International Dunhuang Project
Encyclopedia
The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) is an international collaborative effort to conserve, catalogue and digitise
manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang
and various other archaeological sites at the eastern end of the Silk Road
. The project was established by the British Library
in 1994, and now includes twenty-one institutions in eleven countries. the online IDP database comprised 116,476 catalogue entries and 321,206 images. Most of the manuscripts in the IDP database are texts written in Chinese
, but more than fifteen different scripts
and languages are represented, including Brahmi
, Kharosthi, Khotanese, Sanskrit
, Tangut
, Tibetan
, Tocharian
and Old Uyghur
.
Victor H. Mair
, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania
, has noted that there are many advantages of the IDP providing high resolution digital images of Dunhuang manuscripts online for access to all. Whereas in years gone by scholars often needed to travel long distances to access the original manuscripts, or could only access them by means of low quality reproductions, now anyone can access images from the convenience of their computer, wherever they are in the world. This not only makes research into these manuscripts easier, but helps in their conservation as there is far less need for them to be handled in person. Moreover, the high quality images provided by the IDP often show up details that would be difficult to see with the human eye.
The main activities of the IDP are the conserving, cataloguing, and digitising of manuscripts, woodblock prints, paintings, photographs and other artefacts in the collections material from Dunhuang and other Eastern Silk Road sites held by participating institutions. Digitised images of the items in the IDP database are made available to the public on the IDP website. The digital images are intended to be at least as legible as the original manuscripts, and allow scholars to access the material from anywhere in the world without causing any more damage to the fragile items themselves.
The central core of the project is the online database of catalogue records and images. This is intended to serve three main purposes:
In 2002, Lynne Brindley
, Chief Executive Officer of the British Library, put forward the International Dunhuang Project as a good example of the sort of complex, collaborative, and international digitisation projects that the British Library was increasingly engaged in. She explained that none of the individual institutions participating in the project had the resources or facilities to allow scholars full access to all of the manuscripts in their collections, but by joining together and sharing knowledge and resources the institutions would be able to offer access to the combined collections of all the institutions by means of high-quality digital images. She noted that a digitisation project such as the IDP benefits both the institutions involved, who are often able to obtain more substantial funding than they would for an internal project, and also the scholarly community, who are given access through the digital images to fragile and often inaccessible items that might previously have been difficult or impossible to view.
format on a relational database
using the 4th Dimension
database management tool. Records can be searched for by means of an online search form that allows users to restrict the search on the basis of a number of different criteria, such as type of artefact, holding institute, archaeological site, and language or script. The database was updated to support Unicode
in 2010, and the IDP website is now fully encoded using UTF-8
, allowing characters
from most of the ancient and modern scripts found in the manuscripts to be added to the catalogue records.
Each online catalogue record incorporates a physical description of the item, catalogue records from existing print sources, translations if available, and bibliographic references. The IDP also encourages scholarly users to submit their own catalogue entries and research results on individual items for addition to the database.
To facilitate the locating of items on the IDP database the project has also digitised a large number of catalogues and bibliographic sources, and made them available online, with links from the original catalogue entries to the corresponding online catalogue entry in the IDP database.
In addition to developing techniques for the conservation and preservation of documents and artefacts, the IDP hopes to foster good conservation practices and common standards amongst participating institutes, ensuring that artefacts are stored under the most suitable conditions, and are handled as little as possible.
is used for manuscripts with faded ink or which are otherwise hard to read in normal light.
In 2004 the IDP organised a major exhibition entitled "The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith", which was held at the British Library. This was the most successful exhibition ever held at the British Library, and attracted 155,000 visitors.
was held at Sussex University. This conference brought together curators and conservators from across the world, including the British Library, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
, Bibliothèque nationale de France
, and the National Library of China
, and in its aftermath an IDP Steering Group was set up by Graham Shaw (Deputy Director of the Oriental & India Office Collection at the British Library), Frances Wood
(Head of the Chinese Section at the British Library), and Peter Lawson (Conservator at the British Library). Susan Whitfield
was appointed to edit the newsletter. The first meeting of the IDP steering group was held on 11 April 1994, when the name International Dunhuang Project was adopted. The first newsletter was published on 16 May 1994.
The IDP was initially founded with 3-year grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation
, and had only one member of staff. The following year the IDP database was designed and implemented, and in 1996 a grant from the British Academy
allowed the hiring of a part-time research assistant to input catalogue data into the database.
In 1997, with funding of £148,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund
, the IDP started to digitise manuscripts held at the British Library, and in 1998 the database went online with an initial 20,000 catalogue entries and about 1,000 images of digitised manuscripts.
In 2001, with substantial support from the Mellon Foundation, work started on the digitisation of manuscripts held at collections in Paris and Beijing, and in 2003 digital images of Dunhuang paintings held at the British Museum
were added to the database. By 2004 the IDP database included images of some 50,000 manuscripts, paintings, artefacts, and historical photographs.
IDP Centres were opened in Beijing in 2001, in St. Petersburg and Kyoto in 2004, in Berlin in 2005, in Dunhuang in 2007, in Paris in 2008, and in Seoul
in 2010.
The current director of the IDP is Susan Whitfield.
, French
, German
, Japanese
, Korea
, and Russian
. Each centre is responsible for the conservation, cataloguing, and digitisation of Central Asia
n manuscripts in its country. The staff at these centres help train participating institutions in the use of digitisation equipment and computer software, as well as providing training in conservation and research techniques.
In addition to these centres, it is planned to open an IDP centre in Sweden, and digitise the Central Asian collections held in Swedish institutions.
Aurel Stein (1862–1943) made four expeditions to Central Asia (1900–1901, 1906–1908, 1913–1916, and 1930–1931), during which he collected a vast amount of material, including a large number of manuscripts that he acquired from the 'Library Cave' (Cave 17) of the Mogao Caves
at Dunhuang during his second expedition. Some of the material that he collected, including murals, paintings, artefacts and manuscripts, was sent to India as his first three expeditions had been sponsored by the Indian government. Most of this material is now held at the National Museum of India in New Delhi
, but a small amount of the material from his first expedition is held at the Indian Museum
in Calcutta
, and at Lahore Museum
in Pakistan. The rest of the material collected by Stein was taken to England, and is now shared between the British Library, British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The British Library holds over 45,000 items collected by Stein, mostly comprising manuscripts, printed texts, and inscribed pieces of wood, written in a wide variety of scripts and languages, including Chinese
, Tibetan
, Sanskrit
, Tangut
, Khotanese, Tocharian
, Sogdian
, Uyghur
, Turkic and Mongolian
:
The British Library Stein Collection also includes some artefacts such as textile fragments, sutra wrappers and paste brushes, as well as over 10,000 photographs, negatives and lantern slides taken by Stein.
The British Museum holds a collection of over 1,500 archaeological artefacts collected from various Silk Road sites by Stein, as well as non-literary items from Dunhuang Cave 17, comprising more than 240 paintings on silk or paper, 200 textiles, and about 30 woodblock prints. The museum also holds over 4,000 coins collected by Stein, about three quarters of which are Chinese, and most of the rest are Islamic. Images of all of the paintings and some of the artefacts are now included in the IDP database, and the coins may be added at a future date.
The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a collection of more than 650 textiles collected by Stein from various Silk Road sites, all of which have now been added to the IDP database.
Many of Stein's personal papers and diaries are held at the Western Manuscript Department of the Bodleian Library
at Oxford University. A collection of personal papers and photographs held at the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
have been added to the IDP database.
The removal by Stein of so much cultural and archaeological material from China has caused anger in China, and there have been calls for the texts and artefacts collected by Stein from Dunhuang that are now in the British Museum and British Library to be repatriated to China. Although the Chinese government has not formally requested their return, in 2003 an official at the Chinese Embassy in London stated that "[l]ittle by little, we will expect to see the return of items taken from Dunhuang — they should go back to their original place".
(1841–1918), is a collection of Central Asian manuscripts collected by the Indian government. 22 consignments were sent to Hoernle in Calcutta between 1895 and 1899, and these were sent to the British Museum in 1902. A further ten consignments were sent to Hoernle in London after his retirement in 1899. The Hoernle Collection, which comprises over 2,000 Sanskrit manuscripts, 1,200 Tocharian manuscripts, and about 250 Khotanese manuscripts, as well as a few Chinese, Persian and Uyghur manuscripts, is now held by the British Library.
(1878–1945) led an expedition to Kucha
and Dunhuang from 1906–1908. In Kucha and elsewhere in Chinese Turkestan
he collected hundreds of woodslips with inscriptions in Sanskrit and Tocharian, whilst at Dunhuang, arriving a year after Stein, he acquired thousands of manuscripts from the 'Library Cave' (Cave 17). The items collected by Pelliot are held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
, and are divided into the following sub-collections:
during 1907–1909. The city had been abandoned in the late 14th century, and had been largely buried in sand for several hundred years. Kozlov unearthed thousands of manuscripts and woodblock prints, mostly written in the dead Tangut language
, which had been preserved beneath the sands of Khara-Khoto. The collection of Tangut texts that Kozlov brought back from Khara-Khoto were originally housed in the museum of Alexander III of Russia
in St Petersburg, but were transferred to the Asiatic Museum in 1911. They are now held at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts
in St Petersburg. In addition to the several thousand Tangut texts, the Kozlov Collection includes about 660 manuscripts and printed books in Chinese, mostly Buddhist texts.
The site of Khara-Khoto was excavated by Aurel Stein in 1917, during his third expedition, and several thousand Tangut manuscript fragments recovered by Stein are in the Stein Collection of the British Library.
(1863–1934), who was the first director of the Institute of Oriental Studies (formerly the Asiatic Museum) in St Petersburg, made two expeditions to Central Asia (1909–1910 and 1914–1915), which were to become known as the 'Russian Turkestan expeditions'. During the first expedition Oldenburg explored a number of sites around Turpan, including Shikchin
, Yarkhoto
and Kucha
, and collected murals, paintings, terracottas, and about one hundred manuscripts, mostly fragments written in the Brahmi script. During his second expedition Oldenburg surveyed the Mogao Caves
at Dunhuang, and revisited some of the sites in Turpan that he had visited during his first expedition. He found a large number of artefacts and manuscript fragments (nearly 20,000 fragments, some of them tiny) at Dunhuang, and also purchased about 300 scrolls from local people.
Oldenburg's collections are shared between the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts
and the Hermitage Museum
. The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts holds the more than 19,000 manuscript fragments and 365 manuscript scrolls collected from Dunhuang by Oldenburg, as well as about thirty manuscripts collected by Sergey Malov
during an expedition to Khotan
during 1909–1910, and some 183 Uyghur manuscripts collected by N. N. Krotkov, the Russian Consul in Urumqi
and Ghulja.
The Hermitage Museum holds artefacts from both of Oldenburg's expeditions, including 66 Buddhist banners and banner-tops, 137 fragments of Buddhist silk paintings, 43 fragments of Buddhist paintings on paper, 24 murals, 38 pieces of textile, and eight manuscript fragments. Oldenburg's personal papers, diaries, maps and photographs relating to the two expeditions are also held at the Hermitage.
(c.1849–1931), a Taoist
priest and self-proclaimed guardian of the Mogao Caves. News of the discovery of these manuscripts was bought to the attention of Chinese scholars when Pelliot visited Beijing in 1909, and the renowned scholar and antiquarian Luo Zhenyu
(1866–1940) persuaded the Ministry of Education to recover the 8,000 or so remaining manuscripts. In 1910 Fu Baoshu 傅寶書 was dispatched to Dunhuang to bring the remaining manuscripts back to Beijing, although he left the Tibetan manuscripts behind. Some of the manuscripts were stolen by the minister Li Shengduo 李盛鐸 shortly after they had arrived at the Ministry of Education, but soon after the Xinhai Revolution
in 1911 the manuscripts were deposited in the newly founded Metropolitan Library (later to become the National Library of China
).
The 8,697 manuscripts that Fu Baoshu brought back from Dunhuang form the core of the Dunhuang collection in the National Library of China, but they have since been augmented by various purchases and donations over the years, so that the library collection now amounts to some 16,000 items, including 4,000 small manuscript fragments.
Ōtani Kōzui
(1876–1948) was a hereditary Buddhist abbot from Kyoto
, Japan, but he had studied in London, and after meeting the explorers Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin
(1865–1952) he decided to explore Central Asia
himself from a Buddhist perspective. In 1902 he left England to return to Japan overland via St Petersburg, and together with four other returning Japanese students he made his way to Kashgar
. From Kashgar the expedition divided into two groups, Ōtani and two others travelling to Srinagar
and India, before returning to Japan; and the two others exploring the region of Khotan
and Turpan, and excavating the previously unexplored site of Kucha
, before returning to Japan in 1904. Ōtani became abbot of the Nishi Honganji
Monastery in Kyoto on his father's death in 1903, and so was unable to personally take part in any further expeditions, but he financed further expeditions to Chinese Turkestan
in 1908–1909 and 1910–1914. The final expedition excavated the tombs of Astana
outside the ancient city of Gaochang
, taking back to Japan nine mummies and many grave goods
and funerary texts.
The three Ōtani expeditions produced a large collection of manuscripts (especially Buddhist sutras
), woodslips, murals, sculptures, textiles, coins, and seals. These items were originally deposited in the Nishi Honganji Monastery, and later at Ōtani's residence, Villa Niraku in Kobe
, but in 1914 Ōtani resigned as abbot due to a bribery scandal, and much of his collection was moved to Ōtani's villa in Lüshun
, China. His collection was later dispersed to various libraries, museums and collections across Japan, Korea, and China.
(1856–1935), and the second and fourth expeditions led by Albert von Le Coq
(1860–1930). These expeditions brought back to Berlin a huge amount of material, including murals and other artefacts, as well as about 40,000 manuscript and woodblock fragments written in more than twenty different scripts and languages. The items collected during these four expeditions are now divided between two institutions in Berlin.
The IDP has digitised over 14,000 items from these collection, mostly the Chinese, Brahmi and Sanskrit fragments. The Middle Persian, Old Turkic and Mongolian fragments have been digitised as part of the Digital Turfan Archive hosted by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Tocharian fragments have been digitised as part of the TITUS project
of the Goethe University Frankfurt.
Digital preservation
Digital preservation is the set of processes, activities and management of digital information over time to ensure its long term accessibility. The goal of digital preservation is to preserve materials resulting from digital reformatting, and particularly information that is born-digital with no...
manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang
Dunhuang
Dunhuang is a city in northwestern Gansu province, Western China. It was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road. It was also known at times as Shāzhōu , or 'City of Sands', a name still used today...
and various other archaeological sites at the eastern end of the Silk Road
Silk Road
The Silk Road or Silk Route refers to a historical network of interlinking trade routes across the Afro-Eurasian landmass that connected East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean and European world, as well as parts of North and East Africa...
. The project was established by the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
in 1994, and now includes twenty-one institutions in eleven countries. the online IDP database comprised 116,476 catalogue entries and 321,206 images. Most of the manuscripts in the IDP database are texts written in Chinese
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
, but more than fifteen different scripts
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
and languages are represented, including Brahmi
Brāhmī script
Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
, Kharosthi, Khotanese, Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Tangut
Tangut script
The Tangut script was a logographic writing system, used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia Dynasty. According to the latest count, 5863 Tangut characters are known, excluding variants...
, Tibetan
Tibetan script
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Denzongkha, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday...
, Tocharian
Tocharian script
The Tocharian language is documented in manuscript fragments, mostly from the 8th century that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets and Chinese paper, preserved by the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin...
and Old Uyghur
Old Uyghur alphabet
The Old Uyghur alphabet was used for writing the Old Uyghur language, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in the Tarim basin, which is an ancestor of the modern Uyghur language. It was descendant of the Sogdian alphabet, used for texts with Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian content for 700–800 years in...
.
Victor H. Mair
Victor H. Mair
Victor Henry Mair is a Philologist specializing in Sinitic and Indo-European languages, and holds the position of Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States...
, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, has noted that there are many advantages of the IDP providing high resolution digital images of Dunhuang manuscripts online for access to all. Whereas in years gone by scholars often needed to travel long distances to access the original manuscripts, or could only access them by means of low quality reproductions, now anyone can access images from the convenience of their computer, wherever they are in the world. This not only makes research into these manuscripts easier, but helps in their conservation as there is far less need for them to be handled in person. Moreover, the high quality images provided by the IDP often show up details that would be difficult to see with the human eye.
Activities
The central core of the project is the online database of catalogue records and images. This is intended to serve three main purposes:
- to act as a replacement for tools previously used by institutions to manage their collections;
- to act as a replacement for the offline catalogues previously used by scholars to access the collections;
- to provide additional functionality that will make the database an important scholarly tool.
In 2002, Lynne Brindley
Lynne Brindley
Dame Lynne Janie Brindley, DBE, FRSA is a British professional librarian and has been the Chief Executive of the British Library, the United Kingdom's national library, since July 2000.-Career:...
, Chief Executive Officer of the British Library, put forward the International Dunhuang Project as a good example of the sort of complex, collaborative, and international digitisation projects that the British Library was increasingly engaged in. She explained that none of the individual institutions participating in the project had the resources or facilities to allow scholars full access to all of the manuscripts in their collections, but by joining together and sharing knowledge and resources the institutions would be able to offer access to the combined collections of all the institutions by means of high-quality digital images. She noted that a digitisation project such as the IDP benefits both the institutions involved, who are often able to obtain more substantial funding than they would for an internal project, and also the scholarly community, who are given access through the digital images to fragile and often inaccessible items that might previously have been difficult or impossible to view.
Cataloguing
Catalogue records are stored in XMLXML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
format on a relational database
Relational database
A relational database is a database that conforms to relational model theory. The software used in a relational database is called a relational database management system . Colloquial use of the term "relational database" may refer to the RDBMS software, or the relational database itself...
using the 4th Dimension
4th Dimension (Software)
4th Dimension is a relational database management system and IDE developed by Laurent Ribardière. 4D was created in 1984....
database management tool. Records can be searched for by means of an online search form that allows users to restrict the search on the basis of a number of different criteria, such as type of artefact, holding institute, archaeological site, and language or script. The database was updated to support Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
in 2010, and the IDP website is now fully encoded using UTF-8
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
, allowing characters
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....
from most of the ancient and modern scripts found in the manuscripts to be added to the catalogue records.
Each online catalogue record incorporates a physical description of the item, catalogue records from existing print sources, translations if available, and bibliographic references. The IDP also encourages scholarly users to submit their own catalogue entries and research results on individual items for addition to the database.
To facilitate the locating of items on the IDP database the project has also digitised a large number of catalogues and bibliographic sources, and made them available online, with links from the original catalogue entries to the corresponding online catalogue entry in the IDP database.
Conservation
In order to better understand how to conserve the fragile materials that most of the items in the IDP database are made from (paper, textile, and wood), the IDP has supported a number of conservation projects (such as the analysis of paper and textile fibres), and has organised regular conferences on conservation issues at venues across the world.In addition to developing techniques for the conservation and preservation of documents and artefacts, the IDP hopes to foster good conservation practices and common standards amongst participating institutes, ensuring that artefacts are stored under the most suitable conditions, and are handled as little as possible.
Digitisation
The IDP centre at the British Library set up a digitisation studio in 2001, and now similar studios have been established at IDP centres across Europe and Asia. In addition to making high-quality digital images of items, infrared photographyInfrared photography
In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about...
is used for manuscripts with faded ink or which are otherwise hard to read in normal light.
Education
The IDP also engages in various educational activities, organising exhibitions, workshops, and educational events for schools.In 2004 the IDP organised a major exhibition entitled "The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith", which was held at the British Library. This was the most successful exhibition ever held at the British Library, and attracted 155,000 visitors.
History
The foundations for the project were laid in October 1993 when an international conference on Dunhuang Cave 17Mogao Caves
The Mogao Caves or Mogao Grottoes , also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas , form a system of 492 temples southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis strategically located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province, China...
was held at Sussex University. This conference brought together curators and conservators from across the world, including the British Library, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences , formerly Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is Russia's leading research institution for the study of the countries and cultures of Asia and North Africa...
, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
, and the National Library of China
National Library of China
The National Library of China or NLC in Beijing is the largest library in Asia, and one of the largest in the world with a collection of over 23 million volumes...
, and in its aftermath an IDP Steering Group was set up by Graham Shaw (Deputy Director of the Oriental & India Office Collection at the British Library), Frances Wood
Frances Wood
Frances Wood is an English historian known for her writings on Chinese history, including Marco Polo, life in the Chinese treaty ports, and the First Emperor of China...
(Head of the Chinese Section at the British Library), and Peter Lawson (Conservator at the British Library). Susan Whitfield
Susan Whitfield
Susan Whitfield is an English historian and librarian who works at the British Library in London, England. She obtained a PhD in historiography from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and now specialises in the social and intellectual history of the Tang Dynasty, and the history...
was appointed to edit the newsletter. The first meeting of the IDP steering group was held on 11 April 1994, when the name International Dunhuang Project was adopted. The first newsletter was published on 16 May 1994.
The IDP was initially founded with 3-year grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation
The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange is a private, non-profit organisation located in Taipei, Taiwan, that provides support for research grants on Chinese studies in the humanities and social sciences at overseas institutions. It was founded in 1989 and named...
, and had only one member of staff. The following year the IDP database was designed and implemented, and in 1996 a grant from the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
allowed the hiring of a part-time research assistant to input catalogue data into the database.
In 1997, with funding of £148,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund
Heritage Lottery Fund
The Heritage Lottery Fund is a fund established in the United Kingdom under the National Lottery etc. Act 1993. The Fund opened for applications in 1994. It uses money raised through the National Lottery to transform and sustain the UK’s heritage...
, the IDP started to digitise manuscripts held at the British Library, and in 1998 the database went online with an initial 20,000 catalogue entries and about 1,000 images of digitised manuscripts.
In 2001, with substantial support from the Mellon Foundation, work started on the digitisation of manuscripts held at collections in Paris and Beijing, and in 2003 digital images of Dunhuang paintings held at the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
were added to the database. By 2004 the IDP database included images of some 50,000 manuscripts, paintings, artefacts, and historical photographs.
IDP Centres were opened in Beijing in 2001, in St. Petersburg and Kyoto in 2004, in Berlin in 2005, in Dunhuang in 2007, in Paris in 2008, and in Seoul
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
in 2010.
The current director of the IDP is Susan Whitfield.
Participating institutions
The following institutions are participating in the project.- British LibraryBritish LibraryThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
, London, England - British MuseumBritish MuseumThe British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, London, England - Victoria and Albert MuseumVictoria and Albert MuseumThe Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, London, England - Chester Beatty LibraryChester Beatty LibraryThe Chester Beatty Library was established in Dublin, Ireland in 1950, to house the collections of mining magnate, Sir Alfred Chester Beatty. The present library, on the grounds of Dublin Castle, opened on February 7, 2000, the 125th anniversary of Sir Alfred's birth and was named European Museum...
, Dublin, Ireland - National Library of ChinaNational Library of ChinaThe National Library of China or NLC in Beijing is the largest library in Asia, and one of the largest in the world with a collection of over 23 million volumes...
, Beijing, China - Dunhuang Academy, Dunhuang, China
- Academia SinicaAcademia SinicaThe Academia Sinica , headquartered in the Nangang District of Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. It supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from mathematical and physical sciences, to life sciences, and to humanities and social sciences.Academia Sinica has...
, Taipei, Taiwan - Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (prior to 2007 the St Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of SciencesInstitute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of SciencesInstitute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences , formerly Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is Russia's leading research institution for the study of the countries and cultures of Asia and North Africa...
), St. Petersburg, Russia - National Museum of India, New Delhi, India
- Ryukoku UniversityRyukoku Universityis a private university located in Kyoto, Japan.It was founded as a school for Buddhist monks of the Nishi Hongan-ji denomination in 1639, and became a secularized university in 1876. Professors and students of the university established the famed literary magazine Chūōkōron in 1887. It has three...
, Kyoto, Japan - State LibraryBerlin State LibraryThe Berlin State Library is a library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.-Buildings:The State Library runs several premises, three of which are open for users, namely House 1 in Unter den Linden 8, House 2 in Potsdamer Straße 33 and the newspaper archive...
, Berlin, Germany - Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and HumanitiesBerlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and HumanitiesThe Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften is the academy of sciences of the German states Berlin and Brandenburg. As the word "Wissenschaft", in German includes both the natural sciences and the humanities, the academy's title is best translated as Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of...
, Berlin, Germany - Bibliothèque nationale de FranceBibliothèque nationale de FranceThe is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
, Paris, France - Musée GuimetGuimet MuseumThe Guimet Museum is a museum of Asian art located at 6, place d'Iéna in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France...
, Paris, France - National Museum of EthnographyMuseum of Ethnography, SwedenThe Museum of Ethnography , in Stockholm, Sweden, is a Swedish science museum. It houses a collection of about 220,000 items relating to the ethnography, or cultural anthropology, of peoples from around the world, including from China, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific region, the...
, Stockholm, Sweden - Sven Hedin Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden
- Freer Gallery of ArtFreer Gallery of ArtThe Freer Gallery of Art joins the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery to form the Smithsonian Institution's national museums of Asian art. The Freer contains art from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Islamic world, the ancient Near East, and ancient Egypt, as well as a significant collection of...
, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA - University of California at Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesThe University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
, USA - Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, (Gest Library and Art Museum), Princeton, USA - Morgan Library, New York, USA
- Research Institute of Korean Studies, Korea UniversityKorea UniversityKorea University is a prestigious nonsectarian, private research university located primarily in Seoul, South Korea, and one of the SKY universities, a historical acronym used in South Korea to refer to Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University. Founded by Lee Yong-ik in...
, Seoul, South Korea
IDP Centres
The International Dunhuang Project has centres in seven countries. The London centre, based at the British Library, acts as the directorate for the IDP, and is responsible for maintaining the IDP database and the main English-language website. The other centres maintain local-language versions of the IDP website, currently ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Korea
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. Each centre is responsible for the conservation, cataloguing, and digitisation of Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
n manuscripts in its country. The staff at these centres help train participating institutions in the use of digitisation equipment and computer software, as well as providing training in conservation and research techniques.
| Centre | | Institution | | Established | | Website | | Images | | Notes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | British Library | 1994 | idp.bl.uk/ | 127,409 | Also hosts images for those institutions that do not have their own IDP website, such as the British Museum and Princeton University. | |||||
| Beijing | National Library of China National Library of China The National Library of China or NLC in Beijing is the largest library in Asia, and one of the largest in the world with a collection of over 23 million volumes... |
2001 | idp.nlc.gov.cn/ | 61,021 | ||||||
| Kyoto | Ryukoku University Ryukoku University is a private university located in Kyoto, Japan.It was founded as a school for Buddhist monks of the Nishi Hongan-ji denomination in 1639, and became a secularized university in 1876. Professors and students of the university established the famed literary magazine Chūōkōron in 1887. It has three... |
2004 | idp.afc.ryukoku.ac.jp/ | 17,364 | ||||||
| St Petersburg | Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences , formerly Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is Russia's leading research institution for the study of the countries and cultures of Asia and North Africa... |
2004 | idp.orientalstudies.ru/ | 22,404 | ||||||
| Berlin | Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften is the academy of sciences of the German states Berlin and Brandenburg. As the word "Wissenschaft", in German includes both the natural sciences and the humanities, the academy's title is best translated as Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of... and Berlin State Library Berlin State Library The Berlin State Library is a library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.-Buildings:The State Library runs several premises, three of which are open for users, namely House 1 in Unter den Linden 8, House 2 in Potsdamer Straße 33 and the newspaper archive... |
2005 | idp.bbaw.de/ | 36,841 | ||||||
| Dunhuang | Dunhuang Academy | 2007 | idp.dha.ac.cn/ | 484 | Responsible for manuscripts held by institutions in Gansu Gansu ' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east... province. |
|||||
| Paris | Bibliothèque nationale de France Bibliothèque nationale de France The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:... and Guimet Museum Guimet Museum The Guimet Museum is a museum of Asian art located at 6, place d'Iéna in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France... |
2008 | idp.bnf.fr/ | 55,683 | ||||||
| Seoul | Research Institute of Korean Studies at Korea University Korea University Korea University is a prestigious nonsectarian, private research university located primarily in Seoul, South Korea, and one of the SKY universities, a historical acronym used in South Korea to refer to Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University. Founded by Lee Yong-ik in... |
2010 | idp.korea.ac.kr/ | not yet available | ||||||
Notes
|
||||||||||
In addition to these centres, it is planned to open an IDP centre in Sweden, and digitise the Central Asian collections held in Swedish institutions.
Collections
The IDP database includes material from a number of important collections held by participating institutions of the IDP.The Stein Collections
Mogao Caves
The Mogao Caves or Mogao Grottoes , also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas , form a system of 492 temples southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis strategically located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province, China...
at Dunhuang during his second expedition. Some of the material that he collected, including murals, paintings, artefacts and manuscripts, was sent to India as his first three expeditions had been sponsored by the Indian government. Most of this material is now held at the National Museum of India in New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
, but a small amount of the material from his first expedition is held at the Indian Museum
Indian Museum
The Indian Museum is the largest museum in India and has rare collections of antiques, armour and ornaments, fossils, skeletons, mummies, and Mughal paintings...
in Calcutta
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
, and at Lahore Museum
Lahore Museum
Lahore Museum , established in 1894, is located in The Mall, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was one of the famous curators of the museum. Over 250,000 admissions were registered in 2005.-Attractions:...
in Pakistan. The rest of the material collected by Stein was taken to England, and is now shared between the British Library, British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The British Library holds over 45,000 items collected by Stein, mostly comprising manuscripts, printed texts, and inscribed pieces of wood, written in a wide variety of scripts and languages, including Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, Tibetan
Tibetan language
The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
, Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Tangut
Tangut script
The Tangut script was a logographic writing system, used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia Dynasty. According to the latest count, 5863 Tangut characters are known, excluding variants...
, Khotanese, Tocharian
Tocharian languages
Tocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from the people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans. The term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria, which the...
, Sogdian
Sogdian language
The Sogdian language is a Middle Iranian language that was spoken in Sogdiana , located in modern day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan ....
, Uyghur
Old Uyghur alphabet
The Old Uyghur alphabet was used for writing the Old Uyghur language, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in the Tarim basin, which is an ancestor of the modern Uyghur language. It was descendant of the Sogdian alphabet, used for texts with Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian content for 700–800 years in...
, Turkic and Mongolian
Mongolian script
The classical Mongolian script , also known as Uyghurjin, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most successful until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946...
:
- about 14,000 scrolls and paper fragments in Chinese from Dunhuang Cave 17
- about 5,000 paper fragments and 4,000 woodlsips in Chinese from sites other than Dunhuang
- about 3,100 scrolls and pages in Tibetan from Dunhuang
- about 2,300 woodslips in Tibetan from MiranMiran (China)Miran is an ancient oasis town located on the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert in China, along the famous trade route known as the Silk Road where the Lop Nur desert meets the Altun Shan mountains. Two thousand years ago a river flowed down from the mountain and Miran had a sophisticated...
and Mazar Tagh - about 1,000 paper fragments in Tibetan from Khara-KhotoKhara-KhotoKhara-Khoto was a Tangut city in the Ejin khoshuu of Alxa League, in western Inner Mongolia, near the former Gashun Lake. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo.-History:...
and Etsin-golRuo ShuiRuo Shui is a large river of northern China. It flows approximately from its headwaters in the Qilian Mountains north-northeast into an endorheic valley in the Badain Jaran Desert. The river forms one of the largest inland deltas or alluvial fans in the world... - about 700 paper fragments in Tibetan from other sites
- about 7,000 items in Brahmi and Kharosthi
- about 6,000 paper fragments in Tangut
- about 50 scrolls, 2,000 paper fragments and 100 woodslips in Khotanese
- about 1,200 items in Tocharian
- about 400 items in Old Turkic and Uyghur
- about 150 items in Sogdian
The British Library Stein Collection also includes some artefacts such as textile fragments, sutra wrappers and paste brushes, as well as over 10,000 photographs, negatives and lantern slides taken by Stein.
The British Museum holds a collection of over 1,500 archaeological artefacts collected from various Silk Road sites by Stein, as well as non-literary items from Dunhuang Cave 17, comprising more than 240 paintings on silk or paper, 200 textiles, and about 30 woodblock prints. The museum also holds over 4,000 coins collected by Stein, about three quarters of which are Chinese, and most of the rest are Islamic. Images of all of the paintings and some of the artefacts are now included in the IDP database, and the coins may be added at a future date.
The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a collection of more than 650 textiles collected by Stein from various Silk Road sites, all of which have now been added to the IDP database.
Many of Stein's personal papers and diaries are held at the Western Manuscript Department of the Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...
at Oxford University. A collection of personal papers and photographs held at the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...
have been added to the IDP database.
The removal by Stein of so much cultural and archaeological material from China has caused anger in China, and there have been calls for the texts and artefacts collected by Stein from Dunhuang that are now in the British Museum and British Library to be repatriated to China. Although the Chinese government has not formally requested their return, in 2003 an official at the Chinese Embassy in London stated that "[l]ittle by little, we will expect to see the return of items taken from Dunhuang — they should go back to their original place".
The Hoernle Collection
The Hoernle Collection, named after Augustus HoernleAugustus Hoernle
Dr. Augustus Rudolf Hoernle was an English Orientalist. He was born in India, the son of an Anglican priest. He attended school in Switzerland, later moving to London and studying Sanskrit under Goldstucker. He returned to India in 1865, teaching first at the Benares Hindu University and later at...
(1841–1918), is a collection of Central Asian manuscripts collected by the Indian government. 22 consignments were sent to Hoernle in Calcutta between 1895 and 1899, and these were sent to the British Museum in 1902. A further ten consignments were sent to Hoernle in London after his retirement in 1899. The Hoernle Collection, which comprises over 2,000 Sanskrit manuscripts, 1,200 Tocharian manuscripts, and about 250 Khotanese manuscripts, as well as a few Chinese, Persian and Uyghur manuscripts, is now held by the British Library.
The Pelliot Collection
Paul PelliotPaul Pelliot
Paul Pelliot was a French sinologist and explorer of Central Asia. Initially intending to enter the foreign service, Pelliot took up the study of Chinese and became a pupil of Sylvain Lévi and Édouard Chavannes....
(1878–1945) led an expedition to Kucha
Kucha
Kuchaor Kuche Uyghur , Chinese Simplified: 库车; Traditional: 庫車; pinyin Kùchē; also romanized as Qiuzi, Qiuci, Chiu-tzu, Kiu-che, Kuei-tzu from the traditional Chinese forms 屈支 屈茨; 龜玆; 龟兹, 丘玆, also Po ; Sanskrit: Kueina, Standard Tibetan: Kutsahiyui was an ancient Buddhist kingdom...
and Dunhuang from 1906–1908. In Kucha and elsewhere in Chinese Turkestan
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
he collected hundreds of woodslips with inscriptions in Sanskrit and Tocharian, whilst at Dunhuang, arriving a year after Stein, he acquired thousands of manuscripts from the 'Library Cave' (Cave 17). The items collected by Pelliot are held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
, and are divided into the following sub-collections:
- Pelliot Tibetan : 4,174 manuscripts and woodblock prints in Tibetan
- Pelliot Chinese : about 3,000 scrolls, booklets, paintings and woodblock prints, and around 700 fragments, in Chinese
- Pelliot Sanskrit : about 4,000 fragments in Sanskrit
- Pelliot Kuchean : about 2,000 woodslips and paper fragments in Tocharian
- Pelliot Sogdian : about 40 Sogdian manuscripts
- Pelliot Uighur : about 20 Uyghur manuscripts
- Pelliot Khotanais : Khotanese manuscripts
- Pelliot Xixia : several hundred items in the Tangut scriptTangut scriptThe Tangut script was a logographic writing system, used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia Dynasty. According to the latest count, 5863 Tangut characters are known, excluding variants...
, mostly woodblock prints - Pelliot divers : miscellaneous items
The Kozlov Collection
Pyotr Kozlov (1863–1935) made an expedition to the Tangut fortress city of Khara-KhotoKhara-Khoto
Khara-Khoto was a Tangut city in the Ejin khoshuu of Alxa League, in western Inner Mongolia, near the former Gashun Lake. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo.-History:...
during 1907–1909. The city had been abandoned in the late 14th century, and had been largely buried in sand for several hundred years. Kozlov unearthed thousands of manuscripts and woodblock prints, mostly written in the dead Tangut language
Tangut language
Tangut is an ancient northeastern Tibeto-Burman language once spoken in the Western Xia Dynasty, also known as the Tangut Empire. It is classified by some linguists as one of the Qiangic languages, which also include Qiang and rGyalrong, among others...
, which had been preserved beneath the sands of Khara-Khoto. The collection of Tangut texts that Kozlov brought back from Khara-Khoto were originally housed in the museum of Alexander III of Russia
Alexander III of Russia
Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov , historically remembered as Alexander III or Alexander the Peacemaker reigned as Emperor of Russia from until his death on .-Disposition:...
in St Petersburg, but were transferred to the Asiatic Museum in 1911. They are now held at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences , formerly Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is Russia's leading research institution for the study of the countries and cultures of Asia and North Africa...
in St Petersburg. In addition to the several thousand Tangut texts, the Kozlov Collection includes about 660 manuscripts and printed books in Chinese, mostly Buddhist texts.
The site of Khara-Khoto was excavated by Aurel Stein in 1917, during his third expedition, and several thousand Tangut manuscript fragments recovered by Stein are in the Stein Collection of the British Library.
The Oldenburg Collections
Sergey OldenburgSergey Oldenburg
Sergey Fyodorovich Oldenburg was a Russian orientalist who specialized in Buddhist studies. He is remembered as the founder of Russian Indology and the teacher of Fyodor Shcherbatskoy....
(1863–1934), who was the first director of the Institute of Oriental Studies (formerly the Asiatic Museum) in St Petersburg, made two expeditions to Central Asia (1909–1910 and 1914–1915), which were to become known as the 'Russian Turkestan expeditions'. During the first expedition Oldenburg explored a number of sites around Turpan, including Shikchin
Qigexing Buddhist Temple Ruins
The Qigexing Buddhist Temple Ruins is a ruined compound of Buddhist religious sites located about 25–30 km southwest of the town of Yanqi, Yanqi Hui Autonomous County, Xinjiang, China.-Names:...
, Yarkhoto
Jiaohe Ruins
The Jiaohe Ruins is an ancient Chinese archaeological site found in the Yarnaz Valley, 10 km west of the city of Turpan, Xinjiang province, China...
and Kucha
Kucha
Kuchaor Kuche Uyghur , Chinese Simplified: 库车; Traditional: 庫車; pinyin Kùchē; also romanized as Qiuzi, Qiuci, Chiu-tzu, Kiu-che, Kuei-tzu from the traditional Chinese forms 屈支 屈茨; 龜玆; 龟兹, 丘玆, also Po ; Sanskrit: Kueina, Standard Tibetan: Kutsahiyui was an ancient Buddhist kingdom...
, and collected murals, paintings, terracottas, and about one hundred manuscripts, mostly fragments written in the Brahmi script. During his second expedition Oldenburg surveyed the Mogao Caves
Mogao Caves
The Mogao Caves or Mogao Grottoes , also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas , form a system of 492 temples southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis strategically located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province, China...
at Dunhuang, and revisited some of the sites in Turpan that he had visited during his first expedition. He found a large number of artefacts and manuscript fragments (nearly 20,000 fragments, some of them tiny) at Dunhuang, and also purchased about 300 scrolls from local people.
Oldenburg's collections are shared between the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences , formerly Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is Russia's leading research institution for the study of the countries and cultures of Asia and North Africa...
and the Hermitage Museum
Hermitage Museum
The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...
. The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts holds the more than 19,000 manuscript fragments and 365 manuscript scrolls collected from Dunhuang by Oldenburg, as well as about thirty manuscripts collected by Sergey Malov
Sergey Malov
Sergey Efimovich Malov was a Russian Turkologist who made important contributions to the documentation of archaic and contemporary Turkic languages, classification of the Turkic alphabets, and the deciphering of the Turkic Orkhon script.- Biography :...
during an expedition to Khotan
Khotan
Hotan , or Hetian , also spelled Khotan, is the seat of the Hotan Prefecture in Xinjiang, China. It was previously known in Chinese as 于窴/於窴 and to 19th-century European explorers as Ilchi....
during 1909–1910, and some 183 Uyghur manuscripts collected by N. N. Krotkov, the Russian Consul in Urumqi
Ürümqi
Ürümqi , formerly Tihwa , is the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, in the northwest of the country....
and Ghulja.
The Hermitage Museum holds artefacts from both of Oldenburg's expeditions, including 66 Buddhist banners and banner-tops, 137 fragments of Buddhist silk paintings, 43 fragments of Buddhist paintings on paper, 24 murals, 38 pieces of textile, and eight manuscript fragments. Oldenburg's personal papers, diaries, maps and photographs relating to the two expeditions are also held at the Hermitage.
Dunhuang Collections at the National Library of China
During 1907–1908 Stein and Pelliot had visited Dunhuang, and had both purchased large quantities of manuscripts from Wang YuanluWang Yuanlu
Wang Yuanlu was a Taoist priest acting as an abbot of the caves in Dunhuang at the beginning of the 20th century, the discoverer of the Dunhuang manuscripts....
(c.1849–1931), a Taoist
Taoism
Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...
priest and self-proclaimed guardian of the Mogao Caves. News of the discovery of these manuscripts was bought to the attention of Chinese scholars when Pelliot visited Beijing in 1909, and the renowned scholar and antiquarian Luo Zhenyu
Luo Zhenyu
Luo Zhenyu , courtesy name: Shuyun was a Chinese classical scholar, philologist, epigrapher, antiquarian and Qing loyalist.-Biography:...
(1866–1940) persuaded the Ministry of Education to recover the 8,000 or so remaining manuscripts. In 1910 Fu Baoshu 傅寶書 was dispatched to Dunhuang to bring the remaining manuscripts back to Beijing, although he left the Tibetan manuscripts behind. Some of the manuscripts were stolen by the minister Li Shengduo 李盛鐸 shortly after they had arrived at the Ministry of Education, but soon after the Xinhai Revolution
Xinhai Revolution
The Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, also known as Revolution of 1911 or the Chinese Revolution, was a revolution that overthrew China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing , and established the Republic of China...
in 1911 the manuscripts were deposited in the newly founded Metropolitan Library (later to become the National Library of China
National Library of China
The National Library of China or NLC in Beijing is the largest library in Asia, and one of the largest in the world with a collection of over 23 million volumes...
).
The 8,697 manuscripts that Fu Baoshu brought back from Dunhuang form the core of the Dunhuang collection in the National Library of China, but they have since been augmented by various purchases and donations over the years, so that the library collection now amounts to some 16,000 items, including 4,000 small manuscript fragments.
The Ōtani Collections
Otani Kozui
was the 22nd Abbot of the Nishi Honganji sub-sect of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan. He is known for expeditions to Buddhist sites in Central Asia, such as Subashi....
(1876–1948) was a hereditary Buddhist abbot from Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
, Japan, but he had studied in London, and after meeting the explorers Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin
Sven Hedin
Sven Anders Hedin KNO1kl RVO was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, and travel writer, as well as an illustrator of his own works...
(1865–1952) he decided to explore Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
himself from a Buddhist perspective. In 1902 he left England to return to Japan overland via St Petersburg, and together with four other returning Japanese students he made his way to Kashgar
Kashgar
Kashgar or Kashi is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 residents in the western part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Kashgar is the administrative centre of Kashgar Prefecture which has an area of 162,000 km² and a population of approximately...
. From Kashgar the expedition divided into two groups, Ōtani and two others travelling to Srinagar
Srinagar
Srinagar is the summer seasonal capital of Jammu and Kashmir. It is situated in Kashmir Valley and lies on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus. It is one of the largest cities in India not to have a Hindu majority. The city is famous for its gardens, lakes and houseboats...
and India, before returning to Japan; and the two others exploring the region of Khotan
Khotan
Hotan , or Hetian , also spelled Khotan, is the seat of the Hotan Prefecture in Xinjiang, China. It was previously known in Chinese as 于窴/於窴 and to 19th-century European explorers as Ilchi....
and Turpan, and excavating the previously unexplored site of Kucha
Kucha
Kuchaor Kuche Uyghur , Chinese Simplified: 库车; Traditional: 庫車; pinyin Kùchē; also romanized as Qiuzi, Qiuci, Chiu-tzu, Kiu-che, Kuei-tzu from the traditional Chinese forms 屈支 屈茨; 龜玆; 龟兹, 丘玆, also Po ; Sanskrit: Kueina, Standard Tibetan: Kutsahiyui was an ancient Buddhist kingdom...
, before returning to Japan in 1904. Ōtani became abbot of the Nishi Honganji
Nishi Honganji
or the "Western Temple of the Original Vow", is one of two temple complexes of Jodo Shinshu in Kyoto, the other being Higashi Honganji...
Monastery in Kyoto on his father's death in 1903, and so was unable to personally take part in any further expeditions, but he financed further expeditions to Chinese Turkestan
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
in 1908–1909 and 1910–1914. The final expedition excavated the tombs of Astana
Astana Graves
The Astana Graves are a series of underground tombs located 6km from the ancient city of Gaochang, and 42km from Turpan, in Xinjiang, China. The tombs were used by the inhabitants of Gaochang, both commoners and locals, for about 600 years from 200 CE – 800 CE. The complex covers 10 square...
outside the ancient city of Gaochang
Gaochang
Gaochang is the site of an ancient oasis city built on the northern rim of the inhospitable Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, China. A busy trading center, it was a stopping point for merchant traders traveling on the Silk Road...
, taking back to Japan nine mummies and many grave goods
Grave goods
Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body.They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods are a type of votive deposit...
and funerary texts.
The three Ōtani expeditions produced a large collection of manuscripts (especially Buddhist sutras
Sutras
Sutras may refer to:*Sūtra - A type of literary composition in Buddhism and Hinduism*Sutras - An album by 1960s rock musician Donovan...
), woodslips, murals, sculptures, textiles, coins, and seals. These items were originally deposited in the Nishi Honganji Monastery, and later at Ōtani's residence, Villa Niraku in Kobe
Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...
, but in 1914 Ōtani resigned as abbot due to a bribery scandal, and much of his collection was moved to Ōtani's villa in Lüshun
Dalian
Dalian is a major city and seaport in the south of Liaoning province, Northeast China. It faces Shandong to the south, the Yellow Sea to the east and the Bohai Sea to the west and south. Holding sub-provincial administrative status, Dalian is the southernmost city of Northeast China and China's...
, China. His collection was later dispersed to various libraries, museums and collections across Japan, Korea, and China.
- The Omiya Library at Ryukoku UniversityRyukoku Universityis a private university located in Kyoto, Japan.It was founded as a school for Buddhist monks of the Nishi Hongan-ji denomination in 1639, and became a secularized university in 1876. Professors and students of the university established the famed literary magazine Chūōkōron in 1887. It has three...
, Kyoto holds 8,000 miscellaneous items found in two wooden chests at Villa Niraku after Ōtani's death. These include manuscript scrolls, manuscript booklets, printed texts, wooden slips, silk paintings, textiles, plant specimens, coins, and rubbings. As well as Chinese texts, the collection includes documents written in 15 different languages and 13 different scripts, covering secular subjects as well as ManichaeanManichaeismManichaeism in Modern Persian Āyin e Māni; ) was one of the major Iranian Gnostic religions, originating in Sassanid Persia.Although most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived...
Buddhist scriptures and NestorianNestorianismNestorianism is a Christological doctrine advanced by Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428–431. The doctrine, which was informed by Nestorius's studies under Theodore of Mopsuestia at the School of Antioch, emphasizes the disunion between the human and divine natures of Jesus...
Christian texts. - Tokyo National MuseumTokyo National MuseumEstablished 1872, the , or TNM, is the oldest and largest museum in Japan. The museum collects, houses, and preserves a comprehensive collection of art works and archaeological objects of Asia, focusing on Japan. The museum holds over 110,000 objects, which includes 87 Japanese National Treasure...
holds various items from the Ōtani expeditions, including Chinese and Uyghur manuscripts and woodslips from Turpan, Dunhuang and elsewhere, as well as paintings from Dunhuang and Turpan. - Kyoto National MuseumKyoto National MuseumThe is one of the three formerly imperially-mandated art museums in Japan. The museum is located in Higashiyama Ward in Kyoto. The collections of the Kyoto National Museum focus on pre-modern Japanese and Asian art....
holds a number of items from Ōtani's collection. - Otani UniversityOtani Universityis a private Buddhist university located in Kita-ku, Kyoto, Japan. The university was founded in 1901 as "Shinshū University" in Tokyo with Kiyozawa Manshi as the president.-Notable alumni and faculty:*Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki*Kaneko Daiei*Keido Fukushima...
, Kyoto holds 38 Dunhuang manuscripts, including 34 from Ōtani's collection. - The Lüshun Museum in DalianDalianDalian is a major city and seaport in the south of Liaoning province, Northeast China. It faces Shandong to the south, the Yellow Sea to the east and the Bohai Sea to the west and south. Holding sub-provincial administrative status, Dalian is the southernmost city of Northeast China and China's...
, China holds 16,035 Buddhist manuscript fragments from Turpan, as well as documents written in Brahmi, Sogdian, Tibetan, Tangut, and Uyghur. - The National Library of China in Beijing holds 621 Dunhuang scrolls transferred from the Lüshun Museum.
- The National Museum of KoreaNational Museum of KoreaThe National Museum of Korea is the flagship museum of Korean history and art in South Korea and is the cultural organization that represents Korea...
in SeoulSeoulSeoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
holds about 1,700 artefacts and 60 fragments of murals from the Bezeklik CavesBezeklik Thousand Buddha CavesThe Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves are complex of Buddhist cave grottos dating from the 5th to the 9th centuries between the cities of Turpan and Shanshan at the north-east of the Taklamakan Desert near the ancient ruins of Gaochang in the Mutou Valley, a gorge in the Flaming Mountains, China...
that derived from Villa Niraku.
The Berlin Turpan Collections
Four German expeditions to Turpan were made in the years 1902–1903, 1904–1905, 1905–1907, and 1913–1914, the first and third expeditions led by Albert GrünwedelAlbert Grünwedel
Albert Grünwedel was a German indologist, tibetologist archaeologist and explorer of Central Asia. Grünwedel was also one of the first scholars to study the Lepcha language.-Life:...
(1856–1935), and the second and fourth expeditions led by Albert von Le Coq
Albert von Le Coq
Albert von Le Coq was a German archaeologist and explorer of Central Asia. He was heir to a sizable fortune derived from breweries and wineries scattered throughout Central and Eastern Europe, thus allowing him the luxury of travel and study at the - no longer existing - Ethnology Museum in Berlin...
(1860–1930). These expeditions brought back to Berlin a huge amount of material, including murals and other artefacts, as well as about 40,000 manuscript and woodblock fragments written in more than twenty different scripts and languages. The items collected during these four expeditions are now divided between two institutions in Berlin.
- The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and HumanitiesBerlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and HumanitiesThe Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften is the academy of sciences of the German states Berlin and Brandenburg. As the word "Wissenschaft", in German includes both the natural sciences and the humanities, the academy's title is best translated as Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of...
holds about 6,000 Old Uyghur fragments, about 1,600 Chinese and Old Uyghur fragments, 800 Middle PersianMiddle PersianMiddle Persian , indigenously known as "Pârsig" sometimes referred to as Pahlavi or Pehlevi, is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as a...
and Old TurkicOld Turkic languageOld Turkic is the earliest attested form of Turkic, found in Göktürk and Uyghur inscriptions dating from about the 7th century to the 13th century....
fragments (formerly in the collection of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature), 3,500 Manichaean fragments in various languages (primarily Middle Persian, ParthianParthian languageThe Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlavanik, is a now-extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language spoken in Parthia, a region of northeastern ancient Persia during the rule of the Parthian empire....
, Old Turkic and Sogdian), about 1,000 SogdianSogdian languageThe Sogdian language is a Middle Iranian language that was spoken in Sogdiana , located in modern day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan ....
and Chinese/Sogdian fragments, and about 300 Sogdian fragments in the Nestorian script. - The Oriental Department of the Berlin State LibraryBerlin State LibraryThe Berlin State Library is a library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.-Buildings:The State Library runs several premises, three of which are open for users, namely House 1 in Unter den Linden 8, House 2 in Potsdamer Straße 33 and the newspaper archive...
holds about 6,000 Chinese fragments, about 100 MongolianMongolian languageThe Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
fragments, about 300 Syriac fragments, about 200 Tibetan fragments, about 4,000 Tocharian fragments, and about 8,000 Sanskrit fragments.
The IDP has digitised over 14,000 items from these collection, mostly the Chinese, Brahmi and Sanskrit fragments. The Middle Persian, Old Turkic and Mongolian fragments have been digitised as part of the Digital Turfan Archive hosted by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Tocharian fragments have been digitised as part of the TITUS project
TITUS (project)
TITUS is a project of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, maintained by Professor Dr...
of the Goethe University Frankfurt.
Notable items in the IDP database
The following are some of the notable items in the IDP database.| Institution and pressmark | | Title | | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond Sutra Diamond Sutra The Diamond Sūtra , is a short and well-known Mahāyāna sūtra from the Prajñāpāramitā, or "Perfection of Wisdom" genre, and emphasizes the practice of non-abiding and non-attachment... |
The oldest known dated printed Woodblock printing Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper.... book in the world, dated 868. |
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| Dunhuang Star Chart | The first known graphical representation of stars from ancient Chinese astronomy Chinese astronomy Astronomy in China has a very long history, with historians considering that "they [the Chinese] were the most persistent and accurate observers of celestial phenomena anywhere in the world before the Arabs."... , dated to the Tang Dynasty Tang Dynasty The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire... (618–907). |
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| Dunhuang Go Manual Dunhuang Go Manual The Dunhuang Go Manual or Dunhuang Go Classic or simply the Classic of Go is the earliest surviving manual on the strategic board game of Go... |
The earliest surviving manual on the strategic board game Board game A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve... of Go. |
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Testament of Ba Testament of Ba The Testament of Ba is an account written in Old Tibetan of the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet and the foundation of the Samye Monastery during the reign of King Trisong Detsen The Testament of Ba (Tibetan དབའ་བཞེད or སྦ་བཞེད; Wylie transliteration: dba' bzhed or sba bzhed) is an account... |
The earliest known fragments of an account of the establishment of Buddhism Buddhism Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th... in Tibet during the reign of King Trisong Detsen Trisong Detsen Trisong Detsän or Trisong Detsen ཁྲི་སྲོང་ལྡེ་བཙན , was the son of Me Agtsom and one of the emperors of Tibet and ruled... (r. 755–797/804), dated to 9th or 10th centuries. |
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| Irk Bitig Irk Bitig Irk Bitig or Irq Bitig , known as the Book of Omens or Book of Divination in English, is a 9th century manuscript book on divination that was discovered in the "Library Cave" of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China, by Aurel Stein in 1907, and is now in the collection of the British Library in... (Book of Omens) |
A 9th century manuscript book on divination written in the Old Turkic script. | |||
| Sutra of the Great Virtue of Wisdom Sutra of the Great Virtue of Wisdom Sutra of the Great Virtue of Wisdom is a 5th century Chinese manuscript on silk brought from the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China. It was brought to Europe by the Paul Pelliot , and it is now housed at the National Library of France in Paris.... |
One of the oldest existing Chinese Buddhist sutras, dated to the 5th century CE. | |||
| Wang ocheonchukguk jeon Wang ocheonchukguk jeon Wang ocheonchukguk jeon is a travelogue by Buddhist monk Hyecho, who traveled from Korea to India, in the years 723 - 727/728 CE.... |
A travelogue by the Korean Korean people The Korean people are an ethnic group originating in the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. Koreans are one of the most ethnically and linguistically homogeneous groups in the world.-Names:... Buddhist monk Hyecho Hyecho Hyecho , Sanskrit: Prajñāvikram; Hui Chao in Chinese Pinyin, was a Korean Buddhist monk from Silla, one the three Korean kingdoms of the period."You complain of the long way home to the west,and I sigh at the endless road to the east."... , who traveled to India in the years 723–727/728. |
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| Old Tibetan Chronicle Old Tibetan Chronicle The Old Tibetan Chronicle is a scroll containing 536 lines, however the end is missing. There are Chinese Buddhist texts on the reverse side of the scroll... |
A semi-fictitious record from the 11th century of the early kings of Tibet Tibetan Empire The historic name for the Tibetan Empire is different from Tibet's present name.Traditional Tibetan history preserves a lengthy list of rulers, whose exploits become subject to external verification in the Chinese histories by the seventh century. From the 7th to the 11th century a series of... |
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Old Tibetan Annals | A year-by-year account of important events in Tibet Tibetan Empire The historic name for the Tibetan Empire is different from Tibet's present name.Traditional Tibetan history preserves a lengthy list of rulers, whose exploits become subject to external verification in the Chinese histories by the seventh century. From the 7th to the 11th century a series of... during the years 650 to 764, dated back to 11th century. |
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Awards
In November 2010 the IDP was awarded the Casa Asia Award by the Spanish governmental consortium, Casa Asia, for its work in digitizing and preserving manuscripts.See also
- Dunhuang manuscriptsDunhuang manuscriptsThe Dunhuang manuscripts is a cache of important religious and secular documents discovered in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China during the early 20th century. Dating from the 5th to early 11th centuries, the manuscripts include works ranging from history and mathematics to folk songs and dance...
- Digital libraryDigital libraryA digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
- Preservation (library and archival science)Preservation (library and archival science)Preservation is a branch of library and information science concerned with maintaining or restoring access to artifacts, documents and records through the study, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of decay and damage....
External links
- The International Dunhuang Project
- IDP Paleography Resource (for the study of Tibetan and Chinese manuscripts)
- IDP Newsletter
- IDP Blog