{"id":337,"date":"2023-05-12T08:54:21","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T07:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idp.bl.uk\/?p=337"},"modified":"2024-03-04T12:02:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T12:02:56","slug":"the-lotus-sutra-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idp.bl.uk\/blog\/the-lotus-sutra-project\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lotus Sutra Project"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image of Or.8210\/S.6791<\/a>, conserved and digitised as part of the Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Conservation and Digitisation Project.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) is pleased to announce that after 5 years, the Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Conservation and Digitisation Project successfully concluded in December 2022. Generously sponsored by the Bei Shan Tang Foundation, the Project aimed to publish online 793 manuscript copies of the Lotus Sutra from Dunhuang currently in the Stein collection at the British Library. This has resulted in over 374,000 cm of conserved material and nearly 17,000 new images for the IDP website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lotus Sutra is one of the most influential scriptures in Mahayana Buddhism, and is thought to contain the Buddha\u2019s final teaching, complete and sufficient for salvation.  The Stein collection contains over 1000 copies of the Lotus Sutra in Chinese, which were acquired by Sir Marc Aurel Stein in 1907 and 1914, when he visited the so-called \u2018Library Cave\u2019 (Cave 17) at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, in the present-day Gansu Province in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Before conservation photo of Lotus Sutra Scroll Or.8210\/S.3796<\/a>, one of 793 manuscripts conserved through the Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Digitisation Project.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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After conservation photo of Lotus Sutra Scroll Or.8210\/S.3796<\/a>, one of 793 manuscripts conserved through the Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Digitisation Project.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Only a small portion of these had been previously digitised, and the Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Conservation and Digitisation Project was organised to make images of the remaining manuscripts available online.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the sustained efforts of the Project team since 2017, 790 scrolls and 3 booklets have been stabilised and conserved to enable digitisation, and photographed to produce high-resolution images that are now freely available to the public on the IDP website. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Image of Or.8210\/S.6791<\/a>, conserved and digitised by the Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Conservation and Digitisation Project.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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Image of Or.8210\/S.3579<\/a>, featuring a custom-made core developed by conservators on the Lotus Sutra Project.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Through the thousands of new images online, the Project has significantly increased global access to these important materials.\u00a0In an effort to document the methodology of the Project, team members have published several articles, such as Digitisation Officer Francisco Perez-Garcia\u2019s\u00a0The Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Digitisation Project: the collaborative work between the Heritage Made Digital team and the International Dunhuang Project team<\/em>\u00a0(published in the\u00a0Library’s Digital Scholarship blog, 14 March 2022).\u00a0More about the digitisation efforts of the project can be found in the article\u00a0How to Digitise Scrolls: A Step-by-Step Guide from the Lotus Sutra Project<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by\u00a0Senior Imaging Technician Jon Nicholls (published in the Library\u2019s Asia and Africa blog, 02 August 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the Project, the Conservation team also undertook critical research on preservation techniques and innovative storage solutions, shared via published articles like Conserving paper: reflections on cultures of conservation in Europe and East Asia<\/em> by Paulina Kralka (published in The Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 24 May 2022) and Lotus Sutra Project: Storage Solutions<\/em> by Paulina Kralka and Marya Muzart (published in the Library’s Collection Care blog, 07 December 2020 and the IFLA Journal, 21 July 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wish to express our enormous gratitude for the efforts of the Project team, including Tan Wang-Ward, Marie Kaladgew, Marya Muzart, Paulina Kralka, Tania Estrada-Valadez, Vania Assis, Jon Nicholls, Ambrose Hickman, Isabelle Reynolds-Logue, Giancarlo Carozza, and countless others who have contributed throughout the lifetime of the Project. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"A
Image of a panel discussion at the Lotus Sutra Conference in the Foyle Suite of the British Library. (Left to right:<\/strong> Dr Eric Tzu-Yin CHUNG, Dr Paul Harrison, Dr Stephen F Teiser, Ven. Miao Duo, Roxanna Pang, Dr Luisa Elena Mengoni.)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

To celebrate the close of the Project, the IDP hosted a conference at the British Library on 15 \u2013 16 December 2022. The conference, titled \u2018The Lotus Sutra: the Teachings, Transmission and Material Culture of a Sacred Buddhist Text\u2019, included a keynote speech from Dr Stephen F Teiser and presentations from other experts, in addition to a panel of the Project team discussing their results and methodology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The full programme of the conference is here: IDP Lotus Sutra Conference Programme<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lectures were recorded and are now available on the IDP YouTube channel<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n