The Tibetan script exists because of Buddhist translation, and Buddhist use has surrounded it ever since. The imperial translation bureaus fixed vocabulary and orthography so that the Sanskrit canon could be rendered consistently, an effort crowned centuries later by the Kangyur, the translated word of the Buddha in over a hundred volumes, and the Tengyur, the accompanying treatises, both transmitted in uchen letters through woodblock printing houses at Derge, Narthang and elsewhere. Around the canon grew the vast native literatures of the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug schools, all in the same script, which also serves Bon, Tibet's other religion.
Beyond the book, the script sanctifies the landscape: the mantra Om mani padme hum is carved in Tibetan letters on mani stones heaped into walls along pilgrimage paths, painted on cliffs, and set spinning in prayer wheels, on the understanding that the written mantra blesses as the spoken one does. Prayer flags carry printed texts into the wind for the benefit of all beings. Monastic education begins with the alphabet learned as a sacred inheritance, and calligraphy in uchen remains a devotional art, so that in the Tibetan world the letters themselves, wherever they stand, are understood to carry the dharma.