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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The Sanskrit Diamond Sutra in Infrared

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The Vajracchedikā or Diamond Sutra is one of the most popular Buddhist texts in East Asia. The famous printed copy of a Chinese translation is currently on display at the British Library. But Aurel Stein also found manuscripts of Diamond Sutra in other languages, including Tibetan, Khotanese and Uighur. And the oldest extensive copy of the text in the original Sanskrit was found by Stein in Dandan Uilik, a Buddhist temple site near the ancient city of Khotan.

In a recent study of this manuscript, Paul Harrison has greatly improved on previous readings, offering a much better version of the text. He has also discovered more text by tracing the impression of ‘ghost folios’, lost pages whose impression on the existing pages survives in the faint outline of letters in mirror image.

These readings were helped by the photography of new infrared images of the folios of the Sanskrit Diamond Sutra manuscript, which was done in the IDP digitisation studio at the British Library. The manuscript is spread over several shelfmarks, comprising IOL San 382–387, 419–422, 424–427. All of these can be seen on the IDP website, with the colour photographs of each folio accompanied by the infrared images.

Detail from the colour and infrared images of IOL San 425.

Paul Harrison’s article is in the new volumes of the British Library Sanskrit Fragments series, edited by Seishi Karashima and Klaus Wille:

Paul Harrison, “The British Library Vajracchedikā Manuscript: IOL San 383–387, 419–427,” in The British Library Sanskrit Fragments Vol.III.2, pp.823-866. Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2015.

The volumes can be downloaded from these links:
Volume III.1 (PDF 43MB)
Volume III.2 (PDF 62.6MB)

Comments

  1. JayaravaMay 28, 2015 at 11:31 AM

    While the mss are an exciting development, for me the good news is that Paul Harrison is continuing to work on Vajracchedikā and plans to produce a new edition of the longer text that Muller published. Along with his earlier edition of the 6th C Gilgit/Afghan hybrid ms this means we have some quality Sanskrit texts to work with, perhaps for the first time. Everything written about the so-called Diamond Sutra will have to be revised!

    But we need to find a bridge from the academic environment to connect with practising Buddhists. One hopes that a publisher like Wisdom will commission new English translations from Harrison's improved Sanskrit editions, and perhaps from Kumārajīva's Chinese version (with comparisons to other texts).

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