Irina Popova
Irina Popova has been the Director of the Institute of Oriental
Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), since 2003. She is also Professor of
Chinese History and Language at St
Petersburg State University, the Faculty of Oriental
Studies. She was admitted to Leningrad State University in 1978 in
the Faculty of Oriental Studies, History of China Section. In
November 1983, she started her doctoral studies at the Leningrad
Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies. Three years later, she
joined the staff of the Institute as a junior researcher. In 1988
she received her Ph.D. for the thesis on the Theory of the Rulership
in the Early Tang China and received her Habilitation in 2000. Her
major research areas are political thought, government and the
administrative system of medieval and especially Tang China, as well
as the study of Dunhuang and Chinese manuscripts held at the
Institute and archival documents on Russian Sinology.
Irina
Popova’s chosen item is F-32/4 from the collections of the Institute of Oriental
Manuscripts.
Irina Popova writes:
The manuscript of the ‘Library Document’ (F-32/4) was discovered by the Second Russian
Turkestan Expedition headed by Sergey Oldenburg in Dunhuang and
became part of the collection of The Asiatic Museum (now
The Institute
of Oriental Manuscripts, RAS) with all the other documents on September 1, 1915. The separate sheet of white
paper (30 x 17.2 cm) was registered as a ‘Postscript to Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra’.
The text states that the ruler of
Dunhuang Cao Zongshou and his wife Lady Fan issued an order to
make cloth wrappers for Buddhist sutras and to supplement the
lacunae in the library of Baoen Monastery. The document was
dated the 15th day under the sign renyin of the 7th month of the
5th year under the reign of Universal Peace (Xianping) of the
Song Dynasty, which corresponds to August 25, 1002. This 4-line
document therewith became one of the pearls of Russian
collection, for the clear reason that there are not too many
documents from the Library Cave bearing a full date. And it is
remarkable and even unique, as it represents a long forgotten
type of document that reflects the daily life of Chinese
society in a provincial town located close to the state’s
frontier.
Moroever, in the course of the research and
print and on-line publication of the Dunhuang collections from
all over the world no other document with a full date from later
than this has come to light, even if there is circumstantial
evidence that such documents may exist. So then, this
unpretentious short manuscript F-32/4 retains its complete timeless
value.
Link to original post on IDP blog.