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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Wikipedia Editathon

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The IDP Wikipedia editathon was a great success for us. We managed to source around 100 images in response to the articles that were being worked on. 58 are currently available on Wikimedia Commons with either a Creative Commons or Public Domain license. The rest will be uploaded shortly and we plan to add more in the future. Some of the pages that our staff and wikipedians worked on include: Many thanks to all the wikipedians and students who came along to the event and to everyone else who contributed. We would like to give a special thank you to the British Library Wikipedian in Residence Andrew Gray who worked tirelessly to make the event run smoothly.

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