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Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya M. The S.E.Malov Collection of Manuscripts in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies // Manuscripta Orientalia. Vol. 1, No 2, October 1995. Pp. 29-39.
The famous Russian scholar Sergei Efimovich Malov (1880—1957) began his scientific career with two business trips to Eastern Turkestan and Western China. The first one, aimed to study the languages and life of the Turkish tribes, took place in 1909—1911. At that time Malov visited Chuguchak, Urumchi, Turfan, Khara-Khoja, Наші, Suzhou, Gansu. His trip continued from April 1909 till July 1911. During his second trip (May 1913—August 1915) Malov explored a larger territory: he visited the Lob-Nor region, Aksu, Yarkend, Khotan and Kashgar. Among the results of his trips was a collection of Oriental manuscripts, bought or found by Malov among ancient ruins. These manuscripts were partly handed over to the Asiatic Museum, but some of them came to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, in charge of which another famous turkologist V.V.Radloff was in 1894—1918. Among the manuscripts brought by Malov there were several Uighur manuscripts, which he had been studying for the long time and keeping at home. Three of them he presented to the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Oriental Studies as late as 1952 (after they had been published), eleven more manuscripts were transferred to the Manuscript Department from the Archives of the USSR Academy of Sciences only after the death of the scholar, when his materials were sorted in 1983. The final point in the description of the Malov manuscripts was put only by 1994 when we managed to organize a partial restoration of the recently newly obtained documents.
The review of the Malov collection was delivered by Prof. R. E. Emmerick and the present author in their joint paper New manuscripts in the S.E.Malov collection at the International Symposium Annemarie von Gabain und die Perspektiven der Turfanforschung (8—13.12.1994). It will be published in Proceedings of the Symposium. Since the newly found manuscripts in Khotanese were the subject of the paper, we thought it relevant to return to this collection presenting its brief survey along with several samples of manuscripts in Sanskrit and Tibetan.
Though the manuscripts brought back to St. Petersburg by Malov were in the several languages, only the Turkish ones, namely the manuscripts written in Old Uighur, became the subject of a special scholarly research. The rest were put into boxes and left there for the long time. Only one series of Tibetan wooden documents, transferred to the Asiatic Museum from the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in 1925, was preliminary described by V. S. Vorobyov-Desyatovsky. These documents are also mentioned in our paper in the first issue of the Manuscripta Orientalia. We intend to publish some of them in its future issues.
For the time being the Malov collection includes 138 manuscripts and fragments which are kept under the call numbers: SI M (Ser India, Malov), SI MA (Ser India, Malov, from Archives), TD (Tibetan documents) and Dh. (Dunhuang). The current principles of division of the Malov manuscripts are certainly wrong, but they reflect the history of the study of the collection...PDF-files The entire paper
Keywords The S.E.Malov Collection Manuscripta Orientalia, selected papers Sanskrit manuscripts Tibetan manuscripts
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