[Guangming Book Talk] Author: Duan Zhenzi (Associate Research Librarian in the Ancient Books Department of the Library of Renmin University of China) In November 2020, the "Chinese Documents Unearthed from Xinjiang in the Lushun Museum" (hereinafter referred to as "Lubo Documents

[Book of Guangming]

Author: Duan Zhenzi (Associate Research Librarian of the Ancient Books Department of Renmin University of China)

In November 2020, the "Chinese Documents Unearthed from Xinjiang in the Lushun Museum" (hereinafter referred to as "Lubo Documents") edited by Wang Zhenfen, Meng Xianshi and Rong Xinjiang was published by Zhonghua Book Company. This batch of documents is hailed by the academic community as "the 'last treasure' in the Dunhuang Turpan literature". From Xinjiang to Japan to Lushun, after experiencing vicissitudes, he finally met the world. On December 20, a new book publishing symposium was held in Beijing. All the experts at the meeting gave high praise, believing that this was a "mileage-like achievement" of Dunhuang Turpan research and created a new target for the collection of Dunhuang Turpan literature.

A hundred years ago, we were unable to lead the return of prose documents, and we even had no right to give a unified name. To this day, what is clearer than the general reference of "Dunhuang Turpan Documents" is the abbreviation named after the collection or the grabber, such as "English Tibet", "Fa Zang", "Russian Tibet", "De Zang", and "Dagu", etc., and the name of "Lu Bo Documents" is the correct name of China's ownership of "Dunhuang Turpan Documents". The "Borrowing Documents" has a total of 26,000 document fragments, which have many academic value, confirm the ancient Silk Road, and at the same time clarify the dissemination and influence of Chinese culture.

1. How can Chinese documents unearthed from Xinjiang from "Otani Documents" to "Lubo Documents"

How can they be entered into the Lushun Museum in Tibet? This will be traced back from the beginning of the last century.

Since the Eight-Nation Alliance's war invasion of China in 1900, Dunhuang documents have been discovered and began to flow out, opening up what Chen Yinke said about "the sad history of our country's academic studies." A number of "explorers" including Swedish Svenchtin, British Stein, French Pelchhe, Russian Oldenburg, etc. came one after another, crazily seizing Chinese cultural relics. The emerging Eastern country, Japan, is not willing to lag behind. From 1902 to 1914, Otani Mitsuri, the 22nd generation master of Nishihonganji, led a team to conduct three "explorations" to China, covering Xinjiang, Gansu, Yunnan and other places, and looting a wide variety of cultural relics, collectively known as "Otani Collection". Among them, ancient documents, such as "Dagua Documents", are mostly from Turpan, Xinjiang, and a few are from ancient ruins and tombs from Kuqa, Hotan and other places in Xinjiang, and some are from Dunhuang. This is part of the sad history of Chinese cultural relics.

picture is the Tang Dynasty manuscript "Ancient Literature Shangshu·Shangshu·Tang Oath" discovered for the first time in the Turpan manuscript of Dunhuang. Data picture

Like a separated child, the "Otani Collection" has been moved several times after it was far away from its hometown and arrived in Japan. The first batch of cultural relics were stored in Nishihonganji, Japan and the Imperial Kyoto Museum at that time (now Kyoto National Museum). In 1944, most of the paper books were returned to the Otani family; other cultural relics were sold to Sadaki Kimura, and 20 years later, they were transferred to the Tokyo National Museum. The second and third batches of cultural relics were stored in Kobe Rokka Nilezhuang after 1908; in 1914, the 2 Legozhuang was sold to the government and businessman Kuhara Nosuke, and the cultural relics stored were separated again. Some of them arrived in Seoul in May 1916 and sold to Masaoyi of the North Korean Governor of the Temple, and eventually settled in the North Korean Governor's Office Museum (now the National Central Museum in Seoul, South Korea) and the Shima Tokusuji Temple Temple in North Korea. The other part was transported to Lushun in two batches and entered Otani’s residence in Xinshi Street, Lushun. In November 1925, Otani Mitsuru was faced with serious economic problems and sold the "Otani Collection" to the then Manchurian and Meng Property Office of the Kanto Governor's Office (now Lushun Museum). Japan was defeated in 1945, and the sold cultural relics were taken over by the Soviet Union as "trophy". It was not until the founding of New China in 1949 that it finally stayed in the Lushun Museum. Among them, there are the "Travel Bo Documents" compiled and published now.

From Xinjiang to Japan and then to Lushun, this batch of documents has been wandering for nearly half a century and finally returned to the local area. The ending is gratifying and the process is full of accidents. Modern China was unable to change the fate of the dispersion of documents, could not dominate its return, and even had no right to give a unified name. To this day, what is clearer than the general reference of "Dunhuang Turpan" is the abbreviation named after the collection or the grabber.In this sense, the "Lubo Documents" refer to the documents collected by the Lushun Museum, which is different from the "Otani Documents" in Japan, marks its independent identity after returning to the local area, and corrects China's ownership of the "Dunhuang Turpan Documents", marks that contemporary China has occupied a new highland in the international Dunhuang Turpan field of Turpan, and is also a solid position for scholars to step out of the "sad history".

The picture shows the first "Liezi" discovered in Turpan. Although there are only 2 lines, the content does not coincide with Dunhuang. Data picture

2. Living up to the national treasure and getting out of the "Academic Sad History"

"Blog Documents" were finally fully announced today?

In fact, before the publication of "Lubo Literature", the document compilation and research work in "Otani Collection" had been carried out for nearly a hundred years and could be divided into three stages.

The first phase was dominated by Japan in the first half of the 20th century, and the main forms were the release of cultural relics pictures and catalogs. For example, the "Erle Series" (1912-1913) published by Ju Ruichao, a member of the Otani Expedition Team, introduced a small number of fragments of Pure Land and Lotus Buddhist scriptures. After the Nilezhuang was resold, the "Otani Collection" was scattered. The "Archaeological Map of the Western Regions" (1915) compiled by Kagawa Moshi, and the "New Western Regions Record" (1937) compiled by Yoshitaro Uehara, also published a small number of cultural relics. New collection units such as the "Kanto Hall Museum's Otani Family Production Catalog" and the "Catalogue of the Central Asia Excavations of the North Korean Governor's Office Museum" attached to the "New Western Regions Record" and so on. However, because China was deeply involved in war at that time and had no time to care about it, domestic scholars rarely understand it.

Tang Dynasty manuscript "Praise of Guanyin Sutra" is composed of 37 fragments, and the figure encoded as 13 of them. It is highly consistent with the content of the Dunhuang version, but the Turpan version has some explanations. It has high academic value for restoring the entire original text and further studying the ideas of the Northern School. Data picture

The second half of the 20th century, especially after 1980, can be regarded as the second stage. The "Otani Documents" left in Japan have been valued by the Japanese academic community. Its collection unit, Ryugaya University, Japan, became a research center for a time. In 1983, the first volume of "Otani Documents Collection" edited by Japanese scholar Yoshihisa Oda was published, causing a sensation in Turpan's academic circle. As of the publication of the fourth volume in 2009, a total of nearly 10,000 black and white photos and recorded documents were published. The academic achievements produced in this process once led the research trend in Japan and even China. While the domestic academic community follows closely, it is also seeking breakthroughs and striving to surpass.

However, in contrast, the "Bobao Documents" did not receive equal attention, and only those related to the "Otani Documents" in the Ryuga University can enter the academic field. It was not until 1992 that the article "Ancient Documents Unearthed from Xinjiang in the Collection of Lushun Museum" by Chinese scholars Wang Zhenren, Liu Guangtang and Sun Huizhen was published in "Xinjiang Cultural Relics". The content of some documents was interpreted for the first time, and the collation and research work entered the beginning of the third stage. "Borrowing Bo Documents" finally came out of the boudoir with the arrival of the new century.

"Chinese literature unearthed from Xinjiang in the Lushun Museum"

Wang Zhenfen Meng Xianshirong Xinjiang edited the Zhonghua Book Company

In 2002, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage approved the Lushun Museum and Longgu University to collaborate and study fragments of Chinese Buddhist scriptures unearthed from Xinjiang in the museum; in 2006, "Selected Chinese Buddhist scriptures unearthed from Xinjiang in the Lushun Museum" and "Research Papers on Chinese Buddhist scriptures Unearthed from Xinjiang in the Lushun Museum" were published, displaying the graphic and name of some Buddhist scriptures fragments, and publishing related research. In 2007, "Research on Western Region Documents Collection in the Lushun Museum" was published, introducing the source, characteristics and value of the documents collected. However, the number of "Bobao documents" is huge, with more than 26,000 Chinese documents alone, including various documents written within a thousand years from the 3rd century to the 13th century AD. In addition to the vast majority of them, they also include a certain number of scripture writing inscriptions, scriptures, Taoist scriptures, four classics, codes, public and private documents, mathematics documents, medical documents, etc., involving many aspects of the ancient Turpan region. Therefore, the above work and achievements are just the tip of the iceberg, and it is very necessary to comprehensively organize and deeply reveal the "Borough Documents" in detail.

3. A century-old look has changed

In recent years, the domestic Dunhuang Turpan research team has grown stronger and stronger, and the scientific research level has been continuously improved. The conditions for comprehensively sorting out "Borrowing and Blog Documents" have been very mature.

In 2015, the Lushun Museum, the Center for Research on Ancient Chinese History of Peking University, and the National College of Renmin University of China cooperated to carry out the "Collect and Research on Unearthed Chinese Documents in Xinjiang in the Lushun Museum" project. Over the past five years, nearly 50 people have participated, and have determined the title of more than 26,000 "Travel Bo Documents", written questions and compiled a general index, and finally collected it in the picture version of "Travel Bo Documents". This achievement is not only the first time that the "Borrowing Doctor Documents" have been fully announced, but also created a new target for the compilation of Dunhuang Turpan documents.

"Lives and Blog Documents" 35 volumes, and the picture section is arranged in the order of "Lives and Blog Documents". Try to use the original color photocopy, mark the scale, and indicate the number and title under the picture, avoiding the problems of insufficient clarity and information loss caused by black and white printing when publishing Dunhuang Turpan documents in the past. The text part includes title and problem solving. The problem solving content includes the document translator (author), the corresponding location of the electronic Buddhist scriptures, the proofreading notes, the age, references and other information. It is attached to each picture and is summarized and indexed for readers to search and use.

In August 2015, the organization team went to Lushun Museum to check the original. A complete system like the data picture

is equivalent to establishing relatively detailed academic coordinates for each "Book and Blog Document"; and it is not easy to complete more than 26,000 coordinates.

First of all, we must overcome two major difficulties and accurately name the documents. "Follow the map" is the basic method of name determination, that is, compare the text stored in the fragments to find the source of the document. However, on the one hand, the "Lubo Documents" spanned from the Western Jin Dynasty to the Northern Song Dynasty, and most of them were manuscripts, with many fonts and many forms, making it difficult to read the text. On the other hand, it is difficult to fit the literature. Taking Buddhist literature as an example, many Buddhist literature that was first passed down or popular in China may be re-translated or lost. The versions I see today cannot exactly match the content of the fragments. There are also some fragments of content that exist in many Buddhist scriptures, and the only source cannot be determined based on the search text alone. To overcome these two difficulties, organizers need to use interdisciplinary research methods and means.

Secondly, improve the theory of calligraphy installment and accurately divide the documents. Due to the high degree of fragmentation of "Borough Documents" and most of the information in the chronological period is missing, even if you know that it comes from a certain classic, you cannot directly and accurately determine the generation. Therefore, the organization team carefully compared the documents of Turpan in Dunhuang and Dichuang, proposed a scientific and practical calligraphy installment theory, and solved the problem of grading the "Blog Documents" in accordance with this, and presented it in each problem-solving.

Finally, establish a complete set of scientific and efficient work systems to ensure the operation of the project. Each name and each paragraph of problem-solving will undergo at least six quality inspections before entering the proofreading process. For important links such as searching for previous research, updating references, and compiling general indexes, a dedicated personnel are established to avoid data confusion and disconnection. From May 20, 2017 to September 30, 2020, each of nine people completed four proofreadings. During this period, the COVID-19 epidemic broke out, but the proofreading work was never delayed.

"Borrowing Documents" is the "last treasure" of Dunhuang Turpan documents. The academic circles at home and abroad have been looking forward to it for a long time. Therefore, over the past five years, dozens of academic papers on various documents in the "Borrowing Doctor Documents" have been published in a variety of journals. These articles are written around "Travel and Blog Documents" and are also promoting the compilation of "Travel and Blog Documents". More than 26,000 titles and problem solving are only a few lines, but all of them are research results that have been repeatedly considered. Behind each reference represents the academic community’s discussion and thinking on this issue. The authors of these articles are not limited to the organization team, but also have peer experts who have studied a certain classic and some issues for many years. The complete announcement of the "Borrowing Document" and the display of initial achievements also show the Chinese scholars' more open mind and hope that everyone can work hard to promote academic progress together.

"Borrowing documents" are the carrier of Chinese civilization, and its style should be seen by the world.Therefore, the original color pictures of more than 26,000 "Travel Bo Documents" were published, showing their original appearance as much as possible, and retaining every wrinkle and every broken part on the fragments, so that the world can remember the vicissitudes and great changes it has experienced and live up to the national treasures. The publication of "Traveling and Doctor Documents" is just the beginning. In the process of Turpan studies and Dunhuang studies "flying together" and "dividing and integrating", "Traveling and Doctor Documents" will definitely play an important role; further organizing and publishing the text of "Traveling and Doctor Documents" and making full use of its rich information connotation to carry out academic research, can we enhance the status of "Traveling and Doctor Documents" in the Dunhuang Turpan documents and allow Chinese scholars to shine more brilliantly in the international Dunhuang Turpan academic circle.

"Guangming Daily" (11th edition, January 28, 2021)

Source: Guangming.com-Guangming Daily