The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online

IDP is a ground-breaking international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet and to encourage their use through educational and research programmes.

IDP partner institutions which both provide data for and act as hosts to the multilingual website and database are:

Major IDP partners providing data include:

IDP’s many other collaborating institutions provide data and work on joint projects.

The Dunhuang Sky: A Comprehensive Study of the Oldest Known Star Atlas

A new research paper authored by Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud, Dr Françoise Praderie and Dr Susan Whitfield presents an analysis of the star atlas included in the medieval Chinese manuscript Or.8210/S.3326 discovered in 1907 by the archaeologist Aurel Stein at the Silk Road town of Dunhuang and now housed in the British Library. Although partially studied by a few Chinese scholars, it has never been fully displayed and discussed in the Western world. The paper is available to view via our Research page.

A further resource on the Dunhuang Star Chart for schoolchildren and teachers is currently under development and will be available soon.

IDP Blog

Staff members will be contributing to an IDP blog. News about our travels, collaborations and ongoing fundraising efforts will be posted here and we look forward to receiving comments from our users.

The Diamond Sutra

The newly-conserved Diamond Sutra (Or.8210/P.2) is now online. A web resource is under development which will include information and images of its conservation.

IDP News 33, Spring 2009

The latest bi-lingual (English and French) issue of the IDP Newsletter is now online. Articles include:

IDP France Goes Live
Undoing Old and Doing New Conservation on Pelliot Chinois 2547 and 2490

Plus the latest worldwide Exhibitions, Publications and IDP UK news.

New multi-lingual learning resource on Buddhism now available on the IDP education pages

As part of the EU funded CREA project, IDP has produced a new set of downloadable educational worksheets in English, French and German on the subject of Buddhism for teachers and students. The worksheets aim to offer a general introduction to the topic and can be used together or individually to introduce ideas relating to the history and basic tenets of the religion, its transmission through Asia, and its iconography and manifestation in printed documents, paintings and manuscripts from international museum and library collections.

IDP is currently working to expand its education pages online, and this set of themed worksheets represents the first of a number of new resources that will appear on our web pages over the next few months. Please look out for upcoming resources on Chinese Astronomy and Astrology which will appear soon. We welcome your feedback on our resources and hope that you find them useful in your classroom, or for your own research. Please contact Abby Baker if you have any comments or suggestions, would like to order hard copies of this resource, or have an enquiry about other education services we can offer.

Database Work on Archaeological Site Information

We are currently updating the information on archaeological sites and making some structural changes to improve the searches. This will mean that 'Find by site' searches on the site overview page will not function correctly until we have finished the changes and mounted a new interface. Apologies for any inconvenience and please be patient with us in the meantime.

17 September 2009

What's On

Site Info

Site last revised: January 2010.
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Site Credits

Website design by Vic Swift of IDP.
Database development and web integration by Michael Kaye of sendmetospace with additional support for Chinese version by Mark Mitchenall, using 4D database software and Active4D.
General text written by Susan Whitfield with additional input from other members of IDP staff and translation by IDP staff in China, Russia, Japan and Germany.
Some areas of the site such as Educational Projects, Resources, Research and Conservation Papers and My IDP projects are individually authored and accredited. IDP is not responsible for their content.