Shaping the Stein collection’s Dunhuang corpus (2): the items from Cave 17’s ‘miscellaneous’ bundles

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In a previous blog post , we looked at the instrumental role played by Wang Yuanlu during the selection of the items from the Cave 17. Wang, who directly chose from the small repository what to hand over to Stein for inspection, was very keen to divert his attention from the so-called ‘regular’ bundles, which were composed for the most part of Buddhist sutras in Chinese and Tibetan. During their first ever transaction, which took place between 21 May and 6 June 1907, Wang Yuanlu therefore began by handing over the ‘miscellaneous’ bundles, which he seemed to hold in low estimation. To Stein’s delight, these contained mixed and diverse materials, such as manuscripts in non-Chinese languages, illustrated scrolls, paintings, drawings, ex-votos, textiles, etc. Stein picked out any of the items that jumped at him as being particularly interesting and made sure to put them aside for ‘further examination’, the phrase that he used to refer to their removal in his transaction with Wang. This
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New Studies of the Old Tibetan Documents

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One of IDP's partners is the Japan-based OTDO (Old Tibetan Documents Online). They have just published the third volume of their monograph series: New Studies of the Old Tibetan Documents: Philology, History and Religion. The volume contains 11 articles by some of the leading scholars in the study of early Tibetan linguistics, history and religions. Sam van Schaik's article, "A New Look at the Invention of the Tibetan Script," is the result of IDP's recently completed project on the paleography of the Dunhuang manuscripts. For details of the publication, click on the link above or email otdo.office@gmail.com.

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