the latter, we must also mention here He Mei's 何梅 contribution which collates the catalogue of the Yuan guan zang with the 112 The Official Buddhist Canon of the Yuan Dynasty(元官藏, Yuan guan zang)(Li) Catalogue of the Zhiyuan Era(至元録 Zhiyuan lu). He Mei argues that the structure of the former is based on the latter. (2) In this section, I focus upon the presentation of the fragments from the Yuan guan zang which have been discovered in recent years. (3) I discuss the format, number of columns and characters per folio, paper type and quality, and the dedications 願文 as well as the lists of officials 銜名 recorded in the extant fragments of the Yuan guan zang. (4) This section deals with the chronology and place of the carving and printing of the woodblocks of the Yuan guan zang. The lists of officials 銜名 actually contain names of monks and lay bureaucrats who supervised and/or participated to the printing of the Canon. This allows us to make some conjectures concerning the chronological order of the printing of the extant fragments. This appears to be as follows. The fragments acquired by the National Library of the People's Republic of China 中國國家圖書館 seem to be the earliest. They are followed by the fragments in Ono Genmyo's Collection and the fragments in the Zhong'an 中安 Collection. The fragments in the Yunnan 雲南 Collection appear to be the most recent. Judging from the technical peculiarities of the fragments in the Yunnan Collection, we can conclude that the printing and binding of the Canon took place in Hangzhou 杭州. There is no direct evidence regarding the site where the woodblocks were carved. We know, however, from the history of the printing of the Buddhist Canon in China that usually the woodblocks were not carved far from the site where the editions were printed and bound. It is, therefore, quite probable that the woodblocks of the Yuan guan zang were also carved in the Hangzhou region. (5) In this section, I examine the structure of the catalogue of the Yuan guan zang. This is a section which received special attention and which, I hope, will cast new light on the this subject. I compare the structure of all the fragments of the Yuan guan zang currently found in the collection of the National Library of the People's Republic of China with that of the Zhiyuan lu The Official Buddhist Canon of the Yuan Dynasty(元官藏 Yuan guan zang)(Li) 113 至元録, the Zhaocheng Canon 趙城藏, the Zifu Canon 資福藏, the Puning Canon 普寧藏, the Fangshan Stone-Carved Canon 房山石經(scriptures carved during the Liao 遼. and Jin 金 Dynasties), etc. Here are my
