| Budget Amount *help |
¥7,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥7,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥2,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In the first two years of this project (2001-2002), we identified about sixty Tibetan Dunhuang texts that belong to the post-Tibtan Empire period, and discussed that Tibetan continued to be used in East Turkestan in the 10th century and thereafter by non-Tibetans, such as Chinese and Khotanese, as a lingua franca.
In the second half of the project, we found that a few hundreds of Tibetan Buddhist texts from Dunhuang were also produced in the 10th century, many of which were written by Khotanese. Based on the palaeographical criteria we have established during this process, we expect to find many more Tibetan texts written in the 10th century. This would completely revise our concepts of Tibetan texts and Tibetan Buddhism.
Along with the study of Dunhuang texts, Takeuchi and Iuchi have databased all the Tibetan texts from Khara-Khoto and Etsin-Gol excavated by M. A. Stein and Kozlov and now preserved in the British Library and the Russian Academy at St. Petersburg, respectively. In the database, we provide with the following information on each item: requisition and site numbers, size, physical description, classification, transliterated text, key words, etc. In addition, we have identified and date many texts. As a result, it has been revealed that Khara-Khoto texts date from with to 16the centuries, while Etsin-Gol texts date from 16th to 20th centuries. Together with Dunhuang texts they cover the whole period of Tibetan texts. They provide various palaeographical variations which will be the target of our next research. The final outcome, namely the database, will be made available through the International Dunhuang Project website (http://idp.bl.uk).
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