Eighteen lectures on Dunhuang / by Rong Xinjiang ; translated by Imre Galambos.

• Author: Rong, Xinjiang.
• TeilnehmendeR: Galambos, Imre.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English; Chinese
• Series: Brill's humanities in China library ; v. 5.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; illustrations, maps

In Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang , Rong Xinjiang provides an accessible overview of Dunhuang studies, an academic field that emerged following the discovery of a medieval monastic library at the Mogao caves near Dunhuang. The manuscripts were hidden in a cave at the beginning of the 11th century and remained unnoticed until 1900, when a Daoist monk accidentally found them and subsequently sold most of them to foreign explorers and scholars. The availability of this unprecedented amount of first-hand material from China’s middle period provided a stimulus for a number of scholarly fields both in China and the West. Rong Xinjiang’s book provides, for the first time in English, a convenient summary of the history of Dunhuang studies and its contribution to scholarship.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Lecture 1 Dunhuang in Chinese History -- Lecture 2 Dunhuang and the Silk Road -- Lecture 3 The Discovery of the Dunhuang Cave Library and Its Early Dispersal -- Lecture 4 The Nature of the Dunhuang Library Cave and the Reasons for Its Sealing -- Lecture 5 Major Collections of Dunhuang Manuscripts -- Lecture 6 Scramble for the Treasures of Khotan, Kucha, Loulan and Gaochang -- Lecture 7 Dunhuang Studies and Oriental Studies in the West -- Lecture 8 Dunhuang Studies in China and Japan -- Lecture 9 The Political and Economic History of the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties in Light of Dunhuang Studies -- Lecture 10 Dunhuang Studies and the Social History of the Medieval Period -- Lecture 11 The History of Central Asian Peoples and China’s Contacts with Her Neighbors in Light of Dunhuang Studies -- Lecture 12 The Significance of Buddhist and Daoist Manuscripts from Dunhuang -- Lecture 13 Dunhuang Copies of Traditional Chinese Texts and Medieval Intellectual History -- Lecture 14 Language and Literature in Light of Dunhuang Studies -- Lecture 15 Dunhuang Studies and the History of Science and Technology -- Lecture 16 Dunhuang in Light of Art and Archaeology -- Lecture 17 Dunhuang and Manuscript Studies -- Lecture 18 Forgeries and the Authentication of Dunhuang Manuscripts -- Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Postscript -- Index.