The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) is an international collaborative effort to conserve, catalogue and digitise manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from the Mogao caves at the Western Chinese city of Dunhuang and various other archaeological sites at the eastern end of the Silk Road. The project was established by the British Library in 1994,[1] and now includes twenty-two institutions in twelve countries. As of 18February2021[update] the online IDP database comprised 143,290 catalogue entries and 538,821 images.[2] Most of the manuscripts in the IDP database are texts written in Chinese, but more than fifteen different scripts and languages are represented,[3] including Brahmi, Kharosthi, Khotanese, Sanskrit, Tangut, Tibetan, Tocharian and Old Uyghur.[2]
Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, has noted that there are many advantages of the IDP providing high resolution digital images of Dunhuang manuscripts online for access to all. Whereas in years gone by scholars often needed to travel long distances to access the original manuscripts, or could only access them by means of low quality reproductions, now anyone can access images from the convenience of their computer, wherever they are in the world. This not only makes research into these manuscripts easier, but helps in their conservation as there is far less need for them to be handled in person. Moreover, the high quality images provided by the IDP often show up details that would be difficult to see with the human eye.[4]
Activities
Digitisation at the British Library of the Rabbit Garden Imperial Book Repository 兔園策府, a Tang dynasty manuscript from Dunhuang
The main activities of the IDP are the conserving, cataloguing, and digitising of manuscripts, woodblock prints, paintings, photographs and other artefacts in the collections material from Dunhuang and other Eastern Silk Road sites held by participating institutions. Digitised images of the items in the IDP database are made available to the public on the IDP website. The digital images are intended to be at least as legible as the original manuscripts, and allow scholars to access the material from anywhere in the world without causing any more damage to the fragile items themselves.[3]
The central core of the project is the online database of catalogue records and images. This is intended to serve three main purposes:
to act as a replacement for tools previously used by institutions to manage their collections;
to act as a replacement for the offline catalogues previously used by scholars to access the collections;
to provide additional functionality that will make the database an important scholarly tool.[5]
In 2002, Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive Officer of the British Library, put forward the International Dunhuang Project as a good example of the sort of complex, collaborative, and international digitisation projects that the British Library was increasingly engaged in. She explained that none of the individual institutions participating in the project had the resources or facilities to allow scholars full access to all of the manuscripts in their collections, but by joining together and sharing knowledge and resources the institutions would be able to offer access to the combined collections of all the institutions by means of high-quality digital images. She noted that a digitisation project such as the IDP benefits both the institutions involved, who are often able to obtain more substantial funding than they would for an internal project, and also the scholarly community, who are given access through the digital images to fragile and often inaccessible items that might previously have been difficult or impossible to view.[6]
Cataloguing
Catalogue records are stored in XML format on a relational database using the 4th Dimension database management tool.[7] Records can be searched for by means of an online search form that allows users to restrict the search on the basis of a number of different criteria, such as type of artefact, holding institute, archaeological site, and language or script.[8] The database was updated to support Unicode in 2010, and the IDP website is now fully encoded using UTF-8, allowing characters from most of the ancient and modern scripts found in the manuscripts to be added to the catalogue records.[9]
Each online catalogue record incorporates a physical description of the item, catalogue records from existing print sources, translations if available, and bibliographic references. The IDP also encourages scholarly users to submit their own catalogue entries and research results on individual items for addition to the database.[10]
To facilitate the locating of items on the IDP database the project has also digitised a large number of catalogues and bibliographic sources, and made them available online, with links from the original catalogue entries to the corresponding online catalogue entry in the IDP database.[11]
Conservation
In order to better understand how to conserve the fragile materials that most of the items in the IDP database are made from (paper, textile, and wood), the IDP has supported a number of conservation projects (such as the analysis of paper and textile fibres), and has organised regular conferences on conservation issues at venues across the world.[12]
In addition to developing techniques for the conservation and preservation of documents and artefacts, the IDP hopes to foster good conservation practices and common standards amongst participating institutes, ensuring that artefacts are stored under the most suitable conditions, and are handled as little as possible.[13]
Digitisation
The IDP centre at the British Library set up a digitisation studio in 2001, and now similar studios have been established at IDP centres across Europe and Asia. In addition to making high-quality digital images of items, infrared photography is used for manuscripts with faded ink or which are otherwise hard to read in normal light.[13]
Education
The IDP also engages in various educational activities, organising exhibitions, workshops, and educational events for schools.[14]
In 2004 the IDP organised a major exhibition entitled "The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith", which was held at the British Library.[15] This was the most successful exhibition ever held at the British Library, and attracted 155,000 visitors.[16]
The foundations for the project were laid in October 1993 when an international conference on Dunhuang Cave 17 was held at Sussex University.[17] This conference brought together curators and conservators from across the world, including the British Library, the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the National Library of China, and in its aftermath an IDP Steering Group was set up by Graham Shaw (Deputy Director of the Oriental & India Office Collection at the British Library), Frances Wood (Head of the Chinese Section at the British Library), and Peter Lawson (Conservator at the British Library). Susan Whitfield was appointed to edit the newsletter. The first meeting of the IDP steering group was held on 11 April 1994, when the name International Dunhuang Project was adopted.[17] The first newsletter was published on 16 May 1994.
The IDP was initially founded with 3-year grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation,[18] and had only one member of staff.[16] The following year the IDP database was designed and implemented, and in 1996 a grant from the British Academy allowed the hiring of a part-time research assistant to input catalogue data into the database.[16]
In 1997, with funding of £148,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund,[18] the IDP started to digitise manuscripts held at the British Library, and in 1998 the database went online with an initial 20,000 catalogue entries and about 1,000 images of digitised manuscripts.[16]
In 2001, with substantial support from the Mellon Foundation, work started on the digitisation of manuscripts held at collections in Paris and Beijing,[6] and in 2003 digital images of Dunhuang paintings held at the British Museum were added to the database.[16] By 2004 the IDP database included images of some 50,000 manuscripts, paintings, artefacts, and historical photographs.[19]
IDP Centres were opened in Beijing in 2001, in St. Petersburg and Kyoto in 2004, in Berlin in 2005, in Dunhuang in 2007, in Paris in 2008, and in Seoul in 2010.[16][20]
The first director of the IDP was Susan Whitfield, who retired from the position in July 2017.[21]
Participating institutions
The following institutions are participating in the project.[20]
The International Dunhuang Project has centres in seven countries.[20][22] The London centre, based at the British Library, acts as the directorate for the IDP, and is responsible for maintaining the IDP database and the main English-language website. The other centres maintain local-language versions of the IDP website, currently Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korea, and Russian. Each centre is responsible for the conservation, cataloguing, and digitisation of manuscripts in its country. The staff at these centres help train participating institutions in the use of digitisation equipment and computer software, as well as providing training in conservation and research techniques.
1.^Count of number of images in the IDP database as of 13January2021[update].[2]
In addition to these centres, it is planned to open an IDP centre in Sweden, and digitise the Central Asian collections held in Swedish institutions.[23]
Collections
The IDP database includes material from a number of important collections held by participating institutions of the IDP.
Aurel Stein (1862–1943) made four expeditions to Central Asia (1900–1901, 1906–1908, 1913–1916, and 1930–1931), during which he collected a vast amount of material, including a large number of manuscripts that he acquired from the 'Library Cave' (Cave 17) of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang during his second expedition.[24] Some of the material that he collected, including murals, paintings, artefacts and manuscripts, was sent to India as his first three expeditions had been sponsored by the Indian government. Most of this material is now held at the National Museum of India in New Delhi, but a small amount of the material from his first expedition is held at the Indian Museum in Calcutta, and at Lahore Museum in Pakistan. The rest of the material collected by Stein was taken to England, and is now shared between the British Library, British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.[25]
about 700 paper fragments in Tibetan from other sites
about 7,000 items in Brahmi and Kharosthi
about 6,000 paper fragments in Tangut
about 50 scrolls, 2,000 paper fragments and 100 woodslips in Khotanese
about 1,200 items in Tocharian
about 400 items in Old Turkic and Uyghur
about 150 items in Sogdian
The British Library Stein Collection also includes some artefacts such as textile fragments, sutra wrappers and paste brushes, as well as over 10,000 photographs, negatives and lantern slides taken by Stein.[25]
The British Museum holds a collection of over 1,500 archaeological artefacts collected from various Silk Road sites by Stein, as well as non-literary items from Dunhuang Cave 17, comprising more than 240 paintings on silk or paper, 200 textiles, and about 30 woodblock prints.[27] The museum also holds over 4,000 coins collected by Stein, about three quarters of which are Chinese, and most of the rest are Islamic.[28] Images of all of the paintings and some of the artefacts are now included in the IDP database,[1] and the coins may be added at a future date.[25]
The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a collection of more than 650 textiles collected by Stein from various Silk Road sites,[29] all of which have now been added to the IDP database.[1]
Many of Stein's personal papers and diaries are held at the Western Manuscript Department of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.[30] A collection of personal papers and photographs held at the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences have been added to the IDP database.[25]
The removal by Stein of so much cultural and archaeological material from China has caused anger in China, and there have been calls for the texts and artefacts collected by Stein from Dunhuang that are now in the British Museum and British Library to be repatriated to China. Although the Chinese government has not formally requested their return, in 2003 an official at the Chinese Embassy in London stated that "[l]ittle by little, we will expect to see the return of items taken from Dunhuang — they should go back to their original place".[31]
The Hoernle Collection
The Hoernle Collection, named after Augustus Hoernle (1841–1918), is a collection of Central Asian manuscripts collected by the Indian government. 22 consignments were sent to Hoernle in Calcutta between 1895 and 1899, and these were sent to the British Museum in 1902. A further ten consignments were sent to Hoernle in London after his retirement in 1899. The Hoernle Collection, which comprises over 2,000 Sanskrit manuscripts, 1,200 Tocharian manuscripts, and about 250 Khotanese manuscripts, as well as a few Chinese, Persian and Uyghur manuscripts, is now held by the British Library.[26]
The Pelliot Collection
Paul Pelliot examining manuscripts in the 'Library Cave' (Cave 17) at Dunhuang in 1908
Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) led an expedition to Kucha and Dunhuang between 1906 and 1908. In Kucha and elsewhere in Chinese Turkestan he collected hundreds of woodslips with inscriptions in Sanskrit and Tocharian. Pelliot arrived at the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang a year after Stein, where he acquired thousands of manuscripts from the 'Library Cave' (Cave 17), as well as hundreds of manuscripts and printed texts from Caves 464 and 465.[32] The items collected by Pelliot are held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and are divided into the following sub-collections:[33][34]
Pelliot Tibetan: 4,174 manuscripts and woodblock prints in Tibetan
Pelliot Chinese: about 3,000 scrolls, booklets, paintings and woodblock prints, and around 700 fragments, in Chinese
Pelliot Sanskrit: about 4,000 fragments in Sanskrit
Pelliot Kuchean: about 2,000 woodslips and paper fragments in Tocharian
Pelliot Sogdian: about 40 Sogdian manuscripts
Pelliot Uighur: about 20 Uyghur manuscripts
Pelliot Khotanais: Khotanese manuscripts
Pelliot Xixia: more than 200 items in the Tangut script, mostly woodblock prints (all discvovered in Cave 464 in March 1908)[35]
Pelliot divers: miscellaneous items
The Kozlov Collection
Pyotr Kozlov (1863–1935) made an expedition to the Tangut fortress city of Khara-Khoto during 1907–1909. The city had been abandoned in the late 14th century,[36] and had been largely buried in sand for several hundred years. Kozlov unearthed thousands of manuscripts and woodblock prints, mostly written in the dead Tangut language, which had been preserved beneath the sands of Khara-Khoto. The collection of Tangut texts that Kozlov brought back from Khara-Khoto were originally housed in the museum of Alexander III of Russia in St Petersburg, but were transferred to the Asiatic Museum in 1911. They are now held at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg. In addition to the several thousand Tangut texts, the Kozlov Collection includes about 660 manuscripts and printed books in Chinese, mostly Buddhist texts.[37]
The site of Khara-Khoto was excavated by Aurel Stein in 1917, during his third expedition, and several thousand Tangut manuscript fragments recovered by Stein are in the Stein Collection of the British Library.[37]
The Oldenburg Collections
Sergey Oldenburg (1863–1934), who was the first director of the Institute of Oriental Studies (formerly the Asiatic Museum) in St Petersburg, made two expeditions to Central Asia (1909–1910 and 1914–1915), which were to become known as the 'Russian Turkestan expeditions'. During the first expedition Oldenburg explored a number of sites around Turpan, including Shikchin, Yarkhoto and Kucha, and collected murals, paintings, terracottas, and about one hundred manuscripts, mostly fragments written in the Brahmi script. During his second expedition Oldenburg surveyed the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, and revisited some of the sites in Turpan that he had visited during his first expedition. He found a large number of artefacts and manuscript fragments (nearly 20,000 fragments, some of them tiny) at Dunhuang, and also purchased about 300 scrolls from local people.[37]
Oldenburg's collections are shared between the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts and the Hermitage Museum. The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts holds the more than 19,000 manuscript fragments and 365 manuscript scrolls collected from Dunhuang by Oldenburg, as well as about thirty manuscripts collected by Sergey Malov during an expedition to Khotan during 1909–1910, and some 183 Uyghur manuscripts collected by N. N. Krotkov, the Russian Consul in Urumqi and Ghulja.[37]
The Hermitage Museum holds artefacts from both of Oldenburg's expeditions, including 66 Buddhist banners and banner-tops, 137 fragments of Buddhist silk paintings, 43 fragments of Buddhist paintings on paper, 24 murals, 38 pieces of textile, and eight manuscript fragments. Oldenburg's personal papers, diaries, maps and photographs relating to the two expeditions are also held at the Hermitage.[37]
Dunhuang Collections at the National Library of China
During 1907–1908 Stein and Pelliot had visited Dunhuang, and had both purchased large quantities of manuscripts from Wang Yuanlu (c.1849–1931), a Taoist priest and self-proclaimed guardian of the Mogao Caves. News of the discovery of these manuscripts was brought to the attention of Chinese scholars when Pelliot visited Beijing in 1909, and the renowned scholar and antiquarian Luo Zhenyu (1866–1940) persuaded the Ministry of Education to recover the 8,000 or so remaining manuscripts. In 1910 Fu Baoshu 傅寶書 was dispatched to Dunhuang to bring the remaining manuscripts back to Beijing, although he left the Tibetan manuscripts behind. Some of the manuscripts were stolen by the minister Li Shengduo 李盛鐸 shortly after they had arrived at the Ministry of Education, but soon after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 the manuscripts were deposited in the newly founded Metropolitan Library (later to become the National Library of China).[38]
The 8,697 manuscripts that Fu Baoshu brought back from Dunhuang form the core of the Dunhuang collection in the National Library of China, but they have since been augmented by various purchases and donations over the years, so that the library collection now amounts to some 16,000 items, including 4,000 small manuscript fragments.[38]
The Ōtani Collections
Ōtani Kōzui (1876–1948) was a hereditary Buddhist abbot from Kyoto, Japan, but he had studied in London, and after meeting the explorers Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin (1865–1952) he decided to explore Central Asia himself from a Buddhist perspective. In 1902 he left England to return to Japan overland via St Petersburg, and together with four other returning Japanese students he made his way to Kashgar. From Kashgar the expedition divided into two groups, Ōtani and two others travelling to Srinagar and India, before returning to Japan; and the two others exploring the region of Khotan and Turpan, and excavating the previously unexplored site of Kucha, before returning to Japan in 1904. Ōtani became abbot of the Nishi Honganji Monastery in Kyoto on his father's death in 1903, and so was unable to personally take part in any further expeditions, but he financed further expeditions to Chinese Turkestan in 1908–1909 and 1910–1914. The final expedition excavated the tombs of Astana outside the ancient city of Gaochang, taking back to Japan nine mummies and many grave goods and funerary texts.[39]
The three Ōtani expeditions produced a large collection of manuscripts (especially Buddhist sutras), woodslips, murals, sculptures, textiles, coins, and seals. These items were originally deposited in the Nishi Honganji Monastery, and later at Ōtani's residence, Villa Niraku in Kobe, but in 1914 Ōtani resigned as abbot due to a bribery scandal, and much of his collection was moved to Ōtani's villa in Lüshun, China. His collection was later dispersed to various libraries, museums and collections across Japan, Korea, and China.[39]
The Omiya Library at Ryukoku University, Kyoto holds 8,000 miscellaneous items found in two wooden chests at Villa Niraku after Ōtani's death. These include manuscript scrolls, manuscript booklets, printed texts, wooden slips, silk paintings, textiles, plant specimens, coins, and rubbings. As well as Chinese texts, the collection includes documents written in 15 different languages and 13 different scripts, covering secular subjects as well as Manichaean Buddhist scriptures and Nestorian Christian texts.
Tokyo National Museum holds various items from the Ōtani expeditions, including Chinese and Uyghur manuscripts and woodslips from Turpan, Dunhuang and elsewhere, as well as paintings from Dunhuang and Turpan.
Otani University, Kyoto holds 38 Dunhuang manuscripts, including 34 from Ōtani's collection.
The Lüshun Museum in Dalian, China holds 16,035 Buddhist manuscript fragments from Turpan, as well as documents written in Brahmi, Sogdian, Tibetan, Tangut, and Uyghur.
The National Library of China in Beijing holds 621 Dunhuang scrolls transferred from the Lüshun Museum.
Four German expeditions to Turpan were made in the years 1902–1903, 1904–1905, 1905–1907, and 1913–1914, the first and third expeditions led by Albert Grünwedel (1856–1935), and the second and fourth expeditions led by Albert von Le Coq (1860–1930). These expeditions brought back to Berlin a huge amount of material, including murals and other artefacts, as well as about 40,000 manuscript and woodblock fragments written in more than twenty different scripts and languages. The items collected during these four expeditions are now divided between two institutions in Berlin.[41]
The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities holds about 6,000 Old Uyghur fragments, about 1,600 Chinese and Old Uyghur fragments, 800 Middle Persian and Old Turkic fragments (formerly in the collection of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature), 3,500 Manichaean fragments in various languages (primarily Middle Persian, Parthian, Old Turkic and Sogdian), about 1,000 Sogdian and Chinese/Sogdian fragments, and about 300 Sogdian fragments in the Nestorian script.
The Oriental Department of the Berlin State Library holds about 6,000 Chinese fragments, about 100 Mongolian fragments, about 300 Syriac fragments, about 200 Tibetan fragments, about 4,000 Tocharian fragments, and about 8,000 Sanskrit fragments.
The IDP has digitised over 14,000 items from these collection, mostly the Chinese, Brahmi and Sanskrit fragments. The Middle Persian, Old Turkic and Mongolian fragments have been digitised as part of the Digital Turfan Archive hosted by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Tocharian fragments have been digitised as part of the TITUS project of the Goethe University Frankfurt.
Notable items in the IDP database
The following are some of the notable items in the IDP database.
The earliest known fragments of an account of the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet during the reign of King Trisong Detsen (r. 755–797/804), dated to 9th or 10th centuries.
A year-by-year account of important events in Tibet during the years 650 to 764, dated back to 11th century.
Awards
In November 2010 the IDP was awarded the Casa Asia Award by the Spanish governmental consortium, Casa Asia, for its work in digitizing and preserving manuscripts.[42]
↑ Galambos, Imre (2015). Translating Chinese Tradition and Teaching Tangut Culture: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Khara-Khoto. DeGruter. pp.50–51. ISBN978-3-11-045395-9.
↑ Documents XiXia de Dunhuang conservés à la Bibliothèque nationale de France. Shanghai guji chubanshe. 2007. pp.12–13.
Sir Marc Aurel Stein, (Hungarian: Stein Márk Aurél; 26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943) was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, primarily known for his explorations and archaeological discoveries in Central Asia. He was also a professor at Indian universities.
Dunhuang is a county-level city in northwestern Gansu Province, Western China. According to the 2010 Chinese census, the city has a population of 186,027, though 2019 estimates put the city's population at about 191,800. Sachu (Dunhuang) was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road and is best known for the nearby Mogao Caves.
The Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples 25 km (16 mi) southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province, China. The caves may also be known as the Dunhuang Caves; however, this term is also used as a collective term to include other Buddhist cave sites in and around the Dunhuang area, such as the Western Thousand Buddha Caves, Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves, Yulin Caves, and Five Temple Caves. The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 2,000 years.
Turpan, generally known in English as Turfan, is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of 69,759 km2 (26,934 sq mi) and a population of 693,988 (2020). The historical center of the prefectural area has shifted a number of times, from Yar-Khoto to Qocho and to Turpan itself.
Augustus Frederic Rudolf Hoernlé CIE, also referred to as Rudolf Hoernle or A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, was a German Indologist and philologist. He is famous for his studies on the Bower Manuscript (1891), Weber Manuscript (1893) and other discoveries in northwestern China and Central Asia particularly in collaboration with Aurel Stein. Born in India to a Protestant missionary family from Germany, he completed his education in Switzerland, and studied Sanskrit in the United Kingdom. He returned to India, taught at leading universities there, and in the early 1890s published a series of seminal papers on ancient manuscripts, writing scripts and cultural exchange between India, China and Central Asia. His collection after 1895 became a victim of forgery by Islam Akhun and colleagues in Central Asia, a forgery revealed to him in 1899. He retired from the Indian office in 1899 and settled in Oxford, where he continued to work through the 1910s on archaeological discoveries in Central Asia and India. This is now referred to as the "Hoernle collection" at the British Library.
Paul Eugène Pelliot was a French Sinologist and Orientalist best known for his explorations of Central Asia and the Silk Road regions, and for his acquisition of many important Tibetan Empire-era manuscripts and Chinese texts at the Sachu printing center storage caves (Dunhuang), known as the Dunhuang manuscripts.
Wang Yuanlu was a Taoist priest and abbot of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang during the early 20th century. He is credited with the discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts and was engaged in the restoration of the site, which he funded with the sale of numerous manuscripts to Western and Japanese explorers.
The Sogdian language was an Eastern Iranian language spoken mainly in the Central Asian region of Sogdia, located in modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; it was also spoken by some Sogdian immigrant communities in ancient China. Sogdian is one of the most important Middle Iranian languages, along with Bactrian, Khotanese Saka, Middle Persian, and Parthian. It possesses a large literary corpus.
Khara-Khoto, also known as Heishuicheng or Heishui City, is an abandoned city in the Ejin Banner of Alxa League in western Inner Mongolia, China, near the Juyan Lake Basin. Built in 1032, the city thrived under the rule of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo, and Ejin Banner is named after this city.
The Astana Cemetery is an ancient cemetery 37 kilometers (23 mi) southeast of Turpan, in Xinjiang, China, 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) from the ancient city of Gaochang. It served mainly as the cemetery for the descendants of Chinese settlers in Gaochang from the 4th century to the first half of the 8th century. The complex covers 10 square kilometres (3.9 sq mi) and contains over 1,000 tombs. Due to the arid environment many important artifacts have been well preserved at the tombs, including natural mummies.
The Tocharian script, also known as Central Asian slanting Gupta script or North Turkestan Brāhmī, is an abugida which uses a system of diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. Part of the Brahmic scripts, it is a version of the Indian Brahmi script. It is used to write the Central Asian Indo-European Tocharian languages, mostly from the 8th century that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets and Chinese paper, preserved by the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin. Samples of the language have been discovered at sites in Kucha and Karasahr, including many mural inscriptions. Mistakenly identifying the speakers of this language with the Tokharoi people of Tokharistan, early authors called these languages "Tocharian". This naming has remained, although the names Agnean and Kuchean have been proposed as a replacement.
Dunhuang manuscripts refer to a wide variety of religious and secular documents in Tibetan, Chinese, and other languages that were discovered by Frenchman Paul Pelliot and British man Aurel Stein at the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China, from 1906 to 1909. The majority of the surviving texts come from a large cache of documents produced at the historic printing center between the late 4th and early 11th centuries, which had been sealed in the so-called 'Library Cave' at some point in the early 11th century. The printing center at Sachu (Dunhuang) was also Tibet's imperial printing house during the 8th and 9th centuries, when Tibet controlled the Silk Roads.
Eric Douglas Grinstead was a New Zealand sinologist and Tangutologist, who was best known for his analysis of the Tangut script.
Susan Whitfield is a British scholar, currently Professor in Silk Road Studies at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC), University of East Anglia. She previously worked at the British Library in London, England. She specialises in the history and archaeology of the Silk Road but has also written on human rights and censorship in China.
The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (IOM) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, formerly the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is a research institute in Saint Petersburg, Russia that houses various collections of manuscripts and early printed material in Asian languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Tangut.
The Kumtura Thousand Buddha Caves is a Buddhist cave temple site in the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China. The site is located some 25 km west of Kucha, Kuqa County, on the ancient Silk Road. Other famous sites nearby are the Kizilgaha caves, the Kizil Caves, Subashi Temple and the Simsim caves.
Mazar Tagh is the site of a ruined hill fort in the middle of the Taklamakan desert, dating from the time of the Tibetan Empire. Like the Miran fort site, its excavation has yielded hundreds of military documents from the 8th and 9th century, which are among the earliest surviving Tibetan manuscripts, and vital sources for understanding the early history of Tibet. The site is now located north of the modern city of Hotan in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.
Tangutology or Tangut studies is the study of the culture, history, art and language of the ancient Tangut people, especially as seen through the study of contemporaneous documents written by the Tangut people themselves. As the Tangut language was written in a unique and complex script and the spoken language became extinct, the cornerstone of Tangut studies has been the study of the Tangut language and the decipherment of the Tangut script.
The Guiyi Circuit, also known as the Guiyi Army, Golden Mountain Kingdom of Western Han, Dunhuang Kingdom of Western Han, was a Chinese regional military command and later an autonomous dynastic regime nominally subordinate to the Tang dynasty, the Five Dynasties, and the Northern Song dynasty. The Guiyi Circuit was controlled by the Zhang family from the second half of the 9th century to the 10th century and then the Cao family until the 11th century. The Guiyi Circuit was headquartered in Shazhou.
The Dunhuang Research Academy, originally the National Research Institute on Dunhuang Art, is a "national comprehensive institution" responsible for overseeing the Mogao Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located near Dunhuang in Gansu, China. Established in 1944 by the Nationalist government, it continues to oversee day-to-day management of the site as well as preservation and research projects.
Carpenter, Leona; Shaw, Simon; Prescott, Andrew (1998). Towards the digital library: the British Library's Initiatives for Access programme. London: British Library. ISBN978-0-7123-4540-8.
Whitfield, Roderick; Farrer, Anne (1990). Cave of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese art from the Silk Route. London: British Museum. ISBN978-0-7141-1447-7.
Whitfield, Roderick; Whitfield, Susan (2000). Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Art and History on the Silk Road. London: British Library. ISBN978-0-7123-4697-9.
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