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FYI France: BNdeF's China, Dunhuang Digital Library
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Feb 16 20:03:22 2004
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2004 03:20:10 -0800
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
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FYI France: China at the BNdeF -- a Dunhuang Digital Library
The Magic of the Silk Road... la Route de la Soie... For anyone
who does not know the story, the now-quaint early-1900s English
of Aurel Stein still tells it best:
"The sight disclosed in the dim light of the priest's
little oil-lamp made my eyes open wide. Heaped up in
layers, but without any order, there appeared a solid
mass of manuscript bundles rising to ten feet from the
floor and filling, as subsequent measurement showed,
close on 500 cubic feet. Within the small room measuring
about nine feet square there was left barely space for
two people to stand on..."
-- reveries of rare books, fragile manuscripts, ancient China and
the Silk Trade, of Buddhism and travel adventures and Marco Polo
-- and of The British Raj, and Rudyard Kipling's Kim and his
"Great Game", and Howard Carter's, "What do you see? I see
things, wonderful things..." -- and of, "Raiders of the Lost
Ark", "The Man Who Would Be King", "Tomb Raider" and, yes, even
"Lord of the Rings" -- professional competition, jealousy, high
adventure, and anything, really, involving pirates, and bandits,
and treasure...
This is The Year of China -- "L'Année de la Chine" -- at the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and to celebrate the event
exhibitions are being mounted, talks delivered, presentations
made. And most interesting of all, to me personally, selections
from the library's considerable collection of "manuscrits trouvés
à Dunhuang" not only will be on display but now are being
digitized for presentation on the Web.
The story of the procurement and protection of the Dunhuang
treasures, by among others the French scholar Paul Pelliot,
involving the same "small room" which Aurel Stein also visited
and described above, is one of the cultural property provenance
sagas of all time: in Stein's carefully-chosen words --
"... an order was issued by the central [Chinese]
government directing the prompt transmission of the whole
library to the capital... the large sum of money assigned
in compensation to [the] temple had completely vanished
en route, being duly absorbed in transit through the
various offices. The whole collection of manuscripts was
taken away in carts...
"A good deal of pilfering occurred while the carts were
still waiting at the Tun-huang Ya-mên; for whole bundles
of fine Buddhist rolls of T'ang times were in 1914
brought to me there for sale. Similar opportunities for
rescuing relics from the great cache offered also at
different places on my way to Kan-chou as well as in
Chinese Turkistan. So one may well wonder how much of the
materials thus carted away actually reached Peking in the end..."
How Stein and Pelliot and others rescued the Dunhuang collections
-- some of our earliest and greatest documentary evidence of life
in Tang China -- from their ancient desert hiding place, and
preserved them from various marauders both Asian and other so
that they might be seen by us today, is a story worth retelling
in many books and movies. Pirates and bandits and treasure...
This Spring, then, the BNdeF will be offering glimpses of the
result: an exhibition, and digitization --
1) The exhibition:
"China, the Empire of the Brushstroke"
"In celebration of the Year of China, an exposition will be
presented in 2004, at the François-Mitterrand site, reuniting two
major arts of Chinese culture: calligraphy and painting.
"'A brushstroke is not a simple line. It is an incarnation of
human breath itself': François Cheng, calligrapher and writer,
thus evokes the mystery which governs both calligraphy and the
writings of a poet. The same breath, the same energy, animates
both the hand and the spirit, and unites the two in the line made
by brush and ink.
"The exhibition which the BnF is devoting to China wishes to stay
as close as possible to this Chinese esthetic of the brushstroke,
by reuniting works produced by these two arts: 130 of the most
exceptional works of the 5th to the 19th centuries, held in the
collections of manuscripts, rare printed works, maps, painting
albums, print-making and prints.
"The Chinese collections of the BnF, which are not well-known to
the French public, go back to the end of the 16th century. At the
urging of Louis XIV, who created the first missions to China, the
missionaries were asked to send back works useful to the study of
the Middle Kingdom. This tradition of conservation and
acquisition has been perpetuated to our day.
"Then the spectacular revelation of a veritable treasure came to
enrich the collection, at the beginning of the 20th century: Paul
Pelliot (1878-1945), an eminent sinologist, found a medieval
library of inestimable value in the interior of a cave which had
been sealed at the end of the 11th century, situated in the oasis
of Dunhuang, in Chinese Turkestan. He thus acquired thousands of
manuscripts and hundreds of paintings which would be deposited at
the BN. Thse documents opened new avenues of research into the
economic and social history of medieval China, as well as into
the Buddhist and Taoist religions, and the art and history of
printing and of the book.
"Manuscripts Found At Dunhuang"
"Three beautiful maps -- including 'Grand Empire of the Ching,
Unified and Eternal', of the 18th century, printed in blue --
open the scene. Then come the manuscripts from Dunhuang: silk
calligraphy rolls of the 5th century, rolls showing Buddhist
sutras on the paper which replaced silk to increase the spread of
the religion's writings, prints which are among the oldest in the
world. 'They provide an understanding of the diversity of
medieval Chinese calligraphy, and an appreciation of the vitality
of the art of the brush: regular styles, cursive, calligraphy
produced by monastic copiers or by imperial scribes, that of an
emperor or that of a master calligrapher, fanciful graphics,
celestial or talismanic characters, and so on", comments Nathalie
Monnet, supervisor of the exhibition.
"Brushstroke designs, preparatory sketches -- palimpsests -- for
the paintings which covered the frescoed walls of Dunhuang,
showing the images of divinities, a personnage from the wind, a
guardian-protector... very rare pieces, too, as little in
painting has been preserved from China from before the 16th century.
"From the Letter to the Image"
"The third part of the exposition is devoted to ancient printed
works. The great works of Confucianists, Taoists and Buddhists,
the three Chinese scriptural traditions, all are represented, as
are the fiction and theatrical literatures, in editions
beautifully illustrated by the brush.
"One can discover bibliophilic masterpieces here: albums produced
through techniques of printing and painting and calligraphy, on
silk, jade, treeleaves, or with gold. The 'Album of Ten Views of
Mount Wu', of unequaled fineness of execution, and illustrating
one of the most beautiful sights of the Lake of the West, offers
the only surviving example of the color printing which circulated
among a limited group of educated aesthetes as early as 1615.
"Some of the documents reveal the art of politics in ancient
China, such as the painting on silk glorifying the imperial power
of the Ching dynasty, which shows the court of the emperor
Kangxi, crossing Beijing in state to celebrate his 60th anniversary.
"The exhibition closes with an evocation of the art of the
countryside, through paintings and printed works. Engravings and
silk paintings showing the imperial parks are included. Among the
series of forty silk paintings preserved at the BnF, four of the
largest, in square formats, provide reminders of the views and
pavilions of the Summer Palace, which was destroyed in 1860.
"Balancing these are four engravings of the western-style palaces
of the Chinese monarchs. Designed by Jesuits in the 18th century,
these imperial 'curiosities' bear witness to the first attempts
at mutual comprehension and exchange made between the two
cultures, Chinese and European." --Sylvie Lisiecki [tr. JK].
* Exposition, 16 mars - 20 juin 2004
"Chine, l'Empire du trait" (Calligraphies et dessins
de la Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Site François-Mitterrand, Grande Galerie
Commissaire : Nathalie Monnet, conservateur en chef au
département des Manuscrits (division orientale)
http://chroniques.bnf.fr/
(événement>Expositions à la BnF>Chine, l'Empire du trait)
2) And the digitization: there is a project under way now to
digitize and thus unite, and offer to the rest of us who cannot
get to Paris, the entirety of the great Dunhuang collection which
was scattered nearly to the winds in the early 1900s --
"The Mellon Project at the BnF: the digitization of the
Dunhuang collections"
"In February 1908, a young French sinologist, Paul Pelliot,
arriving at the final lap of his mission to Central Asia, came to
the site of the 'Cave of the Thousand Buddhas', at Dunhuang, a
military outpost established during the 2nd century in the
western regions of the Chinese Empire. He was struck by the
beauty of these stone sanctuaries. He came upon an ancient
meditation cell, muralled in the 11th century, filled with
thousands of manuscripts and paintings. After three weeks spent
compiling an inventory of the documents, he knew that this was
'the most formidable discovery of Chinese manuscripts which the
history of the Far East ever had recorded'. In 1910, the fabulous
collection which he acquired was received at the Bibliothèque
Nationale, for its manuscripts, and at the Louvre for its paintings.
"Since 2001, the BnF has participated in an international
program, directed by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Mellon
International Dunhuang Archives: to present to researchers the
images from the caves and those of the manuscripts, which were
found at the site but became dispersed all over the world. The
requirement of high quality, the burden of exhaustivity of such a
vast project, and the complexity of the documents produce immense
challenges for their digitization, which is taking place now at
the BnF. One additional innovative element: the images will be
tied to metadata in non-latin characters.
"The Dunhuang documents depict, in their many formats, languages,
and writings, the history of a region crossed by rich influences.
Dunhuang was the point of departure for the Silk Road to Central
Asia. Upon the route could be found not only commercial goods,
but also the ideas and religious beliefs of an important period
in the expansion of Buddhism to the Far East. The language of the
texts reflects this cultural diversity, from an oasis which saw
the comings and goings of pilgrims, merchants, or various
dominant ruling groups: Chinese, Tibetans, Uighur Turks...
"The Fundamental Texts of Buddhism"
"These manuscripts, dating from the 5th to the beginning of the
11th centuries, also present the fundamental texts of Buddhism.
They include an array of copy qualities, from imperial documents
on colored papers or the prestigious painted scrolls, to rough
transcriptions containing many flaws. Pious images, examples from
popular cults, and humble devotional texts in paper cut-outs are
found next to moving documentary evidence of the earliest times
of wood-block printing illustration.
"The paintings bear the iconography of a sinicized Buddhism which
also is found in the chapels of the sanctuary in which Pelliot
compiled his descriptions. Pelliot also selected archival
documents and texts of popular literature: sources of great value
for the understanding of Chinese civilization.
"17,000 Images Already Digitized"
"Objectives of high quality and the constraints of conservation
have dictated the choices of direct digitization: the goal is to
achieve both the best fidelity in colors and the best legibility
of the documents. But one of the challenges also is to present
the physical characteristics of the documents on the screen. For
this collection provides us with precious information about 'the
book' in Asia, about the changes among different traditions and
the original forms, such as 'livrets en tourbillons', or
traditional Indian folded palm-leaf 'pothi' manuscripts, adapted
to Chinese texts. Certain unique characteristics may be revealed:
an ornamented edge, an original seam, or the finial of a scroll's
roller, encased in mother-of-pearl, may come to light.
"Finally, the images on the scrolls are assembled in order to
present the continuous scroll on-screen. The vast corpus of
digitized images will be accessible thanks to scientifically -
cataloged metadata, which also will be available on its own for
consultation. By the end of the first year, about 17,000 images
had been completed at the BnF, or two thirds of the Pelliot
Chinese Collection. The program will continue in 2004 with work
on its Tibetan section, and it will finish in 2005 with its rare
doucments in Sanskrit, Uighur, Hebrew, Sogdian, and Khotan.
"These images will be available for consultation via Internet on
the BnF website. This constitutes a large distribution of them
which, on the one hand, will facilitate international research in
these areas and, on the other, will render accessible to a large
public the marvels of the art of Dunhuang."
--Monique Cohen and Véronique Béranger. [tr. JK]
* http://chroniques.bnf.fr/
(international et réseaux>Le projet Mellon : numériser
les collections de Dunhuang)
* http://www.mellon.org/programs/otheractivities/ArtSTOR/Content.htm
* http://www.artstor.org/collections/mida.jsp
--oOo--
Note:
Aurel Stein's "ripping" account of his own adventures at Dunhuang
-- he trekked from India, from the south and west, across the
mountains and the deserts and in the opposite direction from the
route taken by Pelliot -- graced the shelves of practically every
schoolchild of the 1930s and 40s and 50s who had any sort of
sense of adventure, along with books by Richard Halliburton and
the rest in the genre. Stein calls his version:
"... a succinct account of the explorations, antiquarian
and geographical, which I had the good fortune to carry
out in Chinese Turkistan and adjacent parts of innermost
Asia. The years spent on hard travel in those little -
known regions, difficult of access and trying in their
physical features, remain among the happiest years of my life..."
"... explorations which I had the good fortune to carry
out under the orders of the Indian Government on three
successive expeditions to the innermost portions of Asia.
Those expeditions werre started as long ago as 1900-1 and
were continued from 1906 to 1908 and again from 1913 to
1916. They lasted altogether for close on seven years and
allowed my by marches on horseback and on foot to cover
distances aggregating to a total of some 25,000 miles..."
* Sir Aurel Stein, "On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks:
brief narrative of three expeditions in innermost asia
and north-western China" (London : Macmillan, 1933)
See also his "Ruins of Desert Cathay: personal narrative of
explorations in central Asia and westermost China" (London :
Macmillan, 1912) 2 vols.; "On Alexander's Track to the Indus:
personal narrative of explorations on the north-west frontier of
India" (London : Macmillan, 1929); and many other books by and
about Aurel Stein and his adventures. nb. The older editions are
worthwhile as much for the old photos of wild and untamed Central
Asia of 1900, and of wild and untamed young Stein and his
companions -- the following is a caption of a must-see photo --
"Chiang Ssü-yeh, myself with 'Dash II', Rai Bahadur Lal
Singh, Igrahim Beg, Jasvant Singh, Naik Ram Singh"
-- as they are for their scholarly accounts...
And for the careful scholarly work of Paul Pelliot see, inter
alia, his:
* "La Mission Pelliot en Asie Centrale" (Hanoi: Imprimerie
d'Extrême-Orient, 1909).
* (with Robert Gauthiot) "Mission Pelliot en Asie centrale [de
1906 à 1909]" (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1914).
* "Les grottes de Touen-Houang : peintures et sculptures
bouddhiques des époques des Wei, des T'ang et des Song" (Paris:
Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1920).
and,
* Bibliothèque nationale (France); Pelliot, Paul; Séguy, Marie
Rose, "Trésors de Chine et de Haute Asie : centième anniversaire
de Paul Pelliot : Paris, [Bibliothèque nationale, 20 septembre -
28 décembre], 1979" (Paris : Bibliothèque nationale, 1979).
Perhaps a chance here, then, to see old rivalries reunited, or
ignored, or even finally buried, thanks to the unifying effects
of digital information and the Internet... and the only chance,
really, for someone in Tasmania, or for that matter in China or
California, to be able to view all of these scattered objects as
one coherent whole, or perhaps ever to be able to view them at
all... true now maybe of so many "collections" previously
scattered by the vagaries of competitions, and of history...
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
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--hjlm--
