The International Dunhuang Project
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The International Dunhuang Background As Buddhism spread along the Silk Project: Chinese Central Asia Road from India into China at the beginning of the first millennium, Online monks and merchants adopted the Indian practice of paying for cave Susan Whitfield temples to be dug out from cliffs British Library, as an act of merit. These caves London were then painted from floor to ceiling with scenes from Buddha’s life and depictions from the sutras, Despite the excellent work of 80% of the material from and further adorned with statue scholars over the past century, the Dunhuang and a large part of the groupings showing Buddha with his archaeological legacy of the material from other archaeological disciples and guardians kings. The Chinese Silk Road has barely been sites will be available, with over Mogao cave complex at Dunhuang explored. There is so much 200,000 images, scores of was begun in CE 366, and by the material, with more being catalogues, translations, edu- ninth century there were over 500 discovered all the time, and it cational pages, photographs, maps cave temples with many residential covers so many subjects, and research. Chinese Central Asia caves for the scores of artisans, languages, religions, cultures and will be online. painters and sculptors working geographical areas, that decades there [Figs. 1, 6 (p. 7)]. will elapse before all its Dunhuang was one secrets are uncovered. among many such Silk The International Dun- Road cave temple sites huang Project (IDP) is but is unique because of now facilitating access the discovery in 1900 of to and study of this a library cave which had dispersed material by been sealed and hidden making it freely avail- in about CE 1000 [Fig. able on multi-lingual 2]. Containing tens of websites. IDP hopes thousands of manu- that by encouraging and scripts and the earliest promoting international dated printed book, this collaborations the is the world’s earliest importance of this Fig. 1. The northern section of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang. and largest paper wonderful archae- Photo © Daniel C. Waugh 1998. ological legacy will finally be fully appreciated worldwide. The Silk Road is part of all our histories. IDP is bringing it online for everyone. IDP re-launched its web site (http://idp.bl.uk) in December 2005 offering more powerful full- text search facilities, greater functionality, educational project pages and the personalised “My IDP” project space. The IDP’s web site is now hosted by sites worldwide and in English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese and German versions. After just ten years, IDP already holds information and images of over 50,000 paintings, artefacts, manuscripts, textiles and historical photographs from Dunhuang and other sites in Fig. 2. Aurel Stein’s 1907 view of Mogao Cave 16, with a portion of the Chinese Central Asia. By 2010 over manuscripts from Cave 17 (on right). Photograph © The British Library, Stein Photograph Serindia Fig. 200, used with permission. All rights reserved. © 2005 Susan Whitfield 3 archive [Fig. 3; for other images scientific and scholarly information graphers in Beijing. The Chinese- of some of these treasures, see the (for details see IDP News 24, language version of the web site articles below by Connie Chin and available free from IDP or online and online database were launched Jonathan Bloom]. It also contained at http://idp.bl.uk/pages/ on a local server in November 2002 hundreds of fine paintings on silk, archives_newsletter.a4d). To (http://idp.nlc.gov.cn). Institutions facilitate access IDP such as the NLC are founding decided to create a members and full IDP partners. comprehensive online Local staff at the IDP Centre in catalogue of all the Beijing add information about their material, linked to collections into their local database high-quality digital and local photographers digitise images and sup- the collections, using mutually porting information agreed IDP standards and which would be made procedures (published online on freely available to all. http://idp.bl.uk/pages/ Starting with a technical_resources.a4d). Data are grant from the Chiang synchronised between the Chinese Ching-Kuo Foundation and English servers. The NLC and a staff of one, the images, apart from the reference first few years of IDP thumbnails, are also kept on the NLC server. Fig. 3. Detail of the outer “envelope” of Ancient were spent designing Sogdian Letter No. 2 (BL Or. 8212/99.1), discov- and implementing a IDP acts as a host for some ered by Aurel Stein in 1907 at Watchtower T.XII.a cataloguing and image institutions’ collections. For on the Dunhuang Limes. Photograph © The British management example, the Chester Beatty Library, used with permission. All rights reserved. database. A British Library in Dublin and the Freer Academy-funded Gallery in Washington DC both hemp and paper. Numerous other research assistant started adding have three items from Dunhuang. ancient Silk Road sites in Chinese information about the British They supplied IDP with large- Central Asia yielded other Library manuscripts in 1995. In format photographs of these, important artefacts, paintings, 1997 with a further grant from the which IDP then scanned and added textiles, coins and manuscripts in Heritage Lottery Memorial Fund, to its web site with cataloguing over twenty languages and scripts, IDP expanded and employed staff details. IDP also hosts images of and this and the Dunhuang to start work on the cataloguing the paintings from Dunhuang held material was dispersed to and digitisation of Chinese, Tangut in the British Museum and is just institutions worldwide, making and Tibetan materials from various starting to add images of the access difficult. The amount of Silk Road sites, and in October textiles from the Chinese Silk Road material, its age, fragility and 1998 the web site went online with in the Victoria and Albert Museum uniqueness also created a prob- details of over 20,000 manu- and other artefacts from the British lem for conservators. Throughout scripts. Museum. In all cases the holding the twentieth century much Other projects followed. A institution retains copyright on the remained in need of conservation grant from the Higher Education images and there is a clear link on and therefore also uncatalogued, Funding Council for England led to the IDP site to the institutions’ own unpublished and inaccessible. the launch of a map interface to websites. Information on the the database in 2000. In 2001, a participating institutions and their The International Dun- four-year grant from the Andrew collections is on the advanced huang Project — the First W. Mellon Foundation enabled IDP search page. Ten Years to establish a digitisation studio Other collaborations launched The International Dunhuang with the latest large-format during the past two years involve Project (IDP), with its directorate digitisation equipment. Two the Institute of Oriental Studies in at the British Library, was founded conservators, three photographers St. Petersburg, Ryukoku University in 1994 to address these problems and three Photoshop® operators in Kyoto, and the Staatsbibliothek by creating a partnership of all the were employed to work full-time and Berlin-Brandenburg Academy major holders of the material to on the Dunhuang material. of Sciences and Humanities in work together on conservation and Collaboration started with the Berlin. The online Russian, cataloguing and to increase access. National Library of China (NLC) in Japanese and German versions of To achieve the first, IDP organises the same year, funded by the Sino- the IDP site are hosted by these regular conservation conferences British Fellowship Trust, and the institutions. IDP hopes to start and has a publications programme skills learned in London were similar collaborations with the to disseminate conservation, passed on to the IDP photo- Dunhuang Academy, the National 4 manuscripts. and Loulan in the British Library Similar collections. IDP has also started endeavours digitising Sanskrit, Khotanese and are under- Tangut manuscripts and continues way on all digitisation of the thousands of the collec- historical photographs and maps of tions. the Silk Road and its sites made by Aurel Stein and others. IDP has All these achieved far more than it could scholars possibly have expected when Fig. 4. Administrative document in Kharosthi script, found at have agreed founded a decade ago, but the Niya by Aurel Stein. National Museum, New Delhi. Photograph that their collections are so rich that much © Daniel C. Waugh 2001. catalogues remains to be done. Museum, New Delhi [Fig. 4], the be available online, and the Museum for Indian Art, Berlin [Fig. relaunched IDP website enables In addition to conservation and 5], the Musée Guimet and the users to browse a catalogue and digitisation, IDP continues with Bibliothèque nationale de France. carry out full-text searches. It is scholarly work. In 2005 it At present, over 20,000 high- important to apply internationally- completed a three-year collab- quality images are being added accepted metadata to the online orative research project to annually to the database, but this catalogues, and more will come catalogue and digitise the Tibetan figure will be doubled if funds can online during 2006 as IDP staff tantric manuscripts from be secured to upgrade equipment complete this (the catalogues are Dunhuang. Carried out in and expand existing staffing in the prepared as XML documents). The conjunction with the School of UK, China and Germany. IDP will catalogues offered will include Oriental and African Studies at the add more institutions and include “legacy” catalogues — those University of London and funded in its database small and private published from as early as the by the Arts and Humanities collections throughout the world. beginning of the twentieth century. Research Council, this project by Systematic cataloguing of this Although some of the scholarship Dalton and van Schaik uncovered material is essential if it is to be a in these might now be superseded, many surprising results, including useful scholarly and educational they all contain much useful the possibility that most of these resource.