Dunhuang Tibetan Manuscripts in Britain and France Finally Published in China in Full

Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang stored in Britain and France have now been published in full in China. (Wikimedia Commons)

JAKARTA - Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang stored in England and France have now been published in China after being worked on for two decades. The project includes 61 volumes of ancient manuscripts that have been stored in two major European libraries.

A total of 61 volumes of Tibetan-language Dunhuang manuscripts come from the collections of the British Library and the National Library of France. The manuscripts were taken abroad from the Library Cave in Mogao Cave, Dunhuang, in the early 20th century, Xinhua reported, quoted on Thursday, April 9.

The publication of the manuscript was carried out by Northwest Minzu University together with Shanghai Classics Publishing House, involving cooperation between the British Library and the National Library of France. The project lasted a long time, from 2005 to 2025.

According to Tsering, one of the main participants in the project, the publication of 35 volumes of manuscripts from France was completed in 2021. The collection contains 3,174 items that have been catalogued and more than 28,000 high-resolution images. Meanwhile, 26 volumes stored in England were published in 2025 in the same format.

Before this project was completed, only a small portion of the manuscript had ever been reproduced in print. The research team from Northwest Minzu University also had to face various obstacles, ranging from incomplete characters, blurred handwriting, to the complexity of the language.

From that process, the team compiled a bilingual China-Tibet catalog to facilitate the search for the contents of the manuscript. This was conveyed by Professor Tashi Dondrup, who was involved in the research.

Dunhuang is a city on the ancient Silk Road in Gansu Province. The city has three UNESCO World Heritage sites and more than 260 cultural relics sites.

The Tibetan manuscript from Dunhuang is known as the oldest surviving Tibetan-language paper document. Its contents include Buddhist scriptures, historical works, contracts, official documents, and legal texts. According to Xinhua's report, the manuscript has a high academic value because it contains traces of the history, politics, economy, and culture of the Tubo Empire in 618-842.