“Few foreign residents in China, I suppose, challenge the proposition that to speak of a man as a Sinologue is to think of him as a fool.” L. C. Hopkins
This site is about my research, including published and ongoing projects. My main field of interest is Chinese manuscripts, both from the pre-Qin and medieval periods. The keywords are palaeography, codicology, manuscript culture, history of Chinese writing, the Chinese script, orthography, seals, inscriptions, etc.
I am also interested in the history of collections, how manuscripts were discovered, acquired and studied. One of my main topics in this regard is the history of the Otani expeditions to Central Asia and the life of Count Otani Kozui, the man who organized, financed and directed these enterprises.
Select publications by Imre Galambos:
Books:
- Manuscripts and travellers: The Sino-Tibetan documents of a tenth-century Buddhist pilgrim. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2012. Co-authored with Sam van Schaik.
- Orthography of early Chinese writing. Budapest Monographs in East Asian Studies. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University, Department of East Asian Studies, 2006.
Articles, book chapters:
- “Chinese characters written by non-Chinese: Multilingual literacy at the northwestern periphery.” In Zsombor Rajkai and Ildikó Bellér-Hann (eds.), Frontiers and boundaries: encounters on China’s margins. Wiesbade: Harrassowitz. Forthcoming.
- “Punctuation marks in medieval Chinese manuscripts.” In Jörg Quenzer and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch, eds., Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Forthcoming.
- “Sir Aurel Stein’s visit to Japan His diary and notebook.” In Helen Wang (ed.), Sir Aurel Stein: Colleagues and collections. British Museum Research Publication 184 (2012): 1-9.
- “Japanese exploration of Central Asia: The Otani expeditions and their British connections.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and Africal Studies 75 (2012): 113-134. Co-authored with Kitsudo Koichi.
- “Popular character forms (suzi) and semantic compound (huiyi) characters in medieval Chinese manuscripts.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.3 (2011): 395-409.
- “The northern neighbors of the Tangut.” Cahiers de Linguistique – Asie Orientale 40 (2011): 69-104.
- “The Tangut translation of the General’s Garden by Zhuge Liang.” Written Monuments of the Orient (Pis’mennyje Pamiatniki Vostoka), No. 1 (14), (Spring-Summer 2011): 131-142.
- “Touched a nation’s heart: Sir R. Denison Ross and Alexander Csoma de Kőrös.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 21, No. 3 (July 2011): 361-375.
- “Scribal notation in medieval Chinese manuscripts: The hewen (ligature) and chongwen (duplication) marks.” Manuscript cultures in Asia and Africa (Hamburg University), No. 2, 2010: 5-9.
- “Japanese ‘spies’ along the Silk Road: British suspicions regarding the second Otani expedition (1908-09).” Japanese religions, Vol. 35 (2010, 1 & 2): 33-61.
- “Another Hungarian looting China’s treasures? Sir Aurel Stein, Lajos Ligeti and a case of mistaken identity.” Tonkō shahon kenkyū nenpō 敦煌写本研究年報, no. 4 (March 2010): 195-207.
- “Manuscript copies of stone inscriptions among the Dunhuang manuscripts: Issues of dating and provenance.” Asiatische Studien/Etudes asiatiques LXIII, 4 (2009).
- “Two sources related to Otani Kozui and his Central Asian expeditions.” Bukkyō bunka kenkyūjo jōhō 佛教文化研究所所報 (2009): 26-23.
- “The third Otani expedition at Dunhuang: Acquisition of the Japanese collection of Dunhuang manuscripts.” Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 3/2008: 29-35.
- “Devotional use of manuscripts found at Dunhuang: The case of the Baoenjing.” Dunhuangxue yanjiu 敦煌學研究 (2008), No. 2: 272-292.
- “An English participant in the Japanese exploration of Central Asia: The role of A. O. Hobbs in the third Otani expedition”. In I. F. Popova, ed., Russian Expeditions to Central Asia at the Turn of the 20th Century. St. Petersburg: Slavia, 2008: 188-202.
- “The story of the Chinese seals found in Ireland.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2008), 18: 465-479.
- “A 10th century manuscript from Dunhuang concerning the Gantong monastery at Liangzhou,” Tonkō shahon kenkyū nenpō 敦煌写本研究年報, no.2 (March 2008), pp. 63-82.
- “Otani Kozui’s 1910 visit to London.” Heisei 19 nendo kotenseki dejitaru ākaibu kenkyū sentā kenkyū seika hōkokusho 平成19年度古典籍デジタルアーカイブ研究センター研究成果報告書, Kyōto: Ryūkoku University, January 2008.
- “A Corpus-based approach to palaeography: The case of the Houma covenant texts.” Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques LIX 1 (2005).
- “The myth of the Qin unification of writing in Han sources“. Acta Orientalia 57 (2004).
- “Dunhuang characters and the dating of manuscripts.” In Susan Whitfield, ed. The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War & Faith. Chicago: Serindia, 2004.