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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Digital Dunhuang — IDP at NODEM

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The work of IDP was presented at the 2012 NODEM conference in Hong Kong. Speaking on a panel with Professor Wang Xudong, Deputy Director of the Dunhuang Academy, Susan Whitfield gave a brief history of the Dunhuang site and the work of IDP, before asking questions about how we prioritise our work given limited funds and the costs of digitisation and preservation of digital data.

This was part of two days of intensive and stimulating sessions from curators, designers, scholars and others generally focused on digital heritage. Professor Lew Lancaster (University of California at Berkeley) made an impassioned and powerful argument against use of the label 'Digital Humanities' — he pointed out that scientists do not feel so insecure about their use of technology that they need to label themselves as 'Digital Scientists'. He took the audience on his own journey learning to use digital tools to transform his research, especially on the use of 'blue dots' to see patterns and discover anomalies in the Buddhist Canon.

The conference was held in the Run Run Shaw Creative Centre at City University of Hong Kong, where exhibitions included two on Dunhuang by Sarah Kenderdine of the CityU Applied Laboratory for Interactive Visualization and Embodiment (ALiVE) in partnership with the Dunhuang Academy and the Friends of Dunhuang Hong Kong. The exhibits were sponsored by Mr Gabriel Yu.

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