This article about punctuation marks mainly in the Dunhuang manuscripts came out recently. It is sort of an inventory of the most important types of marks used in the manuscripts, although it is certainly not complete in its scope.
Imre Galambos, “Punctuation marks in medieval Chinese manuscripts.” In Jörg Quenzer and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch, eds., Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter: 341–357.
Repetition marks in Dunhuang manuscripts
On 25 September 2014 we held a workshop at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. The title of the workshop was “Text, Language and Script in the Tangut state” and it was a continuation of a similar event held last year at SOAS in London (A day of Tangut studies). This was a one afternoon gathering of mostly European researchers interested in the study of Tangut texts and language. The programme of the workshop is as follows:
Of these, Kirill Solonin could not be with us in person and we listened to his presentation via Skype. Non-presenting participants included Emma Goodliffe (IDP, British Library), Yang Fu (University of Cambridge) and Nathan Hill (SOAS), who had organised the last year’s Tangut workshop in London. We hope that next year we will be able to hold the third Tangut workshop in Paris, thereby officially making this an annual event.
The participants of the workshop
Workshop group photo
Lin Ying-chin writing Tangut characters
Guillaume Jacques presenting
Modern scholars have often remarked how unfortunate it was that during Aurel Stein’s initial visit to the Mogao Caves in 1907 no attempt was made at prodicing a catalogue of the contents of the cave library. This was, of course, due to the lack of time and the abundance of manuscripts in the cave. Stein himself wrote about this in Chapter XXII of Serindia (vol. 2, p. 810) the following way:
Where the covering folds of the rolls were intact it was easy for Chiang Ssu-yeh to read off the title of the Sutra, the number of book and chapter, and anything else usually shown there. The information contained in those titles was of no guidance to me. The fact, however, that the headings of the rolls found in the first bundles were all different disposed of my apprehension that this great mass of manuscripts might be found to contain mainly an inane repetition of a few identical texts, after the fashion so widespread in modern Buddhism. At first I caused Chiang to prepare a rough list of titles; but as the Tao-shih gradually took more courage and brought out load after load of manuscript bundles for examination, all attempt even at the roughest cataloguing had to be abandoned.
It is obvious that Stein here was not describing the entire cave library but only the manuscripts brought out to him for inspection by Abbot Wang. But even these ones turned out to be too numerous to be able to catalogue. Yet when we examine the manuscripts of the Stein collection today, we can see that many manuscripts contain numbers and notes written on the verso by Stein’s secretary Chiang Ssu-yeh (aka Jiang Xiaowan 蒋孝琬). The titles are usually accompanied by strange-looking numbers. These are the so-called Suzhou numerals 蘇州碼子 or Huama 花碼, a traditional numeral system commonly used up to the Republican era in accounting and for other number-intensive tasks. Apparently, Jiang Xiaowan assigned the scrolls a number which he often augmented with the text’s title or a rough description on the outside of the scroll.
Jiang’s description sometimes consisted of only a number and the title of the work, as in S.101 which is a fragmentary copy of the Fomingjing 佛名經 (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Jiang Xiaowan's markings on manuscript S.101
We can see that the red Suzhou numbers were subsequently written out in Arabic numberals in pencil (in this case 465), possibly by Jiang for the sake of Stein, or perhaps by Stein himself. Yet the Stein number of this manuscript is S.101 which is different from the 465 assigned to it by Jiang. In other cases, the manuscript would only have been given a number, without a title or any other comment (e.g. S.112).
Apparently, Jiang did not have much time to work with the material, nor was he particularly familiar with Buddhist texts. This is why some of his descriptions are rather rudimentary, such as in the case of S.111 on which he simply wrote “no title given” 未載名字 (Fig. 2). Indeed, the text, which seems to be a dhāraṇī, bears no title.
Fig. 2. Jiang's note "No title given" on manuscript S.111
On S.114, which is a copy of the Lotus sutra with the colophon saying “copied reverently in the 3rd year of the Shangyuan reign (i.e. 676) by the lay disciple Zhang Che for the benefit of his deceased younger sister” 上元三年清信士張君徹為亡妹敬寫, Jiang copied down the title with the chapter numbers and almost the entire colophon (Fig. 3):
妙法蓮華經第七卷 自廿五品至廿八品
上元三年張徹為亡妹敬寫
Miaofa lianhua jing, juan 7; from Chapter 25 up to Chapter 28
Reverently copied in the 3rd year of the Shangyuan reign (i.e. 676) by Zhang Che for the benefit of his deceased younger sister
Fig. 3. Jiang's note on S.114
In other cases, Jiang also included a note on the condition of the manuscript. Thus on the verso of S.1286 we read the note “A worn-out piece [i.e. fragment] of the Fomingjing” 破爛佛名經一塊 (Fig. 4).
S.1286
This description is obviously neither scientific nor entirely accurate but it shows on Jiang’s part an occasional effort to label the manuscripts he identified and numbered with more than just the original title.
Particularly interesting is Jiang’s description of non-Chinese manuscripts, since at the time these were beyond the general knowledge of Chinese intellectuals. Thus on the verso of manuscript IOL Khot S 1, which has the Lotus sutra on the recto and fragmentary Khotanese texts on the verso, Jiang wrote that this was a “half-Indian Miaofa lianhua jing” 半印度文妙法蓮華經. He also writes on IOL Khot S 4 that the manuscript is “half Chinese, half Indian” 半漢半印度文, showing little awareness of the language seen on the manuscript which, of course, at the time, had not been deciphered yet. Yet Jiang’s comments are perhaps the very first remarks on Khotanese texts by a Chinese intellectual.
Jiang’s numbers and notes can be seen on many manuscripts in the Stein collection. I have not counted how many manuscripts are marked this way but it must be hundreds. While this is obviously a long cry from the entire collection, it nevertheless represents an important part of it. We would have to assume that these manuscripts were those Abbot Wang brought to Stein first and which Jiang Xiaowan tried to identify before giving up the project altogether as unrealistic. Yet Jiang’s numbers and notes are certainly catalogue data and if we took the time and effort to gather them together, we would have in hand the first ever catalogue of Dunhuang manuscripts, even if it covers only a relatively small portion of the corpus.
My new edited volume came out recently with the title Studies in Chinese Manuscripts: From the Warring States Period to the 20th Century (Budapest: Institute of East Asian Studies, ELTE). It has twelve studies all related to Chinese manuscripts. The bulk of the material is related to the medieval period, although there is also one paper on early China and another one on the 20th century. Here is the Table of Contents:
Preface ………………………………………………………………………………………………. vii
William G. Boltz: Why So Many Laozi-s? ……………………………………………… 1
Françoise Bottéro: The Qièyùn Manuscripts from Dūnhuáng ……………………. 33
Takata Tokio: On the Emendation of the Datang Xiyuji during Gaozong’s
Reign: An Examination Based on Ancient Japanese Manuscripts ………. 49
Irina Popova: Tang Political Treatise from Dunhuang: “Heavenly
Instructions” (Tian xun) ………………………………………………………………… 59
Imre Hamar: Huayan Texts in Dunhuang ……………………………………………….. 81
Gábor Kósa: A Correction to the Chinese Manichaean Traité …………………… 103
Christoph Anderl: Was the Platform Sūtra Always a Sūtra? – Studies in the
Textual Features of the Platform Scripture Manuscripts from Dūnhuáng 121
Costantino Moretti: Visible and Invisible Codicological Elements in
Manuscript Copies of Commentaries on the Yogacārabhūmi-śāstra
from Dunhuang ……………………………………………………………………………. 177
Imre Galambos: Correction Marks in the Dunhuang Manuscripts ……………… 191
Sam van Schaik: Ruler of the East, or Eastern Capital: What Lies behind
the Name Tong Kun? ……………………………………………………………………. 211
Kōichi Kitsudō: Liao Influence on Uigur Buddhism ……………………………….. 225
Raoul David Findeisen: Towards a Critical Edition of Feng Zhi’s Last Poem:
Considerations Drawn from Three Draft Manuscripts ………………………. 249
Index …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 273
You can purchase the book here. The page is unfortunately in Hungarian but they may put up an English version sometime soon. The price is marked as EUR 40 + shipping.
Imre Galambos, ed., Studies in Chinese Manuscripts.
With their span of six hundred some years, the Dunhuang manuscripts are
a valuable witness of the process of textual transmission in medieval China.
Beside looking at this process from the perspective of texts and their many
versions or editions, the examination of less deliberate scribal habits in
manuscripts can also be meaningful. In this paper I look at the way medieval
scribes corrected mistakes and show that although we have practically
no evidence that the notation used for this purpose would have been
part of an official teaching curriculum, it nevertheless remained surprisingly
consistent over the centuries. This diachronic stability of the notation
system reveals the direct continuity of the scribal tradition, which is at
times less evident in the transmission of texts…
Download a PDF copy of the full paper here: Correction marks in the Dunhuang manuscripts.
Bibliographic information:
Imre Galambos, “Correction marks in the Dunhuang manuscripts,” in Imre Galambos, ed., Studies in Chinese Manuscripts: From the Warring States Period to the 20th Century, Budapest: ELTE Institute of East Asian Studies, 2013.
This is an article that came out in China so the font is a bit–but it is still readable. In the article, I examine how consistently imperial name taboos were observed in Buddhist texts from Dunhuang. Many scholars in the past have observed the inconsistent use of taboo characters and I wanted to limit my analysis to a particular type of texts so that I am not comparing apples and oranges. The result is that while the sutras (especially those commissioned by the court) do not observe the taboo, other texts related to Buddhism, such as commentaries or popular narratives tend to observe the taboo, even though they do this rather inconsistently.
Imre Galambos, “Taboo characters in Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang,” in Yu Xin 余欣, ed., Zhonggu shidai de liyi, zongjiao yu zhidu 中古時代的禮儀、宗教與制度, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 109-125. (Download PDF)
Abbot Wang, also known as Wang daoshi or Wang Tao-shih, is one of the most infamous figures in the history of Chinese archaeology. He was the Taoist priest (i.e. daoshi) who stayed at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, taking care of the Buddhist temple complex when Aurel Stein visited the site in the autumn of 1907. In 1900 Wang had found in one of the caves a hidden chamber filled to the ceiling with ancient manuscripts and silk paintings. It has become a legend how Stein convinced the priest to part with tens of thousands of scrolls in exchange for a modest donation towards the restoration of the temples. A few months after this the French sinologist Paul Pelliot appeared on the scene and was able to acquire another sizeable collection, which was, on account of his competence as a sinologist, in many ways superior to that of Stein. Next came the Japanese and later the Russian expeditions, each taking home collections of manuscripts.
Although at the time there was little animosity towards either foreign explorers or Abbot Wang, with the rise of patriotic sentiments in the late 1920s, the transactions in retrospect received an increasing amount of negative publicity. As a result, Stein was branded a thief who deprived the country of an important piece of its national heritage, whereas Abbot Wang was perceived by the public as either a traitor who sold out his country to foreigners or simply a fool.
In a photograph taken by Stein at the Mogao Caves (Serindia, Oxford: Clarendon, 1921, vol. II, p. 804) Abbot Wang does appear in a rather unflattering way, albeit perfectly friendly. His stance, clothes and expression all suggest a simple-minded person (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Abbot Wang (Wang Tao-shih) in Serindia, vol. II.
Perhaps because this image so aptly fits the general impression about the Abbot that it became very popular and by now this is how he is remembered. Stein’s description of the Abbot also matched the photo, as in several places he wrote about him in a decidedly dismissive way. For example:
Wang Tao-shih’s ignorance of all that constitutes traditional Chinese scholarship had soon been correctly diagnosed by Chiang Ssŭ-yeh. So I knew that no useful purpose could be served by talking to him about my archaeological interests, about the value of first-hand materials for historical and antiquarian research, and the like, however helpful I had always found such topics for securing the friendly interest and good will of educated Chinese officials. (Serindia, vol. II, pp. 804-805)
Ironically, in this passage Stein criticizes Abbot Wang for his ignorance of “traditional Chinese scholarship”, of which he himself was even more ignorant, not even being able to speak any Chinese at the time. (Learning from the experience of the brilliant French sinologist Paul Pelliot, in later years Stein grew to understand the PR value of being able to speak Chinese to local officials and has made several attempts to learn Chinese.) We can also hardly blame the Abbot for not sharing Stein’s colonial eagerness to secure these “first-hand materials for historical and antiquarian research” and move them to Europe.
In any case, rather than writing a defence for Abbot Wang, I wanted to add to the public record two portraits from among Stein’s photographs which may help to add a human dimension to the simplistic image that currently prevails. The first one is actually from the same photo shown above, only zoomed in so that we can see the priest’s facial features. The other one is more or less unknown to the general public, cropped from a larger image where the Abbot appears only on the side.
Abbot Wang in Dunhuang -- British Library: Photo 392/26(327).
Abbot Wang -- British Library: Photo 392/26(322).
I just received a hard copy of this paper and am putting it up a PDF so it is more accessible. The paper is about the young English boy who travelled with Tachibana Zuicho to Western China in 1910 on an archaeological expedition, and who appears in Peter Hopkirk’s book Foreign Devils on the Silk Road as “A. O. Hobbs.” Although almost nothing was known about him, I managed to dig up some additional information, including his family background and some forgotten details about the expeditions.
Here is the bibliographic information:
Imre Galambos. “An English boy in Chinese Turkestan: The story of Orlando Hobbs”. Studia Orientalia Slovaca 10/1 (2011), pp. 81-98.
This is an article that came out recently:
Galambos, Imre. “Consistency in Tangut Translations of Chinese Military Texts“. In: Irina Popova ed., Tanguty v Tsentral’noj Azii: Sbornik stat’ej v chest’ 80-letija prof. E. I. Kychanova [Tanguts in Central Asia: a collection of articles marking the 80th anniversary of Prof. E. I. Kychanov]. Moscow: Oriental Literature. 84-96.
This is a paper about how consistently terms and names used in Chinese military texts (e.g. Sunzi 孫子, Litao 六韜) appeared in Tangut translations of these texts. I argue that in a specialized genre such as Chinese works on military strategy, the shared terminology and the quotes and references between the texts works as a corpus builder, creating an intertextual network. In Tangut translations, however, we find very little evidence for such intertextuality because the terminology lacks consistency and even quotations from the Sunzi are translated diffently each time they appear. The reason for this is that there was no authoritative or standard translation in existence and when the Tangut translator came across a name or quote, he just translated it as part of the rest of the text, without looking up how this has been translated by others before, thereby severing the connections that held the Chinese corpus together.
Read the full text of the article here: Consistency in Tangut Translations of Chinese Military Texts
There is a Dunhuang copy of the Da fangbian Fo baoenjing 大方便佛報恩經 (The sutra of requiting kindness) at the National Library of China (shelfmark BD01534) which has a number of interesting character variants. One of them is the character 爾 in the phrase ershi 爾時 (at that time), which is extremely common in Chinese translations of Buddhist sutras (e.g. “At that time the Buddha…”). In Buddhist texts, the character in this phrase is invariably written as 尒, which is thus recognized as an alternate form of the standard character 爾. But manuscript BD01534 at the National Library of China writes this variant in a number of different ways:
Of these, the first one is the “normal” way of writing the character, which one would expect in a Buddhist manuscript. The other two are completely unattested in both the lexicographic tradition and – to my knowledge – in other manuscripts. The third form, which is completely wrong as it has the component 心 at the bottom instead of 小, seems to have been influenced by the character 恭 written 6 characters earlier in the same line:
Nevertheless, these anomalous forms seem to imply that the person was largely unaware of not only how this character was supposed to be written but also what it meant in this context. Obviously, he was fully literate because most of the manuscript is written in a “normal” way, yet some characters are problematic. In this case, the distinctly Buddhist way of writing the character 爾 as 尒 suggests that he was completely unfamiliar with Buddhist literature. In some cases, for example, he did not only “misspell” the character 尒 but replaced it altogether with another one, resulting in the meaningless phrase lingshi 令時:
Once again, this points to a complete unfamiliarity of the scribe with Buddhist sutras, where the phrase ershi 尒時 occurs with considerable frequency. Interestingly, this difficulty of reading correctly the Buddhist form 尒 is also attested in the philological tradition. Most notably, the late 6th-century work Jingdian shiwen 經典釋文 quotes the Xiang’er 相爾 commentary to the Laozi 老子, writing it as Xiangyu 相余. William G. Boltz (1982, p. 95, n. 2) comments on this that “this would suggest that he [i.e. Lu Deming 陸德明, the author of the Jingdian shiwen] had never actually seen the text.” Boltz is right in pointing out that the error was the result of misreading 尔, the other common variant of 爾, although we may go a step further and specify that the variant behind the misreading was probably the form 尒 commonly seen in medieval Buddhist manuscripts. This, in turn, suggests that the error may have been introduced not by Lu Deming himself but occurred in the course of the transmission of the Jingdian shiwen. This is also corroborated by the fact that in contrast with this erroneous case, the title of the Xiang’er commentary appears elsewhere in the Jingdian shiwen correctly on at least two occasions.
But coming back to manuscript BD01534, we can also see a number of other variants that are unusual. One of these is the presence of several examples of the Empress Wu character 圀, normally used during the reign of Wu Zetian 武則天 (690-705) in place of the standard form of 國 (country, state). In terms of its physical appearance, however, the manuscript seems to be from the 9th-10th century, although it is undated and thus we cannot be certain about this. We should also keep in mind that there are known examples of Empress Wu characters being used in later manuscripts because they were copied over from earlier ones (cf. Drège 1984). Zhang Nan 张楠 (1992), for example, describes how this particular character continued to be used in Yunnan long after the time of Empress Wu. Nevertheless, in the majority of cases the rule of being able to date manuscripts to Empress Wu’s reign based on the characters she enforced seems to hold true.
The manuscript also has a number of orthographic inconsistencies, such as the following examples:
These are, however, not unusual and it is quite common in the Dunhuang manuscripts to see alternate forms of the same character, even if the entire scroll was written by the same person. This is simply part of manuscript culture. But there are still some variants that do not make sense. For example, the second character in the phrase qingjing 清淨 (peaceful and quiet) is very strange:
Here the right side component of the second character is 乎, rather than the usual 爭. Once again, this is a wholly unattested variant and must be considered an error, especially since the character 淨 appears elsewhere within the same manuscript in its correct form.
Now what do all these variants mean? Although I cannot be entirely sure but it seems that the manuscript was produced outside of the sutra-copying tradition to which we attribute most of the Dunhuang scrolls. It was probably copied by someone who was not familiar with Buddhist sutras, which is a problematic scenario in the Buddhist community of medieval Dunhuang. All this means that this particular manuscript deserves further study and, until we can account for the reasons behind its irregular features, should be used with caution.
References:
Boltz, William G., “The religious and philosophical significance of the ‘Hsiang Erh’ Lao Tzu in light of the Ma-wang-tui silk manuscripts,” BSOAS 45.1 (1982): 95-117.
Drège, Jean-Pierre, “Les Caractères de l’impératrice Wu Zetian dans les manuscrits de Dunhuang et Turfan,” BEFEO 73 (1984): 339-354.
Zhang Nan 張楠, “Wu Zhou xinzi ‘guo’ zai Yunnan de liuchuan kaoshi” 武周新字“國”在雲南的流傳考釋, Gugong bowuyuan yuankan 故宮博物院院刊 (1992) 3: 60-61.
