Dunhuang Manuscript Culture

End of the First Millennium

Bibliographic Data

ID8069845
AuthorsImre Galambos (0000-0002-2855-2275, corresponding author)
Year2020
Publication date2020-12-07
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueDunhuang Manuscript Culture (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherDe Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/9783110726572
OpenAlexW3107033761
Open LibraryOL36748990M
ISBN9783110726572
LanguageEN
Citations received15

Dunhuang Manuscript Culture explores the world of Chinese manuscripts from ninth-tenth century Dunhuang, an oasis city along the network of pre-modern routes known today collectively as the Silk Roads. The manuscripts have been discovered in 1900 in a sealed-off side-chamber of a Buddhist cave temple, where they had lain undisturbed for for almost nine hundred years. The discovery comprised tens of thousands of texts, written in over twenty different languages and scripts, including Chinese, Tibetan, Old Uighur, Khotanese, Sogdian and Sanskrit. This study centres around four groups of manuscripts from the mid-ninth to the late tenth centuries, a period when the region was an independent kingdom ruled by local families. The central argument is that the manuscripts attest to the unique cultural diversity of the region during this period, exhibiting-alongside obvious Chinese elements-the heavy influence of Central Asian cultures. As a result, it was much less 'Chinese' than commonly portrayed in modern scholarship. The book makes a contribution to the study of cultural and linguistic interaction along the Silk Roads

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Buddhism · Central asia · Extant taxon · Geography · Literature · Ninth · Period (music · Sanskrit · Scholarship · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Chinese history and philosophy · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · china · History and criticism · Literature, Medieval · Literature, medieval, history and criticism