Dunhuang scrolls: Innovative storage solutions at the British Library

The British Library’s Stein collection contains about 14,000 scrolls, fragments and booklets in Chinese from a cave in the Buddhist Mogao Caves complex near Dunhuang in north-west China. This article describes storage and access solutions for the collection in the context of a busy research library and the currently ongoing Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Digitisation project. The article presents the various technical and organisational challenges that its rehousing presents to the library conservators. Restricted by the existing storage facilities, budget limitations and tight project deadlines, the conservators must provide housing that is adequate for the scroll format, is practical and prevents dissociation, but is also cost- and time-effective. With the best storage practice in mind, they have developed original solutions, balancing the specific housing requirements and constraints. These storage solutions allow the conservators to ensure the long-term safety and accessibility of the collection while laying down a foundation of standardisation that will ensure a homogeneity of approaches for future projects.

An Unpublished Fragment SI 4645 of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra from the Serindia Collection of the IOM, RAS

The article provides a study of a newly discovered manuscript fragment from the Serindia Collection (IOM, RAS), containing the Sanskrit text of the Lotus Sutra. Currently, the group of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra manuscripts from the Serindia Collection comprises 28 items. Some folios and fragments among them remain unpublished. The goal of the article is to introduce to the specialists a previously unpublished fragment of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra. This manuscript fragment is preserved in the Oldenbourg sub-collection (part of the Serindia Collection), call mark SI 4645. According to the documents from the IOM RAS archive, this fragment was acquired by Serguei F. Oldenbourg in Kizil-Karga during his first expedition to Eastern Turkestan (1909-1910). The text of the manuscript is an excerpt from the 4th chapter of the Lotus Sutra, which contains “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. The article provides facsimile reproduction of the fragment SI 4645 accompanied by transliteration and translation into Russian. It also outlines the physical features of the manuscript, provides a brief description of the text of the fragment SI 4645 and offers its comparison with the other well-known texts of the Lotus Sutra. The comparison of the fragment with several texts representing two Sanskrit “editions” (versions) of the Lotus Sutra shows that the fragment SI 4645 stands closer to the Gilgit-Nepalese “edition” of the Sutra, while the majority of the Lotus Sutra manuscripts from the Serindia Collection reveal features of the Central Asian “edition”.

The role of methaphors in education, self-education and teaching on the example of skillful Buddhist pedagogical methods and means. [rev.] Paweł Zieliński: Aspekty pedagogiczne Sutry Lotosu [Pedagogical aspects of the Lotus Sutra], Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Humanistyczno-Przyrodniczego im. Jana Długosza w Częstochowie, Częstochowa 2021 (ss. 192)

This article is a review of Paweł Zieliński’s monograph Pedagogical Aspects of the Lotus Sutra. The author focuses primarily on the study of skillful pedagogical methods and means (upaya-kausálya) used by Buddhist teachers in the processes of education, teaching and self-education. These methods, as noted by Zieliński, have not been sufficiently analyzed and researched by Western representatives of the humanities and social sciences.

Scenes from the Lotus Sutra. An Old Uygur Temple Banner with Cartouche Inscriptions

The temple banner IB 4781 of the former Ethnological Museum in Berlin (today: Hermitage Museum ВД 585) originates from Qočo (Dakianusšahri: afterwards D 222). A. Grünwedel gave its detailed description, but after his publication in 1905 it remained more or less untouched. The picture is based on an overall composition in which individual passages from the sutra have been integrated. The groups of figures arranged in the cloud scenes were examined in detail in Grünwedel's description. They are mostly bodhisattvas. In depicting the figures sitting around the Buddhas the painter has included figures seen from behind, so that one can correctly imagine a circle, which of course should indicate that all the figures are concentrated on the Buddha. The 10 text cartouches contain quotations in Old Uygur based on the Chinese text of the Lotus sutra. They are read here for the first time. In the paper these cartouche texts are studied as well as the names of the donors on the bottom of the temple banner.