Lecture 18

Forgeries and the Authentication of Dunhuang Manuscripts

The manuscripts from the 5th through the early 11th centuries found in Cave 17 (i.e. the library cave) at the Mogao caves were not preserved as a whole following their discovery in 1900. At first, Abbot Wang, the care- taker of the caves, gave away a few manuscripts as gifts. In 1907 the British Aurel Stein got hold of a large group. Then in 1908 the French Paul Pelliot took away the best manuscripts of the collection. In 1910 the Qing Min- istry of Education made an attempt to secure the remaining part of the cave library but as a result of their failure large numbers of manuscripts were obtained by subsequent visitors, including the Ōtani expedition in 1911–1912, Aurel Stein in 1914, and the Russian Sergei Oldenburg in 1915. In addition, a significant number of manuscripts were scattered among the local population in Gansu or found their way to private and public collec- tions in China and abroad. Beside the collections in national libraries or research institutions in Britain, France, China and Russia, many of the dispersed Dunhuang man- uscripts were gradually acquired by private collectors in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and other political, economic and cultural centers, or appeared on the antique market. To maximize their profit, some antique dealers forged Dunhuang scrolls and sold these either openly or under the coun- ter. Some of these forgeries were of very high quality and, after changing hands several times, went into private collections and became mixed with authentic manuscripts, or ended up in museums and libraries as national treasures. Following the recent publication of some smaller collections of Dunhuang manuscripts of unknown provenance, identifying forgeries is an increasingly important task that presents a new challenge for research- ers in Dunhuang studies.

1. A New Theory of Forgeries

In the past we believed that the British, French and Russian collections, the manuscripts deposited at the Beijing Library in 1910, and those brought back by the Ōtani expeditions were all authentic Dunhuang manuscripts. 502 lecture 18

Even though the British, French and Russian collections also contained some documents excavated by the same expeditions from other sites, or some of the Dunhuang manuscripts, after having been sent back, acciden- tally became part of collections acquired by other expeditions in Xinjiang and Gansu (e.g. northern part of Mogaoku, Turfan, Khotan, Khara-Khoto), there was no indication of modern forgeries being intermixed with the rest of the manuscripts. But the June 23, 1997 issue of The Times published a report called “Hun- dreds of fakes found in library’s Chinese collection”, which quoted Susan Whitfield, head of the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) at the British Library, retelling the theory of the Japanese scholar Fujieda Akira 藤枝晃 that the Beijing official Li Shengduo 李盛鐸 began forging Dunhuang manuscripts as early as 1911. After Li’s death in 1937, his eight sons carried on this business until the 1950s. These types of forged manuscripts were available in Dunhuang quite early and all those who came there after 1911, including the Ōtani expedition, Stein and Oldenburg, purchased some.1 Although up to this point the British Library boasted the finest and most reliable collection of Dunhuang manuscripts in the world, now unexpectedly it was revealed that many of the more than five hundred scrolls obtained during Stein’s third Central Asian expedition were forger- ies. Consequently, the Chinese department at the British Library hosted a conference entitled “Forgeries of Dunhuang Manuscripts in the Early Twentieth Century” (June 30–July 1, 1997), inviting representatives of the main holding institutions of Dunhuang and Turfan manuscripts and lead- ing scholars of Dunhuang studies to discuss the issue together. At the conference, Professor Ishizuka Harumichi 石冢晴通 made clear the stand- point of Professor Fujieda and himself: “The greater half (about 80%) of manuscripts acquired after Stein’s second expedition and Pelliot’s visit to Dunhuang were forgeries!” Demonstrating the evolution of some charac- ter forms in the manuscripts and the changes in the writing material (e.g. paper, brush), he stated that manuscripts such as S.6383, S.6688, S.6830, S.6957, S.6577, S.6568, S.6536, S.6580, and S.6476 from Stein’s third expe- dition were forged scrolls. This view was based on differences in paper, character forms and grid lines drawn with pencil. Library staff brought out the manuscripts in question from storage and displayed them at the venue, enabling scholars to examine them in detail. Ishizuka’s opinion

1 Dalya Alberge, “Hundreds of fakes found in library’s Chinese collection,” The Times, Monday June 23, 1997.