Oktor Skjærvø
Prods Oktor Skjærvø, a former Norwegian, is now an American
citizen. During his Sanskrit studies in Oslo, he acquired an
interest in Old Iranian languages in general and Khotanese in
particular, following in the footsteps of his compatriot Sten Konow,
one of the pioneers of Indic epigraphy and Khotanese language. His
work on the Khotanese collections in India Office Library and the
British Library (now both in the British Library) from the early
1980s onward culminated in an edition of the Khotanese Suvarṇabhāsottama-sūtra and a complete
Catalogue of the British Library collection (which will be online in
2014). He later began concentrating on the eighth-century secular
documents in their social and political context, housed mainly in
the British Library, Hedin collection (Stockholm), and the Petrovsky
collection (St Petersburg), a work that is now being continued, he
is happy to say, by his students Zhang Zhan and Wen Xin. His chosen
item is IOL Khot W 1, a wooden tablet from
Dandān-Uiliq.
Oktor Skjærvø writes:
This is a double wooden tablet ‘envelope’ consisting of a bottom
with three raised edges and a top (cover) with a handle that
slides into the bottom part. The top has a raised middle part in
which a square hole has been carved out, in which there is a
hole piercing both tablets through which a string was drawn. The
square hole was then filled with clay on which a seal impression
was made. The clay, seal impression, and a piece of the string
are still extant. On the inside surfaces of the closed tablet is
recording of a legal case dated in year one of ‘the gracious
lord, great king of kings of Khotan, Viśya Sīhya’, formerly
unknown. The case concerns the sale (lease) of a man’s brother
to do state work on behalf of the villagers of Birgaṃdara to
help pay their debt. The cover contains a summary of the legal
decision, as the complete decision could only be read by
breaking the seal. This tablet was reused, however, to record
another legal decision on its underside.
There are two
other similar double wooden tablets in the British Library
collection, that had been long known and published, but this
object had been stored away and was brought to my attention by
Michael O’Keefe during one of my visits. It turned out to herald
a new era of discoveries of such objects. About the same time,
one was published in China
Pictorial 1981 that was also dated in the year of Viśya
Sīhya and concerning the sale of a brother’s son (published by
R.E. Emmerick). A few years later, on a visit to Urumqi and
Turfan, I was told of a tablet in the Xinjiang Institute of
Archaeology in Urumqi (no. WBH 01), which I was kindly allowed
to inspect. This tablet recorded the sale by a monastery of a
woman and her son (published by Professor Duan
Qing).
Since then, a number of such tablets have come to
light in China (now being published by Professor Duan Qing),
which are shedding welcome new light on the history of Khotan in
the late seventh to early eighth centuries.
To me,
however, it seems like IOL Khot W 1 was what started this new
spate of discoveries. That is why I choose it as my favourite
object.
Link to original post on IDP blog.