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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New Publication

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A new collection of articles on the Tibeto-Burman languages, edited by Nathan Hill, has just been published. The volume contains several articles on the Tangut and Tibetan languages, including an article on Tangut-Tibetan bilingual manuscripts such as Or.12380/1842 by Arakawa Shintaro; a study of the ritual manuscript Pelliot tibétain 239 by Ishikawa Iwao; and an article on the origin of the Tibetan cursive or "headless" script by Sam van Schaik of IDP. The latter draws on the earliest examples of Tibetan writing from Dunhuang and elsewhere to argue that, contrary to traditional accounts, the cursive script developed directly from the original "headed" form of Tibetan writing. Click here to see to the book on the publisher's website.

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