International Dunhuang Project

Early Tibet: The First Tibetan Buddhist Biographies?

2012-01-25T11:45:00.003Z

The vast amount of biographical and autobiographical literature produced in Tibet over the centuries is an interesting phenomenon. For a culture so pervaded by the Buddha’s teaching of non-self, there is an awful lot of writing about the lives of individuals. And, interestingly, this is something that was not done to the same extent in India, the primary source of Tibetan Buddhism. Biographical writing in Tibet began in earnest after the ‘later diffusion’ of Buddhism from the eleventh century onwards, in new lineages like the Kadam and Kagyu. So we don’t have much in the Dunhuang collections that could be called ‘religious biography’, but what we do have is intriguing, and I’d like to point out two manuscripts which might help us understand the origins of Tibetan Buddhist biographical writing.

Read more here.

New Publication: Manuscripts and Travellers

2011-12-16T15:59:00.005Z

This new book by IDP's Sam van Schaik and Imre Galambos is based on a Dunhuang manuscript which was carried by a Chinese monk through the monasteries of the Hexi corridor, as part of his pilgrimage from Wutaishan to India. The manuscript is a composite object from three separate documents, with Chinese and Tibetan texts on them. The most important part is a series of Tibetan letters of introduction addressed to the heads of monasteries along the route, functioning as a kind of passport for the pilgrim. The manuscript dates to the late 960s, coinciding with the large pilgrimage movement during the reign of Emperor Taizu of the Northern Song. Therefore, it is very likely that this is a unique contemporary testimony of the movement. Complementing extant historical sources, the manuscript provides evidence for the high degree of ethnic, cultural and linguistic interaction between Chinese and Tibetan Buddhists in the tenth century. Available from the publisher's website.

IDP Field Trip 2011

2011-12-14T11:08:00.000Z

Members of the IDP UK team recently travelled to Xinjiang to visit the ancient sites of Niya and Karadong. In collaboration with the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology and local guides IDP spent time documenting the sites. We are working to make this material available on the IDP database as soon as possible but general photography of the trip can already be seen on our Flickr group page and several Audioboos can be heard here.

The photograph above was taken at the house of Kaysar Mahmut, guardian of Niya site, in Kapak Askan village. It shows him (third from left) with members of his family, the IDP UK team and the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology.

New manuscripts from the Royal Library of Copenhagen on IDP

2011-12-08T15:03:00.001Z

16 Dunhuang manuscripts in 14 rolls are now available on IDP. Donated by Arthur Bollerup Sørensen (1880–1932) in 1915, the collection contains a Daoist manuscript and a text believed to be unique. MSS 12 and 16 have colophons.

View the catalogue online or search for 'Holding Institute = Det Kongelige Bibliotek' on our Advanced Search page.

IDP UK Offline

2011-12-07T12:11:00.001Z

The IDP UK Server will be offline for approximately one hour today for essential maintenance. Our international servers are available as usual. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Niya: 'The Pompeii of the East'

2011-11-26T06:35:00.008Z

When Aurel Stein first uncovered the vestiges of a once thriving kingdom along the Niya River deep in the Taklamakan, he described it as 'The Pompeii of the East.' But although the ancient Romans and the people of Cadota - the name of the Niya kingdom - shared a love of the grape, the sites are very different. Life in Pompeii was arrested by the lava. The sands of the Taklamakan, while no less invidious, invaded over time. There are cemeteries at Niya but the living community had already left before the sands seeped in.

Working in collaboration with the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology, the IDP team has just returned from Niya and the documentary photographs and videos showing many of the sites of Niya - and the caravanserai of Karadong - will be soon start becoming available online on IDP and here.

Early Tibet: Dzogchen and Chan

2011-11-22T15:39:00.004Z

I’ve written four posts on Tibetan Chan without mentioning the question of whether the Chinese meditation tradition known as Chan influenced the Tibetan meditation tradition known as Dzogchen. Or, to put it in the stronger version, whether Dzogchen is just a disguised form of Chan. Partly, I’ve left the question alone because it doesn’t seem that interesting to me. It seems evident that if you spend a while with Chan and Dzogchen texts from the time when the influence is supposed to have taken place (the 8th/9th centuries) that there is one clear difference between the two: they are in dialogue with two different scriptural bases. That is to say, Chan is a tradition in dialogue with the sutras, while Dzogchen is in dialogue with the tantras.

IDP Report: July–September 2011

2011-10-28T14:25:00.000+01:00

Download this report as a PDF (250KB).

CATALOGUING AND DIGITISATION

IDP photographer Rachel Roberts is currently digitising photographs from Aurel Stein’s fourth expedition to Dunhuang as well as continuing work on Dunhuang manuscripts.
Data on archaeological sites is currently being updated following an enhancement of the database. Miran, Endere and Kharakhoto are near completion.

COLLABORATIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS

2–13 July: Susan Whitfield visited Afghanistan with John Falconer for meetings at the Ministry of Information and Culture, Kabul University, the National Archives and the National Museum, to discuss the development of an updated guide to resources on Afghanistan in the British Library. They continued to Delhi where they interviewed interns for the IDP/British Museum Stein artefacts project, and held continued discussions with the National Museum and the Ministry of Culture about collaboration on Central Asian material.
2 September: A new scholarly resource for manuscript studies was launched on the IDP website, providing an introduction to the script types found in the Chinese and Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang. This was achieved as part of as part of IDP’s Leverhulme palaeography project (2008 to 2011).
26 September: Hu Wanglin arrived for a six-month internship as part of IDP’s collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China. Funding has again been provided by the British Museum’s World Collections Programme.
The BL received a donation of 1940s photographs of Dunhuang taken by John B. Vincent, scheduled for cataloguing and digitisation.

VISITORS TO IDP

14 July: Dr Sarah Kenderdine from the Applied Laboratory for Interactive Visualization and Embodiment (ALiVE) at the City University of Hong Kong visited to discuss immersive technologies.
14 July: Three researchers from LIRIS (Informatics Laboratory for Imaging and Information Systems, based in Lyon, France) visited to discuss automated character recognition systems.
Rebbekah Abraham and Tony Morris from Historypin visited to discuss adding historical and modern photographs to the Historypin website.
5–8 September: Dr Helman-Wazny from Hamburg’s Institute of Sinology made a follow-up visit relating to her earlier paper analysis work (IDP quarterly report for April to June 2011).
7 September: The BL’s Head of Architecture and Development, Sean Martin, visited the IDP studio with members of his team to see digitisation work in progress.
7 September: Benjamin Albritton of Stanford University Libraries and Dr Robert Sanderson of Los Alamos National Laboratory, both working on the Shared Canvas Project visited IDP to discuss user annotation of manuscripts, after their presentation to BL staff on Shared Canvas: Interoperable Medieval Manuscript Facsimiles.
12 September: Professor Ishizuka Harumichi and Professor Ikeda Shoju, from Hokkaido University, Japan, visited IDP and consulted Dunhuang manuscripts in the Asian and African Studies reading room.
11–19th September: Vic Swift accompanied the BL’s visual arts lead curator John Falconer to Sri Lanka, to assist in the installation of his exhibition A Return to Sri Lanka: Images of Sri Lanka from British Collections 1640–1900, for which she designed the exhibition graphics panels.

LECTURES

9–10 September: Sam van Schaik gave a paper at a SOAS conference entitled Bon, Shangshung and Early Tibet.
11 September: Abby Baker spoke about IDP to students attending BL Learning Department workshops.
21 September: Susan Whitfield spoke about IDP to members of the Buddhist Society, London.
15–16 October: Imre Galambos gave a talk entitled ‘Medieval Chinese Manuscripts with Multiple Dates’ at The Rise of Writing in Early China conference in Chicago.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

IDP News 36-37, Winter / Spring 2010–2011.
Imre Galambos, ‘The Tangut Translation of the General’s Garden by Zhuge Liang’, in Pis’mennyje Pamjatniki Vostoka, St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, 2011.
Imre Galambos, ‘The Northern Neighbours of the Tangut’, in Cahiers de Linguistique – Asie Orientale 40 (2011): 69-104.
Imre Galambos, ‘Touched a Nation’s Heart: Sir E. Denison Ross and Alexander Csoma de Kőrös’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 21.3 (2011): 361-375.

FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS

Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan Documents of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim by Sam van Schaik and Imre Galambos is due for publication by de Gruyter in November.
Imre Galambos: ‘Punctuation marks in medieval Chinese manuscripts’, in Sobisch and Quenzer (eds.), Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, Berlin and New York, de Gruyter.
Imre Galambos: ‘Correction marks in the Dunhuang manuscripts’, in Imre Galambos (ed.)Chinese manuscripts: Copies and Originals, Budapest, ELTE University.
Imre Galambos: ‘Popular character forms (suzi) and semantic compound (huiyi) characters in medieval Chinese manuscripts’, Journal of the American Oriental Society.
Imre Galambos: ‘Japanese exploration of Central Asia: The Ōtani expeditions and their British connections’, Bulletin of SOAS.
Sam van Schaik: ‘Towards a Tibetan Paleography: A Preliminary Typology of Writing Styles in Early Tibet.’ Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, edited by Jörg Quenzer and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Sam van Schaik: ‘The Origin of the Headless Style (dbu med) in Tibet.’ Tibeto-Burman Linguistics, edited by Nathan Hill. Leiden: EJ Brill.
Sam van Schaik and André Alexander: ‘The Stone Maitreya of Leh: The Rediscovery and Recovery of an Early Tibetan Monument’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. October 2011.
Susan Whitfield. Contribution on Buddhist sites on the Eastern Silk Road for The Cambridge World History of Religious Architect: Buddhist Volume.
Susan Whitfield, ‘Creating a Codicology for Chinese and Tibetan Manuscripts’ for the Proceedings of the Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies.

Partners' Meeting in Dunhuang

2011-10-19T17:12:00.000+01:00

At the IDP partners' meeting, generously hosted by the Dunhuang Academy from 11–13 October 2011, representatives from IDP Centres around the world met to discuss IDP's future direction. Presentations and lively discussion took place over the two days of the meeting and continued during the visits to local sites.

A full report will be given in the next issue of IDP News.

Pictured front row (left to right):

Yoshihiro Okada, Director of the Digital Archives Research Centre, Ryukoku University
Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, Director of the Turfan Research Group, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities
Li Xiao, Director, Turfan Museum/Academy
Susan Whitfield, Director, IDP UK, The British Library
Wang Xudong, Executive Vice-Director, Dunhuang Academy
Lin Shitian, Researcher, National Library of China
Nathalie Monnet, Curator of Chinese Collections, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Khasim Anwar, Vice-Director, Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology
Yong-chul Choe, Director, Research Institute of Korean Studies

Back row (left to right):

Sheng Yanhai, Head of IDP, Dunhuang Academy
Lou Jie, Director, Exhibition Centre, Dunhuang Academy
Liang Xushu, IDP Imaging Assistant, Dunhuang Academy
Liu Zhijia, Research Assistant, Turfan Academy
Shouji Sakamoto, Researcher, Ryukoku University/British Library
Yoon-hee Hong, Research Professor, Research Institute of Korean Studies
Chunhee Wu, Researcher, Research Institute of Korean Studies
Ma De, Director, Document Research Institute, Dunhuang Academy
Barbara Meisterernst, Researcher, Humboldt-University
Agnieszka Helman-Wazny, Paper scientist, Hamburg University
Alastair Morrison, International Manager, IDP UK, The British Library
Birgit Schlyter, Director, South and Central Asian Studies, Stockholm University
Ann Olsen, Photograph Archivist, Ethnography Museum, Stockholm
Vic Swift, International and Technical Manager, IDP UK, The British Library
Yang Xiuqing, Secretary General, Researcher, China Dunhuang Cave Preservation Research Foundation, Dunhuang Academy
Luo Huaqing, Vice-Director, Dunhuang Academy
Zhang Yuanlin, Director, Information and Resources Centre, Dunhuang Academy
Liu Gang, Vice-Director, Digital Centre, Dunhuang Academy
Taeshik Shim, Senior Research Fellow, Manager, Office of International Affairs, Research Institute of Korean Studies
Liu Bo, Researcher/ Head of IDP Beijing, National Library of China

IDP News Issue No. 36–37 now online

2011-10-19T15:15:00.000+01:00

IDP News Issue No. 36–37, Winter/Spring 2010–11 is now available online. This issue covers the launch of the IDP Seoul website featuring the keynote address by Professor Mair and articles from Korean scholars.

In this issue we also report on links being developed with institutions in Afghanistan to make resources held in the British Library accessible to all.

Sacred Texts on the Silk Road

2011-10-13T13:40:00.006+01:00

As a new addition to the popular Sacred Texts workshop, run by the British Library learning team for school years 7–13, groups are now offered the option of a Sacred Texts on the Silk Road add-on.

This hour-long session, run by a member of the International Dunhuang Project, will introduce students to some of the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts that were uncovered in Dunhuang and other Silk Road sites in northwest China in the early twentieth century, and use them to explore how important the Silk Road was as a conduit for religion and ideas through the first millennium.

Interested schools should contact the BL learning team for more details, and to book.

Image: Book of Buddha's Names Or.8210/S.253.

Two frogs, a thousand years apart

2011-09-27T13:40:00.002+01:00

A while ago I wrote about a Tibetan spellbook, a grimoire if you like, dating back to the ninth or tenth century. This compendium of spells is written in a tiny hand on long leaves of paper that have been stitched in the middle, creating a makeshift booklet. Across the front, the owner has written his name in big letters. Clearly this was a compendium of rituals that was owned and used by this person, and from his name, we can tell that he was a Buddhist monk. Probably, he made some kind of a living from performing these rituals for local people. Some might be shocked that a Buddhist monk would stoop to such things – and that was the subject of a discussion on one Buddhist forum that picked up on this post. But if you’ve read any anthropological or archeological studies of Buddhist communities, you probably wouldn’t be surprised.

Read the full post at earlytibet.com

IDP France offline

2011-09-07T17:58:00.000+01:00

IDP France will be offline 9–12th September for essential maintenance. Our other servers will be available as usual.

New online resource for Tibetan and Chinese manuscripts

2011-09-02T13:46:00.004+01:00

A new scholarly resource for manuscript studies has been launched by IDP. It provides an introduction into the script types found in the Chinese and Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang. Each type of script is described, with examples, and a transcription exercise.

The resource is the result of the palaeographic project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and was developed by Imre Galambos, Sam van Schaik and Vic Swift. It can be found here on the Technical Resources page of the IDP website.

A 100 year Dunhuang flood

2011-06-27T10:29:00.003+01:00

More here at the NUAMPS blog.

Dunhuang conference in Paris

2011-06-20T20:39:00.002+01:00

On 14-16 June 2011 a conference was held in Paris on recent achievements in Dunhuang studies, with the title "Rencontres franco-chinoises sur les Etudes de Dunhuang: Actualité de la recherche et publications récentes." The conference was organized by the UMR and EFEO and was held at Collège de France (first day) and EFEO (second day). Participants principally included French researchers and Chinese guests from the Dunhuang Academy, although Helen Wang of the British Museum and IDP's Imre Galambos also gave papers.

The full programme of the conference can be accessed here in PDF format.

In the afternoon of the second day participants visited the Musée Guimet and were shown paintings on textile from the Pelliot collection. On the third day they visited the Bibliothèque nationale de France where they had a chance to see some of the rare manuscript treasures from Dunhuang.

Previously Unpublished Silk Road Manuscripts Now Available Online

2011-06-17T16:37:00.002+01:00

Completion of Digitisation of Dunhuang Chinese Manuscript Fragments in the British Library (Or.8210/S.8401-13891)

In 1987 the British Library hosted scholars from the Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. They came with a proposal to produce a facsimile edition of non-Buddhist Chinese manuscripts from Dunhuang, to include previously unpublished fragments. The resulting joint Sino-British project conserved all the remaining fragments, including the Buddhist material. This resulted in 6136 more manuscripts becoming available for study.

Thanks to the grant from the Research Institute of Korean Studies, IDP has now completed the digitisation of these fragments, resulting in the publication, for the first time, of most of this material with over 13,000 more images online.

Further information will be available in the next issue of IDP News.

New book on the history of Tibet

2011-06-03T11:26:00.003+01:00

Tibet: A History, by Sam van Schaik (of IDP UK) is a history of Tibet from the glory days of the Tibetan empire in the seventh century through to the present day. The early chapters draw upon the author's research in the Dunhuang collections. The book also explores the emergence of Tibetan Buddhism and the rise of the Dalai Lamas, Tibet's entanglement in the 'Great Game' in the early twentieth century, its submission to Chinese Communist rule in the 1950s, and the troubled times of recent decades.

New Studies of the Old Tibetan Documents

2011-05-24T09:48:00.003+01:00

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.

China under Tibetan Rule

2011-05-11T12:13:00.004+01:00

We’ve become accustomed to thinking Tibet in terms of its present status, subsumed by China, so it’s interesting to consider the time when Tibet was an occupying force in parts of China. It’s fairly well-known that the Tibetan army was once a very effective war machine that even got as far as occupying the Chinese capital in 763. But what was it like to be a person of Chinese background living under Tibetan occupation?

Read the rest of this post on earlytibet.com.

Seminar day on the Christian library from Turfan and the ‘mother church’ in Mesopotamia

2011-05-03T15:22:00.005+01:00

Between 1902-1914 the German Turfan Expedition unearthed a library at the monastery site of Bulayïq in Turfan (north-west China) that yielded over 1000 Syriac, Christian Sogdian and Christian Uighur manuscript fragments written in the Syriac script. This wealth of material was brought to Berlin where it was preserved in various locations. Since April 2008, this remarkable collection has been catalogued by an AHRC-funded project, The Christian Library from Turfan.

SATURDAY 28th MAY 2011 at The Khalili Lecture Theatre
SCHOOL of ORIENTAL and AFRICAN STUDIES Thornhaugh St., Russell Square London WC1H 0XG

PROGRAMME

Morning Session. [10.30 A.M. –1.00 P.M.]
Dr. Erica C D Hunter (SOAS) Syriac prayer-amulets from Turfan.
Prof. Peter Zieme (Berlin) Old Uighur Christian texts between Turfan and Kharakhoto.
Dr. Mark Dickens (SOAS) Biblical texts from Turfan: Psalters and lectionaries.
Prof. Nicholas Sims-Williams FBA (SOAS) The contribution of Christian Sogdian texts to Syriac literature.

Afternoon Session. [2.00 – 4.30 P.M.]
His Grace, Mar Awa, bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East, California, USA will deliver the keynote address:
The importance and impact of the liturgical texts from Turfan on liturgy today.

This address will be followed by discussions and presentations from the various Christian communities in London.

Download full details and a registration form from: http://www.indiran.org/Christianity2011.pdf

You can also register and pay on-line at www.easternchristianity.com

For further details e-mail: eh9@soas.ac.uk

IDP France

2011-03-16T16:22:00.002Z

IDP France is now back online. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

New catalogues of Sanskrit manuscripts

2011-03-16T14:25:00.004Z

New transliterations of the British Library's Sanskrit fragments by leading scholars in the field have just been put online on the IDP website. Go to the catalogue search page to browse the transliterations. This work is the result of a collaborative project, headed by Professor Seishi Karashima, between IDP and the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology in Tokyo. The manuscripts have been digitized by IDP, so the transliterations may now be viewed alongside high-quality colour images.

The image shown above is IOL San 664, a fragment of the Ratnaketuparivarta.

Secrets of the Cave II: the "Library Cave"

2011-03-11T16:31:00.007Z

When Stein wrote about his discovery of a cave full of manuscripts at Dunhuang, he called it a “monastic library” but I don’t think he really considered this very seriously, and he didn’t offer any theories about why a Buddhist monastery would place its whole library in a cave. Then, later on, when scholars looked more closely at the manuscripts which had monastic library stamps, they saw that they came from a variety of different monasteries. Why would that be?

Read the rest of this post on earlytibet.com.

IDP France

2011-03-01T10:05:00.000Z

Due to technical issues IDP France is currently unavailable. We are working to restore the service as soon as possible and apologise for any inconvenience.

Meeting of the OTDO editorial board in Kobe, Japan

2011-02-09T10:25:00.002Z

On 3-4 February, Sam van Schaik attended the editorial meeting of the OTDO (Old Tibetan Documents Online). The OTDO website contains transliterations of Tibetan texts from Dunhuang, and will soon be expanded to include inscriptions and material from other Central Asian sites. The editorial group discussed developments in the OTDO website, and agreed on closer links between IDP and OTDO. Already, one can click to link from OTDO's transcriptions to IDP's images and catalogues, and vice versa.

IDP News 35

2011-01-28T18:59:00.001Z

The latest version of IDP News is now online. Articles include Following the Tracks of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim and A Technical Study of Portable Paintings from Cave 17 in US Collections.

The image above shows a detail from the Eleven-Headed Guanyin, AD 985, painting on silk. 1943.57.14, ©Harvard Art Museums.

Secrets of the Cave I: "Sacred Waste"

2011-01-18T15:29:00.003Z

The Tibetan manuscripts from the sealed cave in Dunhuang are still the earliest that we have (along with those from the Tibetan forts in the Taklamakan desert). So, some readers might be surprised to hear that there is absolutely no agreement about why they were put in the cave, and why it was sealed up. Our failure to answer these questions remains deeply problematic. How much can we say for sure about these sources for Tibetan culture and history if we don’t know these basic facts about the reasons they have survived to this day?
Read the rest of this post on earlytibet.com.

IDP Report: June – November 2011

2011-01-05T11:52:00.005Z

Download this report as a PDF (168KB).

STAFF NEWS

In October, both Susan Whitfield and Barbara Borghese returned to IDP. Following Susan Whitfield’s return full-time to IDP, a management group was set up and had an initial meeting to discuss the structure, role and future of IDP. After discussion among the whole team and some changes, the recommendations were implemented and work has now started on reviewing and completing existing projects, reviewing digitisation and quality control procedures and updating where necessary, and reviewing priorities and funding sources for the coming five years.

COLLABORATIONS AND VISITS

June–July: Imre Galambos spent a month at Princeton University Library doing research on Qing palaeography. While there, he gave a talk on ‘Works on Chinese palaeography from the 18th and 19th centuries’.
23 June: Susan Whitfield and Alastair Morrison visited China, for a workshop at the Dunhuang Academy and meetings with IDP colleagues. They also had discussions on collaboration with the Director of the Turfan Academy,Li Xiao and, the following day, met the new Director of the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology to discuss a planned field trip and internship.
9–18 July: Susan Whitfield, Imre Galambos and Vic Swift visited IDP Japan based at Ryokoku University in Kyoto, for a workshop/symposium. All three gave papers and a memorandum of understanding for continuing collaboration was signed by Wakahara Dosho, President of Ryukoku University and Susan Whitfield.
21 July: Abby Baker attended a training day run by Museums, Arts and Libraries, on ‘Supporting creative curriculum approaches in primary schools’.
25–30 July: Susan Whitfield, Imre Galambos, Alastair Morrison and Vic Swift visited IDP Russia in St Petersburg. They also discussed potential collaboration with colleagues at the Hermitage and attended the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC). PIAC delegates were given a tour of the Hermitage storage facilities outside St Petersburg, including a visit to vaults holding the murals from Turfan which were formerly held in Berlin.
16–17 September 2010: Susan Whitfield attended a workshop at de Montfort University, speaking about the experience of IDP in setting up a networking project.
29 October 2010: Susan Whitfield visited Nottingham University to talk to Julian Henderson about potential collaboration on Silk Road projects.
November 2010: Susan Whitfield and Lukas Nickel of SOAS’s Art and Archaeology Department applied for an AHRC research grant for Ilse Timperman to research tomb cultures of the Tarim Basin.
8 November: Susan Whitfield, Alastair Morrison and Vic Swift visited the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford to look at Stein material.
10 November: Susan Whitfield gave a talk at the London book launch of The Caves of Dunhuang by Fan Jinshi, on which she was translator and consultant editor.
11 November: Sam van Schaik met Nathan Hill (SOAS) to discuss the Tibetan Rāmāyana manuscripts in the Stein Collection. A transcription appears on the Old Tibetan Documents Online website.
11–12 November: Susan Whitfield visited Germany where she met (1) Professor Michael Friedrich and students (including Agnieszka Helman-Wazny who will start work on a research project on identification of paper fibres with IDP in December) at Hamburg University’s Research Project on manuscript cultures of Asia and Africa; and (2) colleagues in Berlin, from the BBAW and the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, to discuss ongoing collaboration.

VISITORS

8–15 August: Liu Bo, IDP Manager at the National Library of China, Su Bomin, Head of Conservation at the Dunhuang Academy, and Wubuli from the Xinjiang Cultural Relics Bureau made a working visit to IDP London. They also visited the British Museum and the V&A, and participated in a workshop at the Courtauld Institute.
22 September: Jan Hybner, a PhD student from the Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture in Prague, visited the BL, including IDP and the conservation department.
25 October: Avijit Chakrabarti, an intern with BL Preservation, visited the IDP studio.
8 November: IDP hosted eight visitors from Ryukoku University during their visit to the BL.

LECTURES AND EVENTS

1 September: Imre Galambos and Sam van Schaik gave presentations at the Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages Symposium, held at SOAS. Imre spoke on ‘Reconstructing a lost Song edition of Zhuge Liang’s Jiangyuan on the basis of its Tangut translation’ and Sam on ‘The Sutra of the Ten Virtues: one of the earliest Buddhist texts’.
4 September: Sam van Schaik spoke at a British Museum study day on ‘Digitising Cultural Heritage’.
5 September: Imre Galambos visited Wiltshire (UK) in search of material on Hobbs, who travelled with the 2nd Otani expedition to Xinjiang and died there in 1911.
7–9 October: Imre Galambos and Sam van Schaik attended a conference at Hamburg University on ‘One-Volume Libraries: Composite Manuscripts and Multiple Text Manuscripts’. Sam gave a paper on ‘Tibetan Zen Mis- cellanies, The Roles of Pedagogy, Patronage and Liturgy in the Creation of Multiple Text Manuscripts’, and Imre spoke on ‘Manuscripts as products of accumulation: The case of a tenth century Chinese manuscript from Dunhuang’. Both were appointed website editors, Sam for Tibetan and Imre for medieval Chinese.
19–22 October: Imre Galambos attended a conference at the University of Minorities in Beijing, on ‘Ancient Manuscripts and Literatures of the Minorities of China’ and gave a paper on translation fidelity in Tangut renditions of Chinese military texts.
26 October: Susan Whitfield gave a lecture to students at Christie’s.
29 October: Susan Whitfield spoke at a Cambridge event on the theme of digital scholarship and world history.
4 November: Susan Whitfield accepted the Casa Asia annual prize in Madrid, awarded to IDP for its website. She then gave a lecture at Casa Asia in Barcelona, on the Silk Road and the Dunhuang Library Cave.
6–8 November: Imre Galambos attended conference at Fudan University in Shanghai, on ‘Ritual, Religion and Institution in Medieval China’ and gave a paper on taboo characters in Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang.
8 November: Susan Whitfield gave a talk at Oxford School of Archaeology.
10 November: Imre Galambos met Professor Qiu Xigui, China’s foremost palaeographer.
11 November: Susan Whitfield gave a lecture and graduate seminar at the University of Hamburg, on Manuscript Culture in Asia and Africa.
21 November: Susan Whitfield attended a Colloquium on Digital Humanities at Chicago’s Northwestern University.
23 November: Sam van Schaik spoke about the Lotus Sutra on the Silk Road, at a British Library conference centre event.
30 November: Sam van Schaik gave a lecture to SOAS students on the palaeography of early Tibetan manuscripts.

PUBLICATIONS

Imre Galambos, ‘Scribal Notation in Medieval Chinese Manuscripts: The hewen and chongwen Marks’, in Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa, Hamburg University.
Imre Galambos, ‘Japanese “Spies” Along the Silk Road: British Suspicions of the Second Otani Expedition (1908–09),’ in Japanese Religions.
Susan Whitfield, ‘Marc-Aurel Stein: Scholar on the Silk Road’, in Robin Hanbury-Tenison (ed.), The Great Explorers, London, Thames and Hudson, 2010.
Susan Whitfield, ‘A Place of Safekeeping? The Vicissitudes of the Bezeklik Murals’, in Neville Agnew (ed.), Conservation of Ancient Sites on the Silk Road: Proceedings from the Second International Conference on the Conservation of Grotto Sites, August 25-30 2004, Los Angeles, Getty Conservation Institute, 2010.
Susan Whitfield, The Caves of Dunhuang (translator and consultant editor), London, London Editions, 2010

Sponsor a Sutra Or.8210/S.3969

2010-12-07T14:20:00.004Z

IDP would like to thank the Archaeological Tours group for their kind sponsorship of Or.8210/S.3969.

This group of twenty-four Americans and one Israeli, under the auspices of Archaeological Tours in New York City, spent twenty-three days traveling the Silk Road of China. Our tour began with three days in Xian visiting the tombs of the Han emperor Jingdi, the Tang emperor Gaozong, and the first emperor Qin Shi Huang, as well as the Forest of Stellae and the Great Goose Pagoda. It continued on to Lanzhou with a boat ride to the cave temples of Bingling and an afternoon at Labrang Monastery where, after our tour, we came upon monks rehearsing a sacred dance. While in Dunhuang, we traveled through the desert to see the ruins of the Jade Gate, the western-most extension of the Great Wall. Near Turpan, we toured the ancient Uighur city of Gaochang and the Bezeklik Grottos. Outside Urumqi, we walked through the ancient city-state of Jiaohe, where this photo was taken. Hotan served as our base for a tour of a traditional silk production facility, a bus trip to the new museum at Melikawak, China's oldest Buddhist temple, and a camel ride to the ancient stupa of Rawak. Before arriving in Kashgar, the western terminus of China's Silk Road, we stopped to visit the sixteenth-century Altun Mosque in Yarkand. Throughout our tour we enjoyed the exhibits in several provincial museums, fine food -- expecially Uighur delicacies -- and Professor Thorp's always informative lectures.

We were deeply moved by the six centuries of Buddhist art we explored in twenty Mogao cave temples during our two-day visit. To emulate past donors but in a twenty-first century manner, we pooled out dollars and asked Professor Thorp to select a sutra for digitization from the IDP web site. He chose this Manichaean text because it presents a minority faith and because it is written in beautiful calligraphy. Like pilgrims before us, we hope by sponsoring this sutra to gain some merit, if not in this world, then in the next.

Pictured in front of the stupa in the ancient citadel of Jiaohe are, front row from left to right: Shirley Pan, Parida Mohamed (CITS Guide), Pat Ketchum, Marjorie Lewis, Pat Wolf, Daphna Barr, Ruth Ben-Zvi, Sally Ashley, Alice Pickering, Susie Thorpe, Lynne Lambert, Lange Schermerhorn, Robert Thorp (Lecturer), and Kathy Cohen. In the back row stand Emmet Brennan, Bob Ketchum, Robert Johnson, Andrea Schneck, Tom Pickering, Ann Marie Kohlligaian, Margaret Hosier, Brenda Diaz, Li Katz, John Baynes, Pedro Diaz, and Ron Story. Kristen Knutsen, the Tour Manager, is not in the photo because she is taking it.

National Committee for Information Resources on Asia

2010-12-03T15:40:00.004Z

Next Tuesday (December 7th), Sam van Schaik will talk at the annual conference of the National Committee for Information Resources on Asia (NACIRA), about recent developments at IDP. Click here for the NACIRA website and details of the conference.

IDP Dunhuang

2010-11-19T19:58:00.000Z

Due to essential maintenance the IDP server at the Dunhuang Academy will be offline at times during the weekend of 20th/21st November. A Chinese language version of the website is available at the National Library of China server along with our other international sites. We apologise for any inconvenience and are aiming to restore a normal service by Monday 22nd.

IDP Receives Casa Asia Award

2010-11-07T21:07:00.005Z

Susan Whitfield received the Casa Asia 2010 Award on behalf of IDP in Madrid on 2nd November. The award was given to IDP for 'for its enormous task in the recovery, preservation and exhibition of information and images of the manuscripts, paintings and textiles found in the Chinese city of Dunhuang and of the Silk Route'. The 2010 award was shared with Philippine Senator Angara.
Susan Whitfield travelled on to Barcelona to give a public lecture at Casa Asia on the Silk Road and the Dunhuang Library Cave. She also discussed with Casa Asia the possiblity of collaboration on joint projects and a Spanish IDP website.

Turfan Forum on old languages of the Silk Road

2010-11-05T12:37:00.002Z

Ursula Sims-Williams presented the paper Revisiting the International Dunhuang Database Project at the Turfan Forum on old languages of the Silk Road, 24–26 October. During her stay she visited the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Museum, the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and several sites including Bezeklik, Khocho and Toyuk (pictured above). A longer report will appear in the next issue of IDP News.

Self-Appointed Buddhas

2010-09-30T10:07:00.006+01:00

The Tibetan manuscripts found when the sealed cave in Dunhuang was opened in 1900 are still the oldest in the world. But many of them are not as old as we once thought. When the manuscripts were first studied it was assumed that they all dated from the time when the Tibetans ruled Dunhuang, between 786 and 848. It’s a reasonable assumption which is, unfortunately, completely wrong. Certainly some manuscripts do date from this time, but many don’t. We now know that the Tibetan language continued to be used in and around Dunhuang long after the fall of the Tibetan empire, right up to the time the cave was sealed up at the beginning of the eleventh century.

Read more here...

IDP French website down 16-20 September

2010-09-15T11:56:00.003+01:00

Due to building works, the IDP French website will be down from 16-20 September. Users can access the IDP UK website, or other IDP sites, during this period. Apologies for any inconvenience.

In search of A. O. Hobbs

2010-09-15T10:26:00.004+01:00

In the summer of 1910, A. O. Hobbs was an English boy of 16, fresh out of school. This was the moment when he was hired to accompany the Japanese Tachibana Zuicho on an expedition to Central Asia. They travelled through Russia to Xinjiang and after a short stay in Urumchi, began excavations at Turfan. After this, Tachibana decided to separate and asked Hobbs to travel with their luggage to Kucha and meet him there a couple of months later. During this time the Tachibana explored the Lob desert and crossed the Taklamakan. Unfortunately, by the time he got back to meet his companion in Kucha, the young Englishman had died of smallpox. His body was already on its way to Kashgar on the orders of the British Consul George Macartney. It was buried at the English cemetery outside the north gates of Kashgar.

This is how much we learn from Tachibana's description of the events, as well as the consular diaries of Macartney. Recently, IDP's Imre Galambos has managed to trace Hobbs's home to the town of Swindon in Wiltshire. In continuation of this line of research, on 5th September Imre travelled to Swindon to see if he could find out more about Hobbs. At the modern and user-friendly Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, he was fortunate to locate some additional information.

The young man's full name was Alfred Orlando Hobbs, although he usually appears in school papers and elsewhere only as Orlando Hobbs. He spent three years at the Swindon and North Wilt Technical Institute on Victoria Road (see image above), and after graduation posted an ad in a newspaper, looking for a job. This is how he was hired to go on an expedition to Central Asia. His school registry has a note next to his name, saying that his occupation upon leaving the school was "explorer's assistant" and, in the next column, that he "died of smallpox in Chinese Turkestan."

The most interesting discovery was that the school's magazine has published two relevant letters. The first one was addressed to Hobbs's mother and was written by Theodora Macartney, the British Consul's wife. In this, she informed Mrs Hobbs of her son's death and described the funerary arrangements. The other was an earlier one, written by Hobbs himself from Turfan, describing in detail the excitements of travelling and working in such a distant land.

The letters and additional details of Hobbs's life will be published in the one after next issue of IDP News.

CCTV programme on Dunhuang woodslips

2010-09-06T17:04:00.003+01:00

Interesting documentary in English on calligraphy from Dunhuang, including Han woodslips.

Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages Symposium V

2010-08-27T10:10:00.005+01:00

IDP's Imre Galambos and Sam van Schaik will be giving presentations at the Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages Symposium on Wednesday, 1 September. The Symposium is held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Imre will speak on Reconstructing a lost Song edition of Zhuge Liang’s Jiangyuan on the basis of its Tangut translation.

Sam will speak on The Sutra of the Ten Virtues: One of the Earliest Tibetan Buddhist Texts.

For further details and a program of the whole seminar, click on the link above.

Amdo Notes

2010-08-25T13:15:00.005+01:00

Sam van Schaik has been writing on his earlyTibet blog about his field trip to Tibetan regions of Qinghai and Gansu (known to Tibetans as Amdo). Links below:

Amdo Notes I

Amdo Notes II

Amdo Notes III

IDP Wins the Casa Asia 2010 Award

2010-08-06T15:47:00.004+01:00

IDP is proud to receive the Casa Asia 2010 award 'for its enormous task in the recovery, preservation and exhibition of information and images of the manuscripts, paintings and textiles found in the Chinese city of Dunhuang and of the Silk Route'. We share the award with Philippine Senator Angara.

IDP News 34

2010-08-06T15:28:00.006+01:00

The latest version of IDP News is now online. Articles include The Iconography of Buddha on a Wooden Panel from Khotan, Stars on Earth — De Filippi’s 1913-4 Karakorum Expedition and a report of the St. Petersburg Dunhuang Studies Conference held in September 2009.

The image above shows the peak at Burji-La from Filippo De Filippi's 1913–4 expedition to the Karakoram.
Courtesy of the Historical Archive of the Astrophysics Observatory of Arcetri (Florence).

IDP Symposium 2010

2010-07-17T06:55:00.006+01:00

Dr Susan Whitfield, Dr Imre Galambos and Vic Swift from IDP UK visited IDP Japan to attend the 2010 Symposium held at the Ryukoku University in Kyoto. Pictured above are Susan Whitfield (IDP Director at the British Library) and Dosho Wakahara (Director of the Ryukoku University) at a press conference for the signing of a new MoU for the continuing collaboration between the two institutions.

New book on Dunhuang caves

2010-07-05T15:02:00.007+01:00

The Caves of Dunhuang, authored by Fan Jinshi, Director of the Dunhuang Academy, and translated and edited by Susan Whitfield of IDP, has recently been published by Scala. The book provides a detailed description of 50 caves at Mogao and other sites near Dunhuang. The forthcoming edition of IDP News will have details of a discount for readers.

Imre Galambos and Sam van Schaik return from Qinghai field trip

2010-06-22T12:31:00.005+01:00

Following the in the footsteps of a tenth-century Chinese pilgrim, Imre Galambos and Sam van Schaik spent a fortnight travelling through the Chinese province of Qinghai. They have been working on a book on the manuscripts carried by this pilgrim, now in the British Library's collections. In the tenth century most of this region was under Tibetan rule, and the pilgrim's letters of passage are written in the Tibetan language. Imre and Sam visited a number of old sites mentioned in the letters, including the secluded valley of Dentik and the cave temples of the Tsongka region (including Baima Si, pictured above). On the way, they gained insights into the terrain covered by the pilgrim, and photographed remnants of old paintings which help demonstrate the antiquity of these sites. A longer report will be posted soon.

Visit to IDP China

2010-06-20T13:22:00.005+01:00

Susan and Alastair of IDP UK are off to China on Wednesday. Susan is taking part in a workshop organised by the Dunhuang Academy to discuss systems for the new visitors' centre, while Alastair will work with colleagues at IDP China in Beijing and Dunhuang.

IDP Reports: February/March & April/May 2010

2010-06-15T16:24:00.003+01:00

February/March 2010: Download this report as a PDF (213KB).

COLLABORATIONS AND VISITS

22 February: curators and conservators from national museums and libraries in Mozambique and Nigeria, on a visit to the BL, were shown round the IDP studio.
5 March: Susan Whitfield met Jan Stuart, Head of Asia at the British Museum, to discuss on collaboration on digitisation and cataloguing of the Museum’s Stein 3D material.
16–18 March: Susan Whitfield held meetings with various foundations and institutions in New York, to discuss possible funding and collaboration.
21–31 March: Imre Galambos visited Japan, to discuss collaboration with the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo and to give a paper at the Digital Silk Road IDP Workshop. He then travelled to Kyoto where he visited Ryukoku University to discuss continuing collaboration; and on 29 March he attended a conference on Buddhist Manuscript Fragments at Lüshun Museum.
22–26 March: Susan Whitfield visited Delhi for meetings with the Ministry of Culture and the National Museum, to discuss possible collaboration.
29 March: IDP welcomed photographer Yichon Kim on a six-month internship, as part of a collaboration between IDP and Korea University.
Intern Ammandeep Mahal completed a three-week placement in the IDP digitisation studio.

LECTURES AND EVENTS

19 February: Sam van Schaik attended a workshop on Tibetan and Mongolian law at the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies.
11–13 March: Susan Whitfield attended a conference on ‘Cultural Crossings’ in Charlottesville, Virgina, giving a paper on IDP and taking part in discussions on the Silk Road and on compilation of a union catalogue of Buddhist scriptural texts.
31 March: Alastair Morrison attended a conference on ‘Digitisation of Written Heritage’ at the Institut national du patrimoine in Paris.

PUBLICATIONS

Imre Galambos, ‘Another Hungarian Looting China’s Treasures? Sir Aurel Stein, Lajos Ligeti and a Case of Mistaken Identity’, Tonko shahon kenkyu (Dunhuang manuscript studies).
Matthew T. Kapstein and Sam van Schaik (eds), Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang: Rites and Teachings for This Life and Beyond. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

FORTHCOMING LECTURES, EVENTS AND PUBLICATIONS

Susan Whitfield will publish an article on Stein in The Great Explorers, Thames & Hudson.
Imre Galambos will publish (1) ‘Scribal Notation in Medieval Chinese Manuscripts: The hewen and chongwen Marks’, Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa. Hamburg University. (2) ‘Japanese “Spies” Along the Silk Road: British Suspicions of the Second Otani Expedition (1908-09)’, Japanese Religions.
Sam van Schaik will publish (1) ‘A New Look at the Source of the Tibetan Script’, Yoshiro Imaeda, Matthew Kapstein and Tsuguhito Takeuchi (eds), Old Tibetan Documents Monograph Series, vol.III. (2) ‘The Origin of the Headless Script (dbu med) in Tibet’, Nathan Hill (ed), Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages IV. Leiden: Brill. (3) ‘Towards a Tibetan Palaeography: Developing a Typology of Writing Styles in Early Tibet’, Jan-Ulrich Söbisch and Jörg B. Quenzer (eds), Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Sam van Schaik and Imre Galambos are editing, for final submission to de Gruyter (provisional publication date October 2010), Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan Documents of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim.

April/May 2010: Download this report as a PDF (299KB).

The Diamond Sutra went on display in the Chinese Print exhibition at the British Museum on 12 May and the Star Chart is on display at the Grand Palais in Paris in their exhibition on Daoism.

COLLABORATIONS AND VISITS

8–9 April: Vic Swift visited IDP partners, at the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften, to install a new server for the IDP German-language website.
13 April: Susan Whitfield met with Claire Warwick, Head of the Centre for Digital Humanities at UCL.
14 April: Sheng Yanhai, from the Dunhuang Academy, returned to China after a five-month internship in the IDP Studio, funded by the World Collections Programme.
21–23 April: Susan Whitfield travelled to Kabul for the opening of a British Library exhibition on images of Afghanistan, 1830-1920. Rachel Roberts was responsible for much of the photography and Vic Swift designed thecatalogue. The images will be put on IDP and IDP will also host a website of the exhibition.
22 April: Neville Agnew and Martha Demas of the Getty Conservation Institute visited the IDP studio.
28 April: Abby Baker and Alastair Morrison visited the Confucius Institute at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, where Abby spoke to secondary students and teachers, and Alastair gave a public lecture, about Buddhism on the Silk Road.
7 May: Susan Whitfield met with Dr Vivienne Lo of UCL and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim to discuss an extension and possible funding of the medical manuscripts project.
11 May: The Chinese Ambassador spoke positively about IDP in his speech at the reception for a NLC-BL China Studies Day. Susan Whitfield met with the delegation from the NLC to discuss IDP and their collaboration with the BL.
20 May: Susan Whitfield met with Roger Wallen to discuss a possible joint project with Newcastle University on Hadrian’s Wall and the Chinese Han walls.
27 May: Susan Whitfield met with Mimi Gardner of Seattle Art Museum to discuss possible joint projects.

LECTURES AND EVENTS

13th April: Sam van Schaik gave a presentation at the Royal Asiatic Society, on ‘The International Dunhuang Project: History of Conservation and Development’ at the conference ‘Conservation of Chinese Graphical Collections’.
19 May: Susan Whitfield gave a lecture on ‘Arts of the Taklamakan Kingdoms’ to the Bristol Society for the Arts of Asia.
26 May: Susan Whitfield gave a lecture on the Dunhuang Star Chart and Chinese astronomy to the Astrophysics group at Imperial College.

FORTHCOMING LECTURES, EVENTS AND PUBLICATIONS

Susan Whitfield will lecture and hold a seminar on manuscript studies in Hamburg in early June.
Imre Galambos will publish (1) ‘Scribal Notation in Medieval Chinese Manuscripts: The hewen and chongwen Marks’, Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa. Hamburg University. (2) ‘Japanese “Spies” Along the Silk Road: British Suspicions of the Second Otani Expedition (1908-09)’, Japanese Religions.
Sam van Schaik will publish (1) ‘A New Look at the Source of the Tibetan Script’, Yoshiro Imaeda, Matthew Kapstein and Tsuguhito Takeuchi (eds), Old Tibetan Documents Monograph Series, vol.III. (2) ‘The Origin of the Headless Script (dbu med) in Tibet’, Nathan Hill (ed), Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages IV. Leiden: Brill. (3) ‘Towards a Tibetan Palaeography: Developing a Typology of Writing Styles in Early Tibet’, Jan-Ulrich Söbisch and Jörg B. Quenzer (eds), Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Sam van Schaik and Imre Galambos are editing, for final submission to de Gruyter (provisional publication date October 2010), Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan Documents of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim.

Videos of IDP's Xinjiang Field Trip

2010-03-31T15:54:00.005+01:00

Over a century ago the Hungarian scholar Marc Aurel Stein set out on what was to be his first of four expeditions to Chinese Central Asia. He was in search of ancient civilisations, almost forgotten to history yet with ruins which could potentially provide archaeological evidence of the rich cultural mix engendered by the opening of the international trade routes across Eurasia – the Silk Road. Stein’s expeditions and finds exceeded his expectations: he uncovered hundreds of archaeological sites, discovering over 50,000 artefacts. He also mapped his journey and the sites and took over 5,000 photographs, recording the sites, people he encountered, everyday life, officials and the changing landscape. In November 2008 members of a joint project between IDP and the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology in China (XJIA), retraced Stein’s footsteps to retake his site photographs a hundred years on. Read more about IDP's field trip in IDP News Issue 32.

Videos of IDP's field trip are now available on our YouTube channel. Footage is available of sites including Miran and Endere.

The video below shows Mazar Tagh or 'Hill of the shrine'. The Tibetan army built this fort when they occupied the area in the mid-8th century AD. On top of a hill overlooking the Khotan River in otherwise flat land it is in a excellent strategic position, controlling the route from Khotan to the south to the kingdoms of the northern Tarim.

Many of the Tibetan woodslips and other items which survived from Tibetan times were discovered among the piles of rubbish from the stable block which still cover the slope below the fort.

© IDP

Pregnancy taboos in medieval China

2010-03-17T09:56:00.026Z

Many cultures have restrictions or prohibitions on the behaviour of pregnant women, stemming either from the desire to protect the mother and unborn baby, or from beliefs that see pregnant women as ‘impure’. There are many taboos in Chinese culture surrounding pregnancy, for example pregnant women are advised not to put scissors or anything sharp on their beds that could harm the spirit of the unborn baby, but to keep knives under their beds to ward off evil spirits.

I recently came across an article published in July 2009 (1) containing some interesting information about medieval Chinese prohibitions surrounding pregnancy from an analysis of the verso of Dunhuang manuscript Or.8210/S.4433 (see image above) in the British Library Stein collection. The manuscript advises women who are three months pregnant not to face south or east while bathing. Author Liu Yanhong 刘艳红 argues that this seems strange as both directions are usually positively associated with reproduction and vitality. According to Liu, the southern wind is associated with growth in classical Chinese sources, and the east wind is associated with spring. In ancient China the spring (east) wind was considered the ‘offspring’ of the interaction between heaven and earth, and thus the east wind was also known as the ‘joining wind’. Therefore Liu is perplexed by the cultural admonition against pregnant women from bathing facing the south or east.

A clue to this can be found, argues Liu, in the importance the ancient Chinese attached to spirit or ancestor worship. Heaven and earth were the most important spirits, and events such as lunar or solar eclipses were interpreted as portending disaster. Thus, pregnant women, as they were considered impure, could not take part in the ceremonies or eat the sacrificial food. Liu then wonders whether the taboo on pregnant women bathing facing south or east was also due to their perceived impurity. As the sun rises in the east and shines longest in the south, Liu thinks the prohibition on bathing facing those directions is linked to the sun god. The life-sustaining properties of the sun meant that the sun god was highly respected by ordinary people in medieval China. Two other spirits of the natural world were also associated with those two directions, the thunder god with the east and the fire god with the south, showing the fear and respect inspired by thunder and fire. According to Liu, the prohibition of facing the east or south while bathing seems therefore to stop pregnant women from offending the sun, thunder and fire gods. While this conclusion is backed up with citations from classical sources, Liu is perhaps making some large assumptions in linking prohibitions facing certain directions while bathing to offending deities.

Liu points out that another aspect of the prohibition could be to protect pregnant women and their unborn babies. In medieval China people believed that before the end of the third month of pregnancy the spirit of the unborn baby was not yet completely formed, and the sex of the baby was not decided. People thought the baby could be damaged by the sun, thunder or fire, which is possibly another reason for the prohibition.

Another Dunhuang manuscript (see image below) dealing with birth is Or.8210/S.6983 (ff.9V-10R), and has paintings of a couple praying to the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokoteśvara (Guanyin), on one panel, and the woman giving birth next to a midwife on the following panel showing her prayers were answered. The text under the painting reads (2):

‘If a woman wishes to give birth to a boy, she should offer obeisance and alms to Avalokiteśvara and she will bear a son blessed with merit, virtue and wisdom … and a daughter, she will bear one with all the masks of comeliness, one who in the past planted the roots of virtue and is loved and respected by many persons.’

These two examples show the typical mingling of folk beliefs with prayers to Buddhist deities in medieval China. There is more information on this manuscript in the catalogue entry next to the item on the IDP database (type Or.8210/S.6983 into the search box on the left hand side of the IDP homepage, and on the education resource of the British Library 2004 Silk Road exhibition, available from the Education pages on the IDP website.

Notes
1.The information in this post comes from the following article by Liu Yanhong 刘艳红, ‘Dunhuang wenxian S.4433 zhong jinzhi yunfu mianxiang “dong” “nan” jiaomu xisu tanmi’ 敦煌文献S.4433中禁止孕妇面向“东”“南”浇沐习俗探秘 (A Study on the prohibition of pregnant women facing east or south while bathing in Dunhuang manuscript S.4433). Journal of Qinghai Nationalities Institute, vol. 35, no. 3, 2009: 39-42.
2.This English translation is from Watson, Burton, The Lotus Sutra. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993: 300.

Teaching Chinese Astronomy

2010-03-12T10:34:00.012Z

For many thousands of years, man has attempted to make sense of the sky by naming and grouping stars into recognisable patterns. At the turn of the twentieth century, Marc Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born, British archaeologist uncovered the world’s oldest existing star chart in a Buddhist cave complex in Dunhuang, China. The chart, now known as the Dunhuang Star Atlas and probably dating from before AD 700, was just one of a large number of important manuscripts, printed documents and paintings which were found at the site, and which tell us much about social, religious and political issues in medieval China and Central Asia. But the Star Atlas – now held at the British Library in London – is also proving important for our current understanding of astronomical history due to the accuracy and detail it provides about the sky seen from China from such an early period.

Visit the IDP website to download a free classroom wallchart on the Chinese Sky, view educational material on many Silk Road themes, and view our new resource on Chinese Astronomy which aims to :

• Introduce the Dunhuang Star Atlas and explain its importance as a historical and scientific document
• Offer an introduction to astronomy and explain the place it has occupied in Chinese history and culture.
• Introduce the most important Chinese constellations and the myths associated with them.
• Look at the links between Chinese astronomy and astrology and explore the Chinese ‘zodiac’.
• Offer ideas for classroom activities and downloadable resources for teachers.
• Link to related websites and other sources of information.

IDP Website Down

2010-03-04T12:22:00.001Z

The IDP UK site will be down for approximately one hour. Thank you for your patience.

Work on Website

2010-03-04T08:27:00.003Z

IDP is working on updating its content management system and website on its servers worldwide. This is a major update requiring considerable testing and verification of data. At the moment we are resolving the issues with catalogues and bibliography search and display. We will let you know when this is fully functioning again.
Thank you for your patience.

Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang

2010-02-25T12:32:00.011Z

Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang is a new collection of articles on the tantric traditions of Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, based on the Dunhuang manuscripts. The collection comes in part from a conference panel that was held at the end of a three-year IDP project to catalogue the Tibetan tantric manuscripts at the British Library. The collection was edited by Sam van Schaik of IDP in collaboration with Matthew Kapstein, of the University of Chicago and the École Pratique des Hautes Ètudes (Paris).

The book is organized on the theme of "rites and teachings for this life and beyond." For this life, there are chapters on wrathful rituals, tantric vows, and philosophical interpretations of tantric practice. And for the next life, there are chapters on mortuary rites (precursors of the “Tibetan Book of the Dead”) and the use of printed mantras and dhāraṇis as magical amulets to be buried with the dead, like the one at the top of this post, 1919,0101,0.249. The book is available now from Brill's website.

IDP Report: November, December 2009 & January 2010

2010-02-04T12:40:00.003Z

Download this report as a PDF (284KB).

COLLABORATIONS AND VISITS

November 2009: Sheng Yanhai from the Dunhuang Academy began a 5-month internship at the BL, taking over from his colleague Zhao Liang. Sheng will do photography and imaging work and will help to develop an educational programme for the Dunhuang Academy, based on the Mogao Caves.
22 December: Imre Galambos visited the Central Library, Taiwan, to open talks about digitising their Dunhuang manuscripts.
13–14 January: Susan Whitfield, Vic Swift and Alastair Morrison visited Stockholm to discuss collaboration on the Sven Hedin collections. They met colleagues at the Museum of Ethnography, the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, the Royal Library, the National Archives and the department of Central Asian studies at Stockholm University.
A project is underway with the Bibliothèque nationale de France to create electronic versions of Pelliot tibétain catalogues, IDP is inputting and marking up the catalogues in XML (TEI), for subsequent conversion to EAD by the BnF, and the first marked-up volume has just been completed and sent to the BnF.

LECTURES AND EVENTS

2 November: Susan Whitfield gave a lecture for Christies, on Silk Road art.
5 November: Susan Whitfield gave an interview to CBS News on the Dunhuang manuscripts.
9 November: Susan Whitfield appeared on a Belgian TV programme about the Silk Road.
14–15 November: Imre Galambos presented a paper on a Song dynasty manuscript and its earlier sources, at a National Library of China conference on ‘Ancient Chinese Texts’.
29 November: Susan Whitfield lectured on the Silk Road exhibition at the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels.
1 December: Susan Whitfield gave a lecture to students at Ghent University.
20 December: Imre Galambos presented a paper on a Tangut manuscript, at a Tangut language conference in Taipei.
18 January: Susan Whitfield gave two lectures, on art on the Silk Road and China, for SOAS Art of China course.

PUBLICATIONS

Imre Galambos: (1) ‘IDP: International collaboration for sharing resources’ in published proceedings of Chinese librarians’ conference, Macao, October 2009; and (2) ‘Manuscript copies of stone inscriptions in the Dunhuang corpus: Issues of dating and provenance’ in Asiatische Studien 63.4 (2009).
IDP News 33 (Spring 2009) was published and issue 34 will follow shortly.
Sam van Schaik with Lewis Doney: ‘The Prayer, the Priest and the Tsenpo: An Early Buddhist Narrative from Dunhuang’, in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 30.1-2: 175-217.

EDUCATIONAL AND ONLINE RESOURCES

A research paper by-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud, Françoise Praderie and Susan Whitfield, on the star atlas in manuscript Or.8210/S.3326, is available on the IDP website.
IDP staff members are contributing to a blog on collaborations and ongoing fundraising.
The newly conserved Diamond Sutra is on the IDP website.
Imre Galambos and Sam van Schaik are completing an educational web resource for the paleographical study of Chinese and Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang.

FORTHCOMING LECTURES, EVENTS AND PUBLICATIONS

Susan Whitfield will publish an article on Stein for The Great Explorers, Thames & Hudson.
Imre Galambos, ‘Japanese “Spies” Along the Silk Road: British Suspicions of the Second Otani Expedition (1908–09),’ in Japanese Religions.
Susan Whitfield, ‘Marc-Aurel Stein: Scholar on the Silk Road’, in Robin Hanbury-Tenison (ed.), The Great Explorers, London, Thames and Hudson, 2010.
Imre Galambos will visit the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo and Ryukoku University in Kyoto, in March.
Sam van Schaik, (1) ‘A New Look at the Source of the Tibetan Script’, Yoshiro Imaeda, Matthew Kapstein and Tsuguhito Takeuchi (eds.), Old Tibetan Documents Monograph Series, vol.III; (2) ‘The Origin of the Headless Script (dbu med) in Tibet’, Nathan Hill (ed.), Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages IV, Leiden, Brill and (3) ‘Towards a Tibetan Palaeography: Developing a Typology of Writing Styles in Early Tibet’, Jan-Ulrich Söbisch and Jörg B. Quenzer (eds), Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, Berlin, de Gruyter.
Sam van Schaik and Imre Galambos are editing for final submission to de Gruyter (provisional publication date October 2010): Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan Documents of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim.

Wakhan Fort

2010-01-30T13:34:00.012Z

Issue XX of the AKTC Afghanistan newsletter has a report on the survey of the Kansir Fort in the Wakhan, believed by Stein to be an 8th-century Tibetan fort. The Wakhan was the site of a battle between the Chinese and Tibetan armies in 747, which I wrote about in The Soldier's Tale and visited a few years ago (my blog picture is taken there). The battle started on the banks of the Amu Darya (Oxus River) and continued up the valley, over the Baroghil Pass, now on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and then across the glacial Dakhot Pass. Forbidding topography.

Excellent news that AKTC are preparing a survey and drawings of the fort. The French Archaeological Institute are said to be interested in excavating there - Stein would have been very jealous!

Buddhism Education Pack

2010-01-28T16:48:00.009Z

As part of the EU funded CREA project, IDP has produced a new set of downloadable educational worksheets in English, French and German on the subject of Buddhism for teachers and students. The worksheets aim to offer a general introduction to the topic and can be used together or individually to introduce ideas relating to the history and basic tenets of the religion, its transmission through Asia and its iconography and manifestation in printed documents, paintings and manuscripts from international museum and library collections.

IDP is currently working to expand its education pages online and this set of themed worksheets represents the first of a number of new resources that will appear on our web pages over the next few months. Please look out for upcoming resources on Chinese Astronomy and Astrology which will appear soon. We welcome your feedback on our resources and hope that you find them useful in your classroom, or for your own research. Please contact abby.baker@bl.uk if you have any comments or suggestions, would like to order hard copies of this resource, or have an enquiry about other education services we can offer.

The image below shows Buddha preaching the Dharma in a detail from the Paradise of Śākyamuni. 1919,0101,0.6
© The British Museum.

The Dunhuang Star Chart

2010-01-28T13:23:00.010Z

The Dunhuang Star Chart (Or.8210/S.3326) is one of the most important manuscripts in the British Library Dunhuang collection. Dating from the second half of the seventh century AD, it is an example of the coloured star-map of Qian Lezhi and almost certainly the oldest extant manuscript star-chart from any civilisation.

A new research paper authored by Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud, Dr Françoise Praderie and Dr Susan Whitfield presents an analysis of the star atlas included in the medieval Chinese manuscript. Although partially studied by a few Chinese scholars, it has never been fully displayed and discussed in the Western world. The paper is available to view via our Research page.

A further resource on the Dunhuang Star Chart for schoolchildren and teachers is currently under development and will be available soon.

The images below show details of the circumpolar map and a bowman in traditional clothes.
© British Library Board.

The Diamond Sutra

2010-01-26T16:51:00.030Z

The Diamond Sutra(Or.8210/P.2) at the British Library is the world's earliest dated printed book, and was made in AD 868. It was discovered by accident in the early twentieth century along with tens of thousands of other scrolls in a hidden cave at the Buddhist Mogao cave site in Dunhuang, northwest China.

The newly-conserved Diamond Sutra is now online via the IDP Database. A web resource about the manuscript is currently being developed and will include information and images about its conservation.

The Diamond Sutra can also be seen on the British Library's Turning the Pages.

The image below shows a detail from the frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra.
The video is of Mark Barnard, Manager of the Conservation Section at the British Library working on the manuscript.
© British Library Board

Items from Sven Hedin's archive at the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum

2010-01-17T22:12:00.002Z

Hedin collections - on IDP?

2010-01-16T18:08:00.001Z

Just back from a great visit to Stockholm discussing potential IDP collaboration on Sven Hedin material and an IDP Sweden - just need to find some funds! Many thanks to Swedish colleagues for their hospitality.