The Tibetan (Monthly) Newspaper.

Folio (34,4 x 19,5 cm): 60 installments (4 double) in blue and black stencil (install. 11, vol. III printed in gold) totalising 122 ff. hand-numbered in blue pencil, illustr. (2 textlvs on red paper bound with; overall good condition).

Contemp. half black sheep, title in gold on flat spine (joints cracked, corners blunt).

Only run known being complete of the first 5 years missing at all sets registered worldwide, including 1925-1926, the very first volume.
In 1925, "Yul phyogs so soʾi gsar ʾgyur me lon" (often abbreviated as "me lon" and "melon") or the "The Tibetan Newspaper", also known as "The Mirror of News" or "The Tibet Mirror", was founded at Kalimpong in West Bengal, India. Published after "The Ladakh Journal", it is the second Tibetan language newspaper to have been started, per available records. Its founder was one Gergan Dorje Tharchin, a Tibetan of Christian denomination who was a pastor at Kalimpong, at the time a border town that acted as a centre for the wool trade between Tibet and India. He was born in 1890 in Himachal Pradesh and was educated by Moravian missionaries although he did not use his newspaper as a platform for proselytising Christianity to his readers.
Published on a monthly basis, the journal's first record was given in October 1925 under the title "The Mirror of News of All Sides of the World", followed by a second one in February 1926. Only 50 copies were printed and all sent to Tharchin's friends in Lhasa, including one for the 13th Dalai Lama who sent a letter encouraging him to continue with the publication and became an ardent reader.
Its founder Tharchin was at the same time journalist, chief editor and publisher. He would select the news from newspapers of which he was a subscriber, and translate them into Tibetan. He had assigned to himself opening up Tibet to the outside world. The journal reported on what went on in the world at the Chinese Revolution, at World War II, during the Indian independence movement, and covered events in Tibet, India, and in Kalimpong itself. The more it informed about western material civilisation such as gramophone, photographic camera, clocks, flashlite, horse saddle, fountain pen, printer's press, an automobile etc, all illustrated. One finds also in the text the photographic portraits of the 13th and of the 14th Dalai Lama, a small view on the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the crash of a zeppelin aircraft etc.
Started as a Tibetan language chronicle of world events, by the 1950's became a vehicle for the fight for Tibetan freedom from the Chinese invasion and occupation. By the early 1960's, with financial troubles that never seemed to end, Tharchin ceased the publication in 1963 and died in 1976.
Apparently, our set is the only one known to contain the complete first 5 volumes (1925/1926-1930), as neither the "Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Libray" at Yale University, nor "The Tharchin Collection" at Columbia University, being Tharchin's personal archives, have complete runs, both starting with the year 1930 (a part from only one record -vol. 2, n. 5- at Columbia).
Ref. Paul G. Hackett, Barbarian Lands: Theos Bernard, Tibet, and the American Religious Life. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2008.