Dunhuang Manuscripts: Their Discovery and Exile

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Dunhuang Manuscripts: Their Discovery and Exile

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In 1900, a cave was discovered in Northwest China. It contained hundreds of thousands of scrolls of manuscripts that were dated to before the 11th century, with the oldest dating to the fifth century.
Nowadays, however, they are scattered among 13 countries, with the best collection preserved in London and Paris. How did these manuscripts find their way to the other side of the Euro-asian continent?
This video tells the story of the discovery of the manuscripts, and their removal by two archaeologists: French Paul Pelliot and British-Hungarian Aural Stein.
[Correction]
Prof. Galambos at Cambridge kindly pointed out one mistake: 'Stein was not knighted by the Queen, as at that time the monarch was King George V. So he would have been knighted by the King.' (By the way, follow his channel The Chinese Alphabet where Prof. Galambos talks about his research experiences and interests).

Пікірлер: 15

@TheChineseAlphabet 2 жыл бұрын

Nice introduction, very engaging!

@nyckhusan2634 8 ай бұрын

Last time when Dunhuang caves were looted was in the end of 1931 when Russian Cossacks came to the caves in the pursuit of Ma Zhongying ( they were hired into Xinjiang Provincial Army by Governor Jin Shuren who issued Order of total mobilization of male Russian population of Northern Xinjiang in August 1931 in a desperate attempt to quell Kumul Rebellion ). They didn't find Ma Zhongying but destroyed many frescos in caves by their sables.

@academicbuddhism1441 2 жыл бұрын

[Correction] 1. Prof. Galambos at Cambridge kindly pointed out one mistake: 'Stein was not knighted by the Queen, as at that time the monarch was King George V. So he would have been knighted by the King.' (By the way, follow his channel The Chinese Alphabet where Prof. Galambos talks about his research experiences and interests). 2. A slip of tongue: it is Gutenberg Bible, not Guggenheim bible! 3. Prof. Stephen Teiser at Princeton kindly made two corrections: a. 'Probably the best estimate of the number of manuscripts (comprising not just scrolls but also booklets and individual sheets of paper) is more like 60,000, if you follow Fang Guangchang.' b. Gest himself was not connected to the Dunhuang materials, nor did he found Princeton’s East Asian Library. Rather, he was a collector whose collection (mostly of rare Ming printed editions and medical texts) he first donated to McGill University, then to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (not part of Princeton University). Only after Gest (an engineer) died was the Gest Collection obtained by Princeton University, in 1948. But at that point, there were no Dunhuang manuscripts in the collection. The Princeton Dunhuang materials (many of which actually came from Turfan but ended up in Zhang’s hands) entered Princeton long after Mr. Gest himself, via the Lo’s, in the 1970s or 1980s.

@BoldBooksandBones 8 ай бұрын

Very informative video! Thank you.

@megasbasileus6661 4 ай бұрын

Greetings from METU

@supremereader7614 Жыл бұрын

Wonderful video. But Chinese scholars who hold a grudge should do some scholarship on what the Chinese people did to their own museums during the Cultural Revolution. Then they might be thankful that these manuscripts were kept safe in Britain and France.

@supremereader7614 Жыл бұрын

@sepulvedablvd7846 Yes, you're right.

@user-fx3nh2zd6y 3 ай бұрын

😂In December 2023, the British Museum released a review report that 2,000 undisplayed collections were missing, stolen or damaged, and some parts of the collection were even sold as waste.

@supremereader7614 2 ай бұрын

@@user-fx3nh2zd6y At least they didn't smash everything in the museum like the Little Red Guards did to the Chinese National Museum in Shanghai.

@user-fx3nh2zd6y 2 ай бұрын

@@supremereader7614 1. The first thing these people did to supposedly “keep safe” cultural relics was to slap on all sorts of chemical glues for rubbings or even chip away at stone walls, which actually just ended up harming the artifacts. 2. Back then, nobody could have predicted the movements in China that would end up destroying art pieces, so the real reason behind these actions wasn’t to protect the relics at all. 3. No Chinese person would thank them for their theft and destruction. Don’t naively assume so.

@Arctic-fox717 Ай бұрын

@@user-fx3nh2zd6yperfect arguments and counter arguments!