Shaping the Stein collection’s Dunhuang corpus (2): the items from Cave 17’s ‘miscellaneous’ bundles

In a previous blog post , we looked at the instrumental role played by Wang Yuanlu during the selection of the items from the Cave 17. Wang, who directly chose from the small repository what to hand over to Stein for inspection, was very keen to divert his attention from the so-called ‘regular’ bundles, which were composed for the most part of Buddhist sutras in Chinese and Tibetan. During their first ever transaction, which took place between 21 May and 6 June 1907, Wang Yuanlu therefore began by handing over the ‘miscellaneous’ bundles, which he seemed to hold in low estimation. To Stein’s delight, these contained mixed and diverse materials, such as manuscripts in non-Chinese languages, illustrated scrolls, paintings, drawings, ex-votos, textiles, etc. Stein picked out any of the items that jumped at him as being particularly interesting and made sure to put them aside for ‘further examination’, the phrase that he used to refer to their removal in his transaction with Wang. This

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Conserving the Diamond Sutra

The British Library recently completed a decade-long project to conserve the oldest dated printed book in the work, a scroll copy in Chinese of the Buddhist text, The Diamond Sutra from the Silk Road town of Dunhuang dated to May 868. This short film, made by the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, tells of the story of the sutra scroll, its science and its conservation.

Read more about the Diamond Sutra


Donor Profile: PK Lom Pabhassaro

The Venerable Phra Kru Samu Lom from the Buddhapadipa Temple in Wimbledon, London, introduces his life at the temple and his support for the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, enabling the project to digitise and make freely accessible online Buddhist manuscripts from a Library Cave at the Silk Road town of Dunhuang.

Read more about sponsoring the digitisation of a sutra


More films made by IDP are available on our YouTube channel.

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