Recently, the "Dunhuang Tibetan Manuscripts Collected by the National Library of France", compiled by the National Library of France in cooperation with Northwest University for Nationalities in China and Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, was compiled and published for the first time.
The series of books has been officially published since 2006, and all publications will be completed by 2020, which lasted 15 years.
There are 35 volumes in the whole series, including 3174 document numbers, more than 28,000 high-definition plates, including all the Dunhuang Tibetan manuscripts in the French collection.
Compared with the previous collections of Dunhuang Tibetan manuscripts published at home and abroad, this set of manuscripts presents the full picture of the French Dunhuang Tibetan manuscripts in both Chinese and Tibetan languages, which is the first time in the world.
At the beginning of the 20th century, about 70,000 manuscripts and works of art were unearthed from the Dunhuang Tibetan Scripture Cave, but they were lost to Britain, France, Japan and other places in just 10 years.
The ancient Tibetan documents from Dunhuang are the oldest Tibetan documents in the world. They cover many aspects such as Buddhist classics, historical works, and contract documents. They vividly show the social features of the Dunhuang period under the Tubo rule and the history of cultural exchanges between Han and Tibet. It is the first-hand data for the studies of Western Regions, Dunhuang Studies, Tibetan Studies, etc. It fills the gaps in Dunhuang literature over the past 100 years and has great academic value.
(Reporter Ding Si edited Fang Min)
Editor in charge: [Lu Yan]