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

Posted by on
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 ...
0

New Publication

Posted by on
Old Tibetan Texts in the Stein Collection Or.8210 is a new catalogue of 88 Tibetan manuscripts from the Dunhuang cave, held at the British Library but previously neglected because they were catalogued in the sequence dedicated to Chinese Dunhuang manuscripts (Or.8210). The catalogue was begun by Professor Tsuguhito Takeuchi of Kobe University, who passed it on to Kazushi Iwao, who worked on it at the British Library with Sam van Schaik of IDP. The catalogue includes an beautifully illustrated astrological divination text, Or.8210/S.6878, and several other texts that offer new insights into Tibetan history and religion. The catalogue is the first in a new series published by the Toyo Bunko: Studies in Old Tibetan Texts from Central Asia. You can download PDF files of the whole book from the Toyo Bunko’s website, here.

Comments

Post a Comment