Category: Manuscripts

Tales from the scriptorium I: expensive books

by Sam van Schaik, posted in Manuscripts

IOL Tib J 105 (pothi)

This huge book (IOL Tib J 105) contains a Buddhist sutra in the loose leaf format known as pothi. The pothi was invented in India, where palm leaves were used for the pages. Along the Silk Road, Buddhist bookmakers used the Chinese invention of paper (which had not yet reached India) but kept the Indian pothi format. The Tibetans inherited this hybrid book from the Buddhists of the Silk Road.

The manuscript is a copy of the large Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāparamitā) sutra. It was written as a joint effort by a team of Chinese and Tibetan scribes working together at Dunhuang in the early ninth century. In fact, although all of the scribes wrote Tibetan, the majority of them were Chinese. Apparently, under the rule of the Tibetan empire masses of Chinese were trained to write in Tibetan. Discipline was tough–on that, more later.

The book was an expensive production that would have to have been sponsored by a wealthy donor. This donor may have been the king of Tibet himself: another manuscript (Pelliot tibétain 999) mentions that the Tibetan king Ralpachen (ruled 815–838) sponsored the copying of hundreds of sutras, which were kept in a temple near Dunhuang.

See also:
Tales from the Scriptorium II: It’s a scribe’s life
Tales from the Scriptorium III: Scribal doodles

References
1. Marcelle Lalou. 1954. “Les manuscrits tibétains des grandes Prajñāpāramitā trouvés à Touen-houang”. Silver jubilee volume of the Zinbun-kagaku-kenkyusho, pp.257-261.
2. Marcelle Lalou. 1957. “Les plus anciens rouleaux tibétains trouvés à Touen-houang”. Rocznik Orientalistyczny Tom. 21, pp.149-152.
3. Marcelle Lalou. 1964. “Manuscrits tibétains de la Satasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā cachés à Touen-houang”. Journal Asiatique 1964, pp.479-486

Infrared, seals and nomads

by Sam van Schaik, posted in Manuscripts, New discoveries

Digital photography is allowing us to read some previously unreadable manuscripts. Take for example IOL Tib J 834, part of a scroll that almost certainly dates back to the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang (c.781-848 CE). The importance of this scroll is indicated by the silk lining that was used to strengthen the edges (visible in the image below).
IOL Tib J 834 (detail)
The scroll has become darkened by handling, or because of where it was stored before being placed in the Dunhuang library cave, so that some of it is unreadable. What makes it worse is that some of the writing and all of the seals stamped on the manuscript are in red ink, which is now almost invisible.

Now, this scroll is a perfect candidate for infrared photography. Though infrared is not as magically efficacious as some believe (see these pages), it works very well with manuscripts that have darkened over time, and, of course, with red ink. As the infrared image below shows, we can now clearly see the seal on this manuscript, a rectangular seal containing a picture of a horse and (perhaps) a pasture? The writing underneath states that this is the seal of Drog (‘Brog), a word that means ‘nomad’, which fits rather well with the horse and pasture image.

IOL Tib J 834 (seal, infrared)

This raises another question. As Kazushi Iwao has kindly pointed out to me, this scroll is a land registry, that is to say, it parcels out land between different landowners. So why would nomads be involved with this kind of thing?