Although Tibetan Buddhism is often associated with monks and canonical texts, other types of Buddhist practitioners and texts are also important. Before the Fifth Dalai Lama came to power and Tibetan Buddhism became systematized, charismatic yogins composed and printed songs and biographies to promote a non-monastic ideal with remarkable success. Modeling their lifestyle upon Indian tantric siddhas and the 11th century Tibetan yogin Milarepa, whose tradition they followed and propagated, they attempted to reform Tibetan Buddhism. Taking as a point of departure four texts which were printed in Southern Tibet in the early sixteenth-century by a group of such yogins, this project will investigate how Buddhist songs and biographies were codified into a distinct genre in Tibet. By combining a traditional philological and historical approach with theories concerning the interaction between life and texts, the history, function, and contents of these songs and biographies will be explored. Moreover, the people who collected and printed the texts will be portrayed. The texts upon which the project focuses have never been translated, and the historical period when they were produced has generally been neglected in contemporary scholarship. By scrutinizing this unique body of material, the project will contribute with important basic research. The project will also break new ground in unfolding the complicated web of interfaces between lives and texts, and in the textual corpus.