The Calligraphy of Wang Xizhi

Above: Or.8210/S.3753 — British Library manuscript featuring copies of no. 3 (Longbao tie 龍保帖) and no. 8 (Zhanjin tie 瞻近帖) from Wang Xizhi’s Shiqitie.

Below: Pelliot chinois 4642 — Bibliothèque nationale de France manuscript featuring a copy of no.23 (Zhanji hutao tie 旃罽胡桃帖) from Wang Xizhi’s Shiqitie.

The fourth-century calligrapher Wang Xizhi (王羲之, 303–361) became known in China as the 'Sage of Calligraphy' for his mastery of all calligraphic forms, in particular semi-cursive script (行书). His work was prized by calligraphers, collectors and emperors, both for its artistry and its rarity. As none of his original work is known to have survived, it was through rubbings, tracings and copies that his legacy was secured as generations of calligraphers tried to emulate his distinctive style.

Even in Dunhuang, on the opposite side of China from his native province of Shandong, we know of at least two manuscripts that have been identified as copies of Wang Xizhi’s work. One of these is now in the Stein Collection at the British Library and the other, first identified by Pelliot, is at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Dating back to the Tang period (618–907), these manuscripts show three parts of the Shiqitie (十七帖), a model work in cursive script consisting of letters and other miscellaneous texts and named after the first two characters of the original piece.

Copies of Wang Xizhi's work continue to be identified and to make headlines. As recently as January 2013, a fragment of a letter held in a private Japanese collection was identified by specialists at the Tokyo National Museum as an expert copy of a Wang Xizhi original. It was promptly displayed in the museum's exhibition Wang Xizhi: Master Calligrapher, which ran from 22 January to 3 March 2013.

These manuscripts will feature in The Calligraphy of Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi (王羲之王獻之書法全集), to be published in June 2013 by the Forbidden City Publishing House.

IDP Jobs: Digital Imaging Assistants

IDP is looking for part time Imaging Assistants with Photoshop experience. For full details see the British Library careers pages.

IDP Report January–March 2013

Staff

• We were very sorry to say goodbye to Abby Baker and Rachel Roberts, both of whom had been with IDP for over ten years. We wish them well in their new roles. We welcomed Josef Konczak (JK) to replace Rachel as IDP Studio Manager.
• Interns from University College London were interviewed for a placement with IDP in May. Two interns will be joining us then.

Cataloguing, Digitisation and Data Consolidation

• The number of digital images available through IDP exceeded 400,000. Recent additions included Chinese manuscript scrolls from Dunhuang in the National Library of China (search for BD), photographs from the Sven Hedin collections in Sweden (search for 1034.00), and Tibetan pothi from the Stein collection at the British Library (search for IOL Tib J).
• Work started on digitising nitrate negatives showing Tibet from the Bailey Collection at the British Library. These can be seen by searching for Neg 1083.
• Emma Goodliffe has completed data checking and consolidation on several sequences of Uighur, Khotanese, Sanskrit and other manuscript fragments and these are now scheduled for digitisation. The consolidated data are being imported into the new data structure.

Conferences and Lectures

• 19–20 January: Susan Whitfield (SW) took part in a workshop at Birmingham University of the AHRC network ‘Defining the Global Middle Ages’.
• 21–28 January: SW visited Chicago, Minneapolis and New York. She held meetings with partners and potential funders, as well as teaching at the ‘Early Globalities’ graduate seminar at the University of Minnesota. In New York she gave a talk on the Silk Road explorations and IDP for the Dunhuang Foundation at the Asia Society.
• 6–7 Feb: John Falconer (JF), Vic Swift (VS) and SW attended the Royal Geographical Society AHRC workshop Re-enacting the Silk Road: Geographies and Geographers of Central Asia and the Silk Road. SW gave a talk about Aurel Stein.
• 8 March: Sam van Schaik (SvS) and SW helped organise an IDP Wikipedia Editathon in Nottingham University, along with Professors Mike Heffernan and Julian Henderson, as part of the AHRC-funded IDP project Contextualizing Texts.
• 9–16 March: VS and SW visited Korea and Japan for partner meetings. They attended an international workshop on palaeography held by IDP’s partners at Ryukoku University, Kyoto and met with existing and potential collaborating institutions in Tokyo, Kyoto and Seoul to discuss present and future plans. In addition, they met the IDP Academic Advisory Committee at the Research Institute of Korean Studies at the Korea University.
• 14–15 March: SvS went to Berlin to attend a seminar organised by Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst (Head of Turfan Research Group, BBAW and IDP Germany) to discuss tripartite cooperation between IDP Germany, the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (IOM) and the Hermitage, St Petersburg. There were two days of presentations finishing with a roundtable discussion.

Collaborations and Projects

• Franck Lebourgeois and Yann Leydier met with VS, SW and SvS to discuss their newly funded project between the University of Lyon and Tsinghua University, Beijing, with the cooperation of the IDP Beijing and IDP France. This is a CNRS project under the NSFC program and provides funds for three years to develop image processing tools and pattern recognition systems for a robust Optical Character Recognition suited for old Chinese manuscripts. Langruia Peng from Tsinghua University, Beijing joined the meeting by Skype.
• Professor Daniel C. Waugh, University of Washington visited IDP to discuss the two websites under his management, namely the Silk Road Seattle site and the Silk Road Foundation site.
• Dr Takeuchi Tsuguhito visited SvS and SW to discuss the completion of cataloguing of Tibetan woodslips with Iwao Kazushi, and the preparation of a catalogue of Tibetan texts from Kharakhoto and Etsin-gol for publication in 2015.
• Dr Wang Shumin’s volume of transcriptions, notes and images of the medical manuscripts from Dunhuang in the British Library was published and a copy received by IDP, following several years of collaboration.

Fundraising

• The AHRC-funded project Contextualizing Texts was completed and a full report and budget are currently being prepared.
• IDP is exploring potential grants for the continuation of its core work — conservation, cataloguing, digitisation, research and outreach. We will be submitting applications over the next few months.
• A fundraising drive for individuals through the IDP Supporters and Sponsor a Sutra schemes is also planned. A new publicity leaflet is shortly going to press and work will shortly be completed on an online payment system for donations.
• IDP is seeking funding for an annual named lecture series on the Silk Road.

Training

• 23 January: The IDP team attended Collection Care Training at the British Library on handling manuscripts.
• During January and February Emma Goodliffe (EG) attended a series of Digital Scholarship training days, organized by the British Library, which covered a series of topics such as social media, information integration, geo-referencing and metadata.
• 14 February: VS and EG attended a training day on the Text Encoding Initiative held at the British Library.
• 26 February: SW and Sarah Mullan (SM) met with Colleen Harrison to discuss Record Management.
• 27 February: JK attended an Access and Reuse policy workshop organized by the British Library.
• 19-20 March: JK undertook Phase One Camera & Software training.

Forthcoming Events

• 15 May: There will be an event for IDP patrons and supporters in the British Library. This will showcase the work that IDP have been doing on field trips to Xinjiang and encourage support for a forthcoming exhibition of old and new photographs at the Royal Geographical Society (Jan–March 2014) as well as other future work.

Manuscripts under the microscope

A few years ago Sam van Schaik (IDP) and Agnieszka Helman-Wazny (Hamburg University) started a small project on the Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang. They developed a plan to combine the results of Agnieszka's scientific analysis of the paper used in the Tibetan manuscripts with Sam's work on the textual and palaeographical aspects of the manuscripts. Selecting a group of fifty manuscripts, put everything they could find out about them into a table, and studied at the patterns that emerged. One of the most interesting results was the suggestion that manuscripts that had been brought to Dunhuang from Tibet itself were made in a different way to those made locally at Dunhuang. Though more work needs to be done, this opens up the possibility of ‘fingerprinting’ a manuscript to find out where it was made.

Read more about the project here.

The image above shows a microscopic image of Paper Mulberry fibres, more examples of Agnieszka Helman-Wazny's images of paper fibres from a Dunhuang manuscript can be found on the IDP website.

Toghrak – A Tree with Many Uses

In 1901 in Khotan on his way back from his first expedition to Central Asia, Aurel Stein tracked down and questioned Islum Akhun about his manuscript forgeries. These had been sold as genuine fragments to the Russian and British Consuls in Kashgar by Islam Akhun and his colleague for about a decade. Islum Akhun gave a detailed description of how he made the forgeries, including the dyeing process.

The sheets of modern Khotan paper were first dyed yellow or light brown by means of ‘Toghrugha’, a product of the Toghrak (or Toghraq) tree, which, when dissolved in water, gives a staining fluid.’ (M. Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan, 512).

‘Toghraq’ is the Uygur name for the black poplar tree (Populus euphratica Oliv., Populus diversifolia Schrenk, Huyang 胡杨 in Chinese) and ‘Toghrugha’ refers to its sap. When the bark is cut the sap flows and forms into lumps. This has traditionally been used by the Uygurs as baking soda in cooking and in soap, and is listed as a medicine in Uygur and Chinese materia medica, but its use as a dye was also known.

IDP received samples of various parts of the Toghrak tree some years ago from a scholar in Xinjiang and recently Richard A. Laursen, Professor Emeritus in Bioorganic and Protein Chemistry at Boston University, agreed to analyze them. However, none were found to contain colorants. They did however produce a dark liquid that could have been used, like tea, to stain the paper brown.

Professor Laursen reports that there is also some evidence that the leaves are used to prepare a yellow dye, as chromatographic profiles of extracts of textiles from Cherchen and Loulan are similar to those from a related poplar tree from the region, Populus pruinosa Schrenk, and not to other known sources of yellow dyes.

For an audioboo of the sound of walking over autumnal Toghrak leaves on IDP's 2011 Field Trip on route back from Karadong, see below.

listen to ‘Walking on Toghrag leaves’ on Audioboo

IDP User Survey Report

The IDP User Survey Summary Report is now available on the IDP website and as a PDF for download. The survey was online during May/June 2012 and gave IDP users the opportunity to give feedback about the website and its content. A full list of responses is also available online.

New Videos

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Conserving the Diamond Sutra

The British Library recently completed a decade-long project to conserve the oldest dated printed book in the work, a scroll copy in Chinese of the Buddhist text, The Diamond Sutra from the Silk Road town of Dunhuang dated to May 868. This short film, made by the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, tells of the story of the sutra scroll, its science and its conservation.

Read more about the Diamond Sutra

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Donor Profile: PK Lom Pabhassaro

The Venerable Phra Kru Samu Lom from the Buddhapadipa Temple in Wimbledon, London, introduces his life at the temple and his support for the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, enabling the project to digitise and make freely accessible online Buddhist manuscripts from a Library Cave at the Silk Road town of Dunhuang.

Read more about sponsoring the digitisation of a sutra

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More films made by IDP are available on our YouTube channel.