Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts敦煌道经
- Also known as
- Catalogue of the Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts, Album of the Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts
- Author / transmission
- Catalogued by Ōfuchi Ninji, Manuscripts unearthed from the Library Cave at Dunhuang
- Period
- Six Dynasties–Tang (manuscripts); modern compilation · About eight hundred Daoist manuscripts of the Six Dynasties to the Five Dynasties and Tang from the Library Cave of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang (discovered in 1900); the Japanese scholar Ōfuchi Ninji compiled the Catalogue of the Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts (1978) and the Album of the Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts (1979), with further compilation by Fukui Fumimasa, Wang Ka, and others.
- Canon division
- Manuscript Texts
- Collected in
- Modern works (manuscripts held in institutions in the UK, France, China, Russia, and Japan)
- Category
- Daozang Collections
- Fascicles
- About 800 manuscripts; catalogued by Ōfuchi Ninji in two large volumes of catalogue and album
Synopsis
About eight hundred Daoist manuscripts were unearthed from the Library Cave at Dunhuang, direct physical witnesses to Daoist scriptures of the Tang and earlier, predating the surviving Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era by more than seven hundred years, and therefore of irreplaceable value for textual collation and dating. They include the Xiang'er Commentary on the Laozi (the only surviving copy), fragments of the Scripture of the Original Bound (Benji jing) and the Scripture of Great Peace, ordination documents for the Scripture of the Ten Precepts, numerous fragments of the Scripture of Laozi's Conversion of the Barbarians, catalogues of Lingbao scriptures, manuscripts of retreat ritual, and Daoist ordination certificates, among others. These materials have allowed scholars to reconstruct the actual state of the Daoist scriptural corpus from the Six Dynasties to the Tang, and the concrete procedures of ordination and the conferral of registers on Daoist priests, and to correct errors in the transmitted editions. The Japanese scholar Ōfuchi Ninji's Catalogue of the Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts (1978) and Album of the Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts (1979) are foundational works of compilation, followed by Ōfuchi's Daoism and Its Scriptures, Wang Ka's Studies on the Dunhuang Daoist Documents, supplementary collation for the Zhonghua Daozang, and the successive publication of materials from the École française d'Extrême-Orient and the Dunhuang manuscripts held in Russia. The manuscripts are today held in institutions including the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Library of China, and the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in Russia, and most have been digitized and made publicly available.
Key Ideas
- About eight hundred Daoist manuscripts of the Tang and earlier
- The only surviving copy of the Xiang'er Commentary on the Laozi and other unique texts
- Physical witnesses predating the Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era by more than seven hundred years
- Reconstructing the Six Dynasties–Tang scriptural corpus and ordination procedures
- Ōfuchi Ninji's Catalogue and Album as the foundational compilations
Structure
Manuscript fragments; organized in modern scholarship into catalogues, albums, and thematic studies.
Editions
- Ōfuchi Ninji, Catalogue of the Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts (Fukutake Shoten, 1978)
- Ōfuchi Ninji, Album of the Dunhuang Daoist Manuscripts (1979)
- Wang Ka, Studies on the Dunhuang Daoist Documents (2004)
- Digitized images of the International Dunhuang Project (IDP)
Commentaries
- Wang Ka, Studies on the Dunhuang Daoist Documents
- Related research by Fukui Fumimasa
Full Text & Online Resources
Related scriptures
Xiang'er Commentary on the Laozi, Scripture of the Original Bound (Benji jing), Scripture of Laozi's Conversion of the Barbarians, Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong EraRelated figures
Ōfuchi Ninji, Wang Ka, Kristofer Schipper- 大渊忍尔《敦煌道経：目録編》，福武書店，1978
- 王卡《敦煌道教文献研究》，中国社会科学出版社，2004
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 2004
- 国际敦煌项目（IDP）