IDP News Issue No. 36-37

Launch of IDP Seoul

The IDP Korean website and centre in Seoul were officially launched by the Research Institute of Korean Studies (RIKS), Korea University on 2nd December 2010, thanks to the hard work of colleagues at IDP Seoul and London. The IDP Korean website is now online, bringing the Central Asian collections to new groups of scholars and the general public in Korea.

Speakers and guests visited the Central Asian galleries and the Silk Road exhibition at the National Museum of Korea before the official launch ceremony. The ceremony began with opening addresses from the former Director of RIKS, Heung-kyu Kim, and Director of IDP, Susan Whitfield. Korea University President Ki-Su Lee offered his congratulations, and the Chief Executive of the British Library Dame Lynne Brindley OBE expressed her appreciation of the work in a video message from London. Following a presentation on the history and work of RIKS, a demonstration of the IDP Korean website was given.

A symposium on the topic of Dunhuang, the Silk Road and Korea followed and featured three keynote addresses given by Dunhuang scholars Victor H. Mair (University of Pennsylvania), Wen­hsin Yeh (University of California Berkeley), and Kyung-wook Jeon (Korea University). Victor Mair spoke of the impact of IDP on Dunhuang studies drawing on his own experience and stressing the importance of digitisation in making the manuscripts and artefacts available to scholars worldwide. In her paper on Dunhuang manuscripts and the internationalisation of Chinese studies in China, Wenhsin Yeh argued that scholarship on Dunhuang from outside China challenged Chinese scholars and stimulated the field within China. Kyung-wook Jeon discussed the primacy of Korea’s role in Dunhuang and the Silk Road in his paper citing music, entertainment, and other evidence of Korea’s influence and cultural exchange with Central Asia.

After the successful launch of IDP Korea, Professor Heung-kyu Kim expressed his hope and determination that it would stimulate research on Dunhuang, the Silk Road, and Central Asia in Korea and worldwide. Although the interest and involvement in Dunhuang Studies on the part of RIKS may seem unexpected and surprising, Professor Kim said that it conformed to the expansion that began in the late 1990s of RIKS Korea-related research in a more international context.

In addition to providing access to data and images of collections from Dunhuang and the Eastern Silk Road to Korean researchers and the general public, IDP Korea will focus its interests on Central Asian culture and history, including Dunhuang and the Silk Road as the historical background for establishing cultural links through clan migration, pilgrimage and commercial transactions. Korea’s geopolitical position is such that research on cultural links transmitted by both land and sea routes is important. While these links provide an understanding of the past, they may also have relevance for the future. It is hoped that the development of the IDP Korea centre will encourage research projects in this area.

Yoon-Hee Hong
Research Professor and Head of IDP Korea

The Impact of IDP on Dunhuang Studies

Victor H. Mair

Since I began my career in Dunhuang Studies as a graduate student at Harvard University in 1972, the field has witnessed tremendous changes. During the 1970s and early 1980s, while writing my dissertation and doing research for my first publications,¹ I travelled to London, Paris, Leningrad (now, again, St. Petersburg), Dunhuang, Beijing, Kyoto, and elsewhere to examine firsthand several hundred Dunhuang manuscripts. However, due to various practical considerations and constraints, I was unable to stay in any of these places as long as I would have liked, and consequently I did not get to see directly with my own eyes as many manuscripts as I wished.

To make up for this lack, I spent a couple of summers working at Cornell University, whose library was the first in the United States, and one of the first in the world, to purchase the microfilms of all the Dunhuang manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the British Library, and the Beijing Library (now the National Library of China). During the months I spent at Cornell, I very quickly looked through all 40,000 or so microfilmed manuscripts in the collection. It was because of my experience at Cornell that I was able to write the long article entitled ‘Lay Students and the Making of Written Vernacular Narrative: An Inventory of Tun-huang Manuscripts’,² which I consider to be one of my most important publications in Dunhuang Studies. Unfortunately, because it appeared in an obscure journal, few people have ever seen it. Consequently, I am considering the possibility of having it reprinted in a more accessible venue, perhaps online in Sino-Platonic Papers.³

While the microfilms of the Dunhuang manuscripts at Cornell University were a tremendous boon to my research, they had several drawbacks. First and foremost, of course, I could not consult them easily and regularly, but had to travel a long distance and find housing whenever I went to Ithaca, New York. The method of reading the manuscripts in this form was not that convenient either, since I had to peer into a back-lit dark space that caused a strain on my eyes after several hours. Furthermore, I had to spin the microfilms back and forth when I searched through them, so it was not easy to find a particular manuscript, much less a particular spot on a given manuscript on the tapes that were approximately 100 feet long. While the microfilms had their disadvantages, I was enormously grateful for them, until something else more convenient came along.

The Dunhuang Baozang 敦煌寶藏 (1981–86) came next, edited by Huang Yongwu, in 140 large volumes, and what a boon it was!⁴ Affordable for most good research libraries at universities with a graduate program in Chinese Studies, Dunhuang Baozang was essentially a transfer to book format of the images on the microfilms, one set of which I had used so assiduously at Cornell. Not only was the Dunhuang Baozang affordable, it was also remarkably handy. Within a couple of library bookcases, one had at one’s fingertips the overwhelming bulk of Dunhuang manuscripts. What is more, using the index volume, it was fairly easy to locate a particular manuscript among the many thousands in the collection. A significant drawback, however, was that the clarity of the images left much to be desired. The resolution and printing were often simply not sharp enough for one to determine with certainty the strokes of the characters in texts that one was trying to read.

Around the same time as the Dunhuang Baozang appeared Lev Nikolaevich Menshikov, L. I. Chuguevkii, and their Russian colleagues began to publish Dunhuang documents in the holdings in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (Saint Petersburg). Dunhuang manuscripts scattered around the world, in Japan, Denmark, Finland, even Philadelphia, were also being published in bits and pieces. But it was almost impossible to keep track of them because they often appeared in private editions or in more or less obscure journals.

Finally, major Chinese publishing houses, such as the Sichuan People’s Publishers and Shanghai Classics Press, began to make contracts with the main libraries and archives holding Dunhuang manuscripts and then started to publish them in large volumes of high-quality photographic reproductions. These were far superior to the images provided in Dunhuang Baozang and, as such, they could be used for critical research on the manuscripts. The level of detail in these large volumes was remarkable, and enabled scholars to read the manuscripts almost as well as if they were holding them in their hands. There were, however, a number of significant drawbacks, first among them being the very high price of the sets, which put them beyond the reach of all but the very wealthiest individual scholars, and even beyond the reach of all but the best funded research libraries. These sets coming out from Chinese publishing houses, moreover, were cumbersome and bulky, making them far more difficult to house and handle than the volumes of the Dunhuang Baozang. Finally, there were often complications and delays in the production, publication, and distribution brought about by misunderstandings between the host libraries holding the manuscripts and the Chinese publishing houses, but also by the sheer scale and scope of the projects.

That, essentially, is where things stood when the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) was formed in 1993, under the leadership of staff members at the British Library. It is neither my purpose nor my place to recount the early history of IDP, for there are others far better qualified to do so than I. My intention here, rather, is to give a brief indication of how IDP has had an impact upon individual scholars who work on Dunhuang manuscripts and upon the field of Dunhuang Studies in general.

The advantages of having high-quality digital images of the Dunhuang manuscripts freely available to interested scholars online are so numerous as to be almost uncountable. First of all, we no longer have to leave our carbon footprints all over the atmosphere in going to wherever the manuscripts we need to see happen to be. Rather, the images fly instantaneously into our own studies. Not only does that help to save our planet, it also personally saves us lots of money (think of the travel, housing, and food costs incurred in travelling long distances around the globe to visit the various libraries where Dunhuang manuscripts are stored) and endless amounts of time. Secondly, having scholars work from high quality digital images of the manuscripts rather than with the manuscripts themselves contributes immeasurably to the conservation of the manuscripts. In addition, to make the manuscripts accessible to individual scholars usually entails outfitting them with some sort of protective and reinforcing material, which usually results in reduced visibility of the surface of the manuscript. Thus, a high quality photograph or digital image of a manuscript is often clearer than the protected manuscript itself.

Something else I have realized in working with archeologically recovered objects is that high-quality photography very often reveals details not evident to the naked eye. This seems paradoxical, but somehow a skilled photographer manages to bring out colours, shades, marks, and other properties of an artifact that are not visible to the unaided eye. The same is true of manuscripts. I still remember working at the old British Library. I would hold a manuscript up to the light and turn it around in different directions and view it from various angles so that I could see faint traces of writing. In the end, I did manage to discover some very important inscriptions and notations that had never been noticed, much less published, before. However, it all would have been so much easier if IDP had been in existence when I was doing my research back in the 1970s and 1980s of the last century! Now, in the comfort of one’s study, one may view the image of a given manuscript in whatever orientation one pleases, enlarging it, and enhancing the image by a variety of means that would have been impossible if one were working directly on the physical manuscript itself. Sometimes (I would say frequently), a virtual manuscript or artifact is preferable to a real manuscript or artifact.

I could go on and on outlining the advantages that are now available to us through IDP, such as all of the catalogues that have been posted to the site and the countless links to useful resources. The next generation will be able to make many breakthroughs that were beyond us, in no small part because we did not have fast and efficient tools such as those provided by IDP. Nonetheless, far from feeling envious of those of you who will benefit most from IDP, I wish only to encourage you to make the best use of it.

Before closing, I would like to point out that, in order to realize the full potential of IDP, we must all cooperate in doing whatever is necessary to complete the digitization of the entire corpus of Dunhuang manuscripts. That seems almost like an infinite, and extraordinarily expensive, task. Still, when we look at what a relatively small number of dedicated individuals have accomplished with severely limited resources, we can be confident that if more committed persons and an expanded circle of patrons and donors joins them, the completion of the IDP dream can, and will, be realized within our lifetimes.

Victor H. Mair is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. This paper was given as a keynote at the official opening ceremony of IDP Korea in Seoul on 2nd December 2010.

NOTES

1. Victor H. Mair, Tun-Huang Popular Narratives (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988); T’ang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies Harvard University: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1989).

2. Victor H. Mair, ‘Lay Students and the Making of Written Vernacular Narrative: An Inventory of Tun-huang Manuscripts’, Chinoperl Papers 10 (1981): 5–96.

3. Sino-Platonic Papers Website

4. Huang Yongwu 黃永武 (ed.), Dunhuang Baozang 敦煌寶藏 (Dunhuang manuscripts) (Taibei shi: Xin wen feng chuban gongsi, 1981–86).

Accounts of Silla in Dunhuang Manuscripts

Kim Sang-hyun

Buddhist monks from Silla (57 BC–AD 935) began travelling to Central Asia and India from the seventh century. Some monks reached Tang China (618–907) by sea, while others followed the routes later known as the Silk Road to reach their destinations. They visited sacred Buddhist sites in Central Asia, and studied the teachings of the Buddha in Nālandā, India.

None of these monks returned to Silla after their pilgrimages, but their passion for seeking the Dharma and their adventurous spirit paved the way for important figures such as Hyecho 慧超 (704–87) in the late eighth century. Some of the monks transmitted knowledge of Silla as they passed through Dunhuang. Examples of documents written by Silla monks found at Dunhuang include Wonhyo’s 元曉 (617–86) Daeseung gisinnon so 大乘起信論疏 (Commentary on the Awakening of the Mahāyāna Faith) and Hyecho’s Wang ocheonchukguk jeon 往五天竺國傳 (A Travel Account to the Five Indian Kingdoms).

Our understanding of Wonhyo’s commentarial literature from the Dunhuang collection has been improved by a recent paper by Ding Yuan.¹ Five Dunhuang fragments of the text were used in this research: Or.8210/S.7520 from the British Library; Dx-16758, Dx-8241B, and Dx-824 from the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg; and BD12261 from the National Library of China. Ding concludes that four different versions existed, and that all were transcribed between the eighth and tenth centuries. Also it has been confirmed that Wonhyo’s Commentary on the Awakening of the Mahāyāna Faith, influenced Tan Kuang’s 曇曠 (c.700–88) version Dasheng qixinlun guangshi 大乘起信論廣釋 (The Extensive Explanation of the Awakening of the Mayāhāna Faith) that circulated in the Dunhuang area in the late eighth century. Wonhyo authored more than one hundred texts, most of which were transmitted to Tang China, with a few reaching as far as India in the case of the Sipmun hwajaengron 十問和諍論 (The Reconciliation of Disputes in Ten Aspects). When viewed in this context, the discovery at Dunhuang of fragments of Wonhyo’s commentary comes as no surprise.

Hyecho arrived in Tang China during the eighteenth year of King Seongdeok’s reign (702–37) in 719. At the beginning of his journey, he met the Indian monk Vajrabodhi in Guangzhou and became his disciple. Under the encouragement of his teacher, he set out for India in 723 in his thirties. Four years after leaving Guangzhou, Hyecho ended his pilgrimage in India and Central Asia, and in November 727, he reached the city of Kucha. His journey is described in his three-volume travelogue, A Travel Account to the Five Indian Kingdoms. In 1908, a copy of this text was discovered by Paul Pelliot in the Library Cave at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, and is now part of the Bibliothèque nationale de France collection (Pelliot chinois 3532). This manuscript found in the Library Cave was just one section of an original text 6,000 characters long. The signature of the author does not appear on this manuscript, but once scholars found that the text had been written by Hyecho, it justly aroused interest worldwide. This travel diary was considered to be a valuable resource, shedding light on the history, customs, religion, and politics of eighth-century India and Central Asia.

The existing Travel Account to the Five Indian Kingdoms begins from Hyecho’s account of travels in Eastern India. He walked northwest from the Ganges River valley in the Magadha region for one month and arrived at Kushinagar. He travelled south to Varanasi where he prayed at Bodhgaya’s Mahābodhi Temple. Hyecho then continued his journey to Central India. He prayed at the Buddha’s birthplace Lumbini, and travelled through Western and Southern India before returning to the north, crossing the Pamir Mountains, and finally arriving in Kucha via Kashmir. Hyecho stayed for next fifty years in Tang China until his death at the age of eighty, never returning to Silla. He devoted himself to the study and transmission of Esoteric Buddhism in China.

Kim Sang-hyun is Professor at Dongguk University.

NOTES

1. Ding Yuan, ‘Understanding the Discovered Dunhuang Copies of Silla Wonhyo’s Literary Works’, Critical Review for Buddhist Studies 7 (2010): 151–176.

Following Stein’s Dreams in Afghanistan

Afghanistan at the Heart of the Silk Road

Treasures from the ancient Bactrian kingdom — in what is now northern Afghanistan — recently moved from London on another leg of their worldwide exhibition schedule. In the exhibition catalogue, Afghanistan is billed as the crossroads of the Silk Road and the rich treasures on display as showcasing the cultural products resulting from this strategic position. Although Afghanistan has long been a region divided and fought over by neighbouring powers, it has also produced its own kingdoms and empires with rich and unique cultural mixes. It was this that attracted the scholar and explorer Aurel Stein (1862-1943). Yet it was not until his death — within a week of his arrival in Kabul at the age of 80 — that he was ensured an enduring link with a country he had longed to visit since childhood: he was buried in the British Cemetery (see below). The British were hardly in favour in Afghanistan and despite several attempts to get permission to visit, Stein had been thwarted throughout his life.

‘Your Excellency will dissuade him.’

Stein’s initial attempt to visit came in 1902 following his first expedition to Chinese Central Asia. After elicting the support of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1898 to 1905, and also, he thought, the Indian Foreign Office, he wrote to a friend that he planned to start for Herat following his return from England, ‘the fulfillment of a dream I had since I was a boy’ (Mirsky 1977, 202). He explained its attractions to him as a scholar of Iranian and Indian cultures:

‘From Bactria, the traditional home of Zoroaster’s religion and one of the oldest centres of civilization in Asia, there were derived those elements of unmistakably Iranian (Old Persian) origin which meet us in the earliest extant remains and records of North-Western India. After the invasion of Alexander the Great, Bactria, under Greek rulers, became the seat of a remarkable Hellenistic culture…’

But his optimism was misjudged: King Habibullah (r.1901-19) refused the application from Lord Curzon on Stein’s behalf:

‘I cannot in any way advise the said Doctor to carry out his intentions.’ Stein’s childhood dreams had to wait.

In the Footsteps of a Korean General

On his second expedition to Central Asia in 1906 Stein managed an initial brief foray, King Habidullah being more obliging and providing him with an armed escort to cross the Hindu Kush into the Pamirs and the Afghan Wakhan valley and to follow the waters of the Amu Darya (Oxus) up to the border of China. Stein did not squander this opportunity and sought to identify and survey places named in the historical sources. One of these was a fort that Stein associated with a battle between Chinese and Tibetan armies in 747. At this time the Chinese were employing generals of non-Chinese ethnicity for their border forces, believing them less likely to rebel. General Gao Xianzhi (Ko Sōnji) was of Korean (Goguryeo) descent. He suceeded where his predecessors had failed, defeating Tibetan forces and pursuing them south over the treacherous Darkot Pass to take the mountain kingdom of Yasin (in present-day Pakistan), thus enabling the Chinese to control the trade routes south into India.

Further Prevarications

Stein’s hopes were raised again in 1912 by Lord Hardinge, successor to Curzon as Viceroy from 1910-16, who agreed to support another request to the Amir. A letter was sent with a copy of Steins’s account of his second expedition, Ruins of Desert Cathay. The Amir was less abrupt this time, but the result was the same, a refusal.

It was no different in 1922. Again, Stein had the support of the British Viceroy and, he believed, that of the French archaeologist and long friend, Alfred Foucher (1865-1952). There was also a new regime in Afghanistan, King Habibullah having been assassinated.

However, Stein’s reservations about Foucher’s sincerity were substantiated when he discovered his erstwhile friend had been invited to set up a French archaeological mission and that Stein was not part of this: ‘Bitter as is the fresh failure of old hopes, it has not found me unprepared.’

Afghan Records in the British Library

Despite Stein’s failure to acquire archaeological spoils, Afghanistan’s geographical position between British India and the Russian empire ensured the British amassed considerable resources covering both ancient and modern Afghanistan. Most of these are now held in the British Library and include political archives material from the India Office Records, private papers from visitors, such as Charles Masson (James Lewis, 1800-1853, considered the first ‘archaeologist’ in Afghanistan), maps both from the India and Foreign Offices, and prints, drawing and photographs from the early nineteenth century onwards.

Lesley Hall’s 1981 Brief Guide gave an indication of the range and wealth of these materials and they have been used by a number of scholars and others – for example, the restoration by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) of the enclosure to Babur’s tomb in Kabul was based largely on drawings made by Masson in the early 1830s. A British Library proposal by John Falconer for an exhibition in Kabul of digital prints of historical images of Afghanistan coincided with a similar initiative under consideration by AKTC and the two organisations subsequently worked in partnership to bring this about.

Bringing Material to Afghanistan

The exhibition, largely funded by a grant from the UK World Collections Programme, was held at the Queen’s Palace in Babur’s Garden, Kabul in 2010 and received over 16,000 visitors. It then moved to the Chahar Suq cistern in Herat — also recently restored by the AKTC ­— and is now on permanent display in the new museum in the Citadel of Herat. A duplicate set of study prints were presented by the Library to Dr Muneer, Director of the National Archives in Kabul by John Falconer in 2011.

Falconer and Whitfield used visits to Kabul in 2010 and 2011 to make initial contact with Professor Amin, Chancellor of Kabul University (KU) and others, to discuss potential collaboration both for developing resources for use in teaching and research, in conjunction with the Afghanistan Centre at the University, and in offering professional development for faculty. They also discussed collaboration in areas of conservation, digitisation and cataloguing with Professor Muneer.

The Library and Kabul University were subsequently awarded an INSPIRE grant from the British Council ‘to make accessible the unique holdings in the British Library on sources relating to Afghanistan from mid-eighteenth to twentieth centuries’, working together with the National Archives (NA). Faculty and staff from KU and the NA will be involved in the research and preparation of this resource, spending periods in London.

References:

Mirsky, Jeannette. Sir Aurel Stein, Archaeological Explorer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

Hall, Lesley. A Brief Guide to Sources for the Study of Afghanistan in the India Office Records. London: India Office Library and Records, 1981.

Publications on Korea and the Silk Road

Silk‘ûrodû misul: Chun-gang Asia-esô Han’guk-kkaji

실크로드미술: 중앙 아시아에서한국까지
(Silk Road Art: From Central Asia to Korea)
Kwôn Yônggp’il 權寧弼
Seoul: Yôrhwadang, 1997
318 pp.
ISBN: 9788930110501

Silk Road and Dunhuang: Journey to the Western Regions with Hyecho

Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2010
ISBN: 9788993518153
This catalogue accompanies the exhibition of the same title held at the National Museum of Korea from December 2010 to March 2011. The Museum borrowed over 200 objects from institutions worldwide, including the Travel Account to the Five Indian Kingdoms, written by Hyecho in the eighth century, and now housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Pelliot chinois 3532). See above for more information on this manuscript.

Hyechoui Wangocheonchukgukjeon

혜초의 왕오천축국전
(A Travel Account to the Five Indian Kingdoms)
Jeong Su-il 정수일
Seoul: Hakkojae, 2008
339 pp.
ISBN:9788956250748

So yok mi sul: Kuk lip cuñ añ pak mul koan so cañ

西域美術 : 국립중앙박물관소장
(Arts of Central Asia)
Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2003
331 pp.
ISBN: 9788990382122
This publication is a catalogue of the Arts of Central Asia exhibition held at the National Museum of Korea from December 2003 to February 2004. The catalogue features captions provided in Korean, Chinese and English, and essays by Kwon Young-pil, Idiris Abdurusul, and Min Byuong-hoon.

History and Culture of Central Asia

Young-pil Kwon & Ho-dong Kim (eds)
Seoul: Sol, 2007
467 pp.
ISBN: 9788981338695

Early Buddhist Narrative Art: Illustrations of the Life of the Buddha from Central Asia to China, Korea, and Japan

Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky
Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000
249 pp.
ISBN: 9780761816706

Silkeurodeuwa Hanguk Munhwa

실크로드와 한국 문화
(Silk Road and Korean Culture)
International Association for Korean Studies
Seoul: Sonamu, 2000
456pp.
ISBN: 8971395346

Silk‘û Rodû esô on ch‘ônbulto: Kungnip Chungang Pangmulgwan sojang Chungang Asia pyôkhwa

실크 로드 에서 온 천불도 : 국립 중앙 박물관 소장 중앙 아시아 벽화
(Thousand-Buddha Murals from the Silk Road: Central Asian Murals at the National Museum of Korea)
National Museum of Korea, 2006
41 pp.
ISBN: 9788995807316

The Dreams of the Living and Hopes of the Dead: Goguryeo Tomb Murals

Ho-Tai Joen
Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 2007
180 pp. US$40
ISBN: 9788952107299
Seoul National University Press Website
This book provides an analysis of the technology used in the Goguryeo tomb murals, and shows how the murals yield much information regarding views of the afterlife, religion and cosmos, and daily life in Goguryeo.

Are all Warriors Male? Gender Roles on the Ancient Eurasian Steppe

Katheryn M. Linduff and Karen Sydney Rubinson
Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2008
270 pp. US$80
ISBN: 9780759110731
AltaMira Press Website
This book contains a chapter by Sarah Milledge Nelson entitled ‘Horses and Gender in Korea: The Legacy of the Steppe on the Edge of Asia’, 111-127.

Currents and Countercurrents: Korean Influences on the East Asian Buddhist Traditions

Buswell, Robert E., Jr
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005
304 pp. US$27
ISBN: 9780824831790
University of Hawai‘i Press Website

IDP Centre Staff Publications

Tibet: A History

Sam van Schaik
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011
324 pp. £25/US$35
ISBN: 9780300154047
Yale University Press Website

Works of the Orientalists during the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944)

Труды востоковедов в годы блокады Ленинграда (1941—1944)
Irina F. Popova (ed.)
Moscow, Vostochnaya Literatura
Publishers, 2011
343 pp.
ISBN: 9785020364660
Vostochnaya Literatura Website

Der alttürkische Kommentar zum Vimalakirtinirdesa-Sutra

Yukuyo Kasai
Turnhout: Brepols, 2011
237 pp. €70
ISBN: 9782503541570
Brepols Website

Mani’s Psalms. Middle Persian, Parthian and Sogdian Texts in the Turfan Collection

D. Durkin-Meisterernst, E. Morano (eds.)
Turnhout: Brepols, 2010
380 pp. €80
ISBN: 9782503528878
Brepols Website

Prajñāpāramitā Literature in Old Uyghur

Abdurishid Yakup
Turnhout: Brepols, 2010
300 pp. € 120
ISBN: 9782503528885
Brepols Website

Exhibitions

IDP UK

People

We were very sorry to say goodbye to Barbara Borghese, who left IDP at the end of March 2011. Barbara started at IDP as a conservator funded by the Mellon Foundation in 2001, becoming IDP European Project Coordinator in 2006. We wish her luck in her new role as editor at News in Conservation.

Dr Shouji Sakamoto, from Ryukoku University, Kyoto began a one-year project at IDP UK in January. He is using a scanning electron microscope to collect data on the morphology of paper of Dunhuang manuscripts in the British Library Stein collection. Dr Sakamoto will take sample images of the paper which he will upload to the IDP database. He will also carry out XRF analysis of pigments on the manuscripts, working together with Dr Renate Noeller in Berlin.

Dr Catrin Kost started work on 11th April 2011 cataloguing the Stein 3D objects at the British Museum, and coordinating their digitisation with IDP. Rachel Roberts of IDP is photographing this collection at the British Museum. Researchers from China and India funded by the World Collections Programme will be arriving in London over the second half of 2011 to help with data input and cataloguing of this collection.

Research

One of IDP’s longest-running research projects, on the palaeography of the Dunhuang manuscripts, is now complete after five years. The project, generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust, co-ordinated research into the writing styles, book forms and social conventions of Tibetan and Chinese manuscripts from the fifth to tenth centuries AD. The project resulted in many articles in academic journals, the monograph Manuscripts and Travellers, a tool for isolating individual letters or characters from digital images, and an online resource for learning to read Tibetan and Chinese manuscripts. The long-term influence of the project continues in IDP’s ongoing collaborative work in palaeography and codicology.

Collaboration

Susan Whitfield and Alastair Morrison visited Delhi to attend a conference on Kumārajīva at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) on 3rd–5th February 2011; Alastair Morrison gave a paper on manuscripts relating to Kumārajīva in the BL collections. During the visit, funded by a Connections through Culture grant from the British Council, they led a workshop with local MA students majoring in conservation, museology, history of art, and fine arts at the National Museum Institute on resources on the Central Asian collections and IDP. Professor Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, Director of the Turfan Research Group in Berlin, contributed to the workshop. They also met with colleagues at the National Museum and spoke to officials at the Ministry of Culture regarding further collaboration, including a proposal to hold a series of conservation workshops at the National Museum Institute starting in spring 2012.

On 3rd–4th February 2011, Sam van Schaik attended the editorial meeting of the Old Tibetan Documents Online (OTDO) in Kobe, Japan. 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, OTDO’s transcriptions are linked IDP’s images and catalogues, and vice versa.

Cataloguing

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.