A Catalogue of Dunhuang Materials

CHEN, Yuan 陳垣, ed.

Dunhuang jie yu lu 敦煌劫餘錄 [An Analytical List of the Dunhuang Manuscripts in the National Library of Beiping].

Six vols. Small 8vo, orig. wrappers (upper wrapper of Vol. I a little defective), orig. stitching. Beijing: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1931.

The scholarship of an era must have its own new sources and new questions. To use these sources in order to research those same questions is what constitutes the new tide of the era’s scholarship.

Thus polyglot scholar Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (or Yinque, 1890-1969) begins the Preface for Chen Yuan’s Analytical List of the Dunhuang Manuscripts in the National Library of Beiping (i.e., Beijing). Like Chen Yinke, Chen Yuan (1880-1971) was one of the leading historians of the Republican period, whose career continued into the People’s Republic. His many publications included several studies on the history of religion in China, as well as works on middle-period Chinese history.

According to Chen Yinke, the archaeological finds at Dunhuang presented the new sources that would define scholarship in his day:

Students of Dunhuang form the new tide of scholarship of today’s world…There has so far been no catalogue of the classical texts that have emerged from Dunhuang, making it difficult to examine and check them…Chen Yuan (Mr. Shouan) of Xinhui…has accepted the invitation of the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica to catalogue and arrange the over 8000 scrolls of Dunhuang manuscripts held at the Beiping Library…This catalogue is a tool that no one who seriously wants to engage in Dunhuang research can do without.

The catalogue describes the items moved from Dunhuang to Beijing in 1910.

Fine set.

Price: $950.00

Item ID: 9631