An Online Digital Database of Tibetan Woodslips
In the beginning of the twentieth century, great numbers of ancient manuscripts were brought to Europe from the old Silk Road of Central Asia by archaeological explorers and adventurers from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Sweden. More recently, Chinese archaeologists have uncovered yet more manuscripts from the region. The scattered written and artistic records of the many civilizations which flourished at different times in Central Asia were dispersed among the museums and libraries of these countries.
By SAM VAN SCHAIK
The largest and best-known, single cache of Central Asian manuscripts is that discovered in a walled-up library in the monastic cave complex of Dunhuang (although other large collections of manuscripts have been excavated from other sites on the Silk Road). The manuscripts come in a variety of forms, scrolls, pothis, bound books, and wooden documents. They are written, and occasionally printed, in many languages, including Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Khotanese, Tangut, and Uighur. Most of them date from within the first millennium AD.The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) was established in 1993 following a meeting of conservators from all over the world to promote the study and preservation of manuscripts and printed documents from Dunhuang and other Central Asian sites through international co-operation. The principle aim of IDP is to bring together these various collections in the form of a digital image database, which, through international co-operation, will eventually allow anybody to have access to high-quality images of all of these manuscripts, wherever the original manuscripts happen to be kept. Besides providing digital images, the IDP database, which went on-line in 1998, gives detailed catalogue information about the manuscripts, and also allows on-line access to the catalogues already produced by scholars, which are now generally out of print. The database has so far concentrated on the collection of the British Library, though IDP centres will be established at other institutions later this year.
The British Library collection of ancient Silk Road manuscripts, one of the largest in the world, was mainly the work of one man, Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943). Stein led four expeditions into Central Asia, the first in 1900, bringing back over 30,000 manuscript items. The largest proportion of these are Chinese, and the second largest, Tibetan. The Tibetan manuscripts date from the relatively brief period of Tibetan domination in Central Asia lasting from the seventh to the ninth century AD. A great many of these came from the library cave in Dunhuang, but a significant number was found at other ancient Silk Road sites, such as the fort of Miran in the Lop Nor desert. The Dunhuang Tibetan texts are predominantly Buddhist, while those from other sites are mostly secular documents.
Tibetan woodslips
About 2,300 of the Tibetan manuscripts are woodslips, messages written in ink on thin pieces of wood, a material much more readily available in desert settlements than paper. In July 1999, Tsuguhito Takeuchi, professor of linguistics at Kobe University, Japan, and Sam van Schaik at the British Library, began the work of creating a complete on-line catalogue and digital image database of the British Library's collection of Tibetan woodslips, as a part of the IDP on-line database.
Most of the Tibetan woodslips are from two ancient forts, outposts of the Tibetan Empire, in Miran and Mazar-Tagh. Written in the Old Tibetan language, they are an invaluable source for linguists. But their interest extends beyond this, for they provide an insight into the Tibetan culture, both military and civilian, of this early period. The military messages include orders sent out to troops in the field, as well as reports sent back, relating the results of expeditionary marches and battles. Some attest to the hardships of military life in the desert, reporting deaths from starvation, with pleas for food to be sent, and sickness, which may have been brought on by the extreme cold encountered on winter expeditions.
The majority of the messages are not about military subjects, however, but are concerned with the day-to-day running of a community. There are many petitions sent to officials asking for a cause to be heard or for clemency in implementing a penal sentence. Legal documents report the sentencing of criminals, and minor contracts set out the terms of commerce in crops, animals, and land. Medical documents contain lists of symptoms with a request for a prescription, or the prescription itself. Amongst all these messages, one finds the names of Tibetans from all social levels, names which were largely to disappear in Tibet after this period as Buddhist names became more and more common.
The woodslips also reveal something of the religious life of these outpost towns. Monks, referred to as ban dhe, are often amongst those named in a document, while a few woodslips, including one amulet made from paper, leather, and wood, carry prayers, dha-ranis or mantras. Other wooden documents attest to a thriving system of ritual activity which was not Buddhist in origin but connected to the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, usually called Bon. These documents, which often refer to Bon gods (bon lha), are generally concerned with divination, although some seem to describe other kinds of ceremonies, such as the burial of the dead.
Very little is known of Tibetan culture in this early period and, because of the paucity of documents from this time in Tibet itself, the British Library's collection of Tibetan woodslips is an extremely important source for research into the period. So far, digital images and basic catalogue information have been made available on-line for half of the collection, over a thousand woodslips. Digitally enhanced images have been added for those woodslips so faded that they have become illegible to the naked eye.
The IDP database (http://idp.bl.uk) is an active resource for scholarship, and all interested scholars are invited to visit and to add their own readings, opinions, or other information to the database, which they may also do while online. *
Sam van Schaik specializes in Tibetan Buddhism and works for the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library.
Email: sam.vanschaik@bl.uk
TIBETOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES SERIES
This article on the Online Digital Database of Tibetan Woodslipts, written by Sam van Schaik, is the third contribution to a series devoted to important projects on cataloguing, 'computerization' (inputting and scanning), editing, and translation of important Tibetan language text-collections and archives. In these Tibetological and Archives Series various colleagues briefly present their initiatives to a larger public, or update the scholarly world on the progress of their already well-established projects. Some are high-profile projects, of which at least Tibetologists will generally be aware, yet some may also be less well known. Nevertheless, I trust that it will be useful to be informed or updated on all these initiatives and I also hope that the projects presented will profit from the exposure and the response that this coverage will engender. If you are interested in any of the projects described, feel free to contact the author of the article. In case you would like to introduce your own (planned) work in the field, please contact the editors of the IIAS Newsletter or the author of this introduction. We should very much like to encourage our contributors to keep us informed on the progress of their projects by regular updates.
The next contribution in this series will be by Dr E. Gene Smith on the Tibetan Studies Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
HENK BLEZER
Research fellow IIAS
E-mail: blezer@let.leidenuniv.nl