The Diamond Sutra I:
View of the caves from the top of the cliff
After this the site was little used until a secret sealed-up cave was discovered in 1990. Its entrance from the side wall of another cave had been plastered over and disguised but, when opened, a small cave crammed with ancient manuscripts, printed documents and paintings was open to view for the first time since the early 11thcentury. Wang Yuanlu, the Daoist priest who discovered the cave, gave some of the manuscripts and paintings to local Chinese officials over the next few years, including the magistrate of Dunhuang, Wang Li’an.
The cave’s discovery coincided with a period of great international archaeological research in the area and Sir Aurel Stein was the first foreigner to gain access in 1907. Thereafter archaeologists from France, China, Russia and Japan were drawn to Dunhuang, and the great majority of manuscripts and documents from this one cave are now in Beijing, Paris, London and St. Petersburg, with sizeable collections in Japan. Documents and paintings from other Silk Road towns are to be found more widely in museums and libraries throughout Europe, Asia and America.
Apart from 14,000 paper scrolls and fragments from this cave at Dunhuang, the British Library Stein collection includes several thousands of woodslips and woodslip fragments with Chinese writing, thousand of Tibetan and Tangut manuscripts, Prakrit wooden tablets in Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts, along with documents in Khotanese, Uighiur, Sogdian and Eastern Turkiesh. All this material is included in Tthe International Dunhuang Project and is being entered onto the IDP Database.
The British Library Dunhuang Collection is part of the collections of the Chinese Section.
International Dunhuang Project is a ground-breaking international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet and to encourage their use through educational and research programmes.