Till a few decades ago, when interest in the Mahayana Buddhism began to rise world-wide, literature related to it was limited to classical languages like Tibetan and Chinese. As a result of the efforts of scholars like Mahapandita Rahul Sankrityayana, some Sanskrit texts did come to the attention of readers, but they were often inaccurate and incomplete. Seeing this situation, some contemporary scholars prepared an ambitious programme, the chief object of which was to prepare authoritative editions of the available Sanskrit texts, to restore fragmentary texts with the help of their Tibetan translations, to encourage high-level research based on the material available in these languages, and to make easily available the Buddhist literature available in the classical languages like Tibetan, Sanskrit etc. in modern languages like Hindi and English. In order to accomplish this ambitious programme, the need for various kinds of lexicons was felt. Accordingly, the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies undertook a grand Dictionary Project, in which there was a provision for the creation of two kinds of lexicons – general and specialized.