Vol 6, No 1 (2020)

The previously undesiphered manuscript inv. № 5875 preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences, proves to be the Tangut version of a primary reader. Its Chinese original is an inconsistently miscellaneous compilation of ancient literary allusions and contemporary folk maxims. The text is composed by different literary style of antithetical couplet and ordinary prose without a consistent subject. Although its Chinese original has not been found yet and the whole text has not been thoroughly deciphered so far, narrations and translations may be provided as many as possible in the present paper in order to lay a foundation for further studies.

The paper discusses the 觀無量壽經 Guanwuliangshoujing (T. 365) in Old Uyghur. It is an important text of the Pure Land Buddhism known only in its original Chinese text. Several separated fragments in Old Uyghur are known. One fragment of the Turfan Collection in Berlin (U 1499) can be joined with a leaf of the Serindia Collection of the IOM (SI 1748). The result is presented here. One of its interesting differences is the list of 15 Bodhisattvas of which only Mañjuśrī is given by name in the Chinese original.

Manhan huangyu shanhe diming kao 滿漢皇輿⼭山河地名考 “A Study of Mountain and River Toponyms of the Imperial Territories” is a Manchu and Chinese bilingual manuscript on geography in the collection of the National Library of China. It is a collection of toponyms covering the northeastern territory of the Qing and includes a brief description of the military achievements before the Manchu conquest of the central plains. In this paper I argue that this text is closely related to the Shengjing Jilin Heilongjiang deng chu biaozhu zhanji yutu 盛京吉林黑龍江等處標注戰跡輿圖 “Map of Military Deeds in Shengjing, Jilin, Heilongjiang,” and that its dating on the title page to the Qianlong gengchen nian 乾隆庚辰年 “white dragon year of Qianlong (1760)” is not actually the date of this manuscript’s composition. The phrase of huangyu (the imperial territories) refers in the context of this work to the territory of the Qing before 1644.

The paper introduces twelve fragments of secular texts in Tibetan found in the main collection of Dunhuang manuscripts preserved in the IOM, RAS. In regard of each fragment a physical description, provisional notes on their contents, digital copy and transliteration are provided. Since all the fragments are very short our identifications of the texts are just tentative. One of them, Дх-7759, relates to the divination with dice. The others are fragments of letters, economic documents, etc.