Dunhuang manuscripts

Common card · No. 375048

The Dunhuang manuscripts are a large and varied collection of religious and secular texts, consisting mainly of handwritten manuscripts on materials such as hemp, silk, and paper, along with some woodblock-printed items. Composed in a range of languages including Chinese, Tibetan and others, these manuscripts were discovered in 1900 at the Mogao Caves near Sachu in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China, by the itinerant Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu. After taking over the caves, Wang sold the manuscripts to Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot for a modest sum. Knowing the philological value of the Dunhuang manuscripts, Stein and Pelliot bought them from Wang and took them from China to Europe. Most of the manuscripts originate from a cache of documents produced between the late 4th and early 11th centuries. These were sealed in what is now known as the Library Cave (Cave 17) sometime in the early 11th century. The site at Sachu (modern-day Dunhuang) was an important regional centre for manuscript production...

Read on Wikipedia · Image International Dunhuang Project, CC BY-SA 3.0