The Dunhuang manuscripts are dispersed

Assembled from 31 blocks · 3 evidence · 35 related

1. Story
2. Aurel Stein removes thousands of manuscripts and paintings from Cave 17 in 1907, including the Diamond Sutra and, from a watchtower to the west, the Sogdian Ancient Letters. Paul Pelliot follows in 1908, and Japanese and Russian expeditions after him. The collection is now split between London, Paris, Beijing, St Petersburg and Tokyo, and its reassembly is digital rather than physical.
3. Knowledge
4. Sogdian merchant networks
5. Mogao Caves
6. The Dunhuang manuscripts are dispersed
7. Connections
8. Mogao Caves
9. Sogdian merchant networks
10. Religious syncretism at contact points
11. Dunhuang
12. Dunhuang
13. Buddhism
14. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
15. The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is printed
16. Mogao Cave 17 is sealed
17. Wang Yuanlu opens Mogao Cave 17
18. The Dunhuang manuscripts are dispersed
19. Mogao Caves inscribed on the World Heritage List
20. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
21. Samarkand
22. Silk
23. Buddhism
24. Paper
25. The Sogdian Ancient Letters are abandoned west of Dunhuang
26. Arab conquest of Transoxiana
27. The Dunhuang manuscripts are dispersed
28. Evidence
29. Five substantially surviving letters of Sogdian merchants, undelivered, showing how the eastern routes actually operated: resident family colonies in a chain of cities from Sogdiana to the Hexi Corridor, goods moved between them in relays, business conducted by correspondence and credit rather than by single long journeys. Letter 2 reports the sack of Luoyang, which anchors the conventional dating to around 313 CE. The letters are written on paper, establishing that the material had reached the far western Chinese frontier by that date.
30. A woodblock-printed scroll dated by its own colophon to 868 CE, the earliest dated complete printed book known. Its presence at Dunhuang shows printing in working use on the corridor four centuries before it appeared in Europe.
31. Catalogues and digitally reunites the material removed from Mogao Cave 17 and other eastern Silk Road sites between 1900 and the 1920s, now held in London, Paris, Beijing, St Petersburg and Tokyo. The dispersal is physical and permanent; the reassembly is digital.