Written
Monuments
of the Orient

2(6), 2017

Issued twice a year

The entire issue as a *.PDF file

Li Jingrong. The Scribal Hands of the Er nian lü ling Manuscript Unearthed from Zhangjiashan Han Tomb No. 247 — 3
Contrary to received texts, early Chinese manuscripts written on bamboo strips have typical physical features, of which handwriting is the significant character. This paper studies handwriting of the Er nian lü ling manuscript unearthed in the Zhangjiashan Han tomb No. 247. According to analysis on the monophony of the repeating characters in the manuscript, it concludes that the manuscript was most likely written by three scribes. One scribe who mastered professional writing skills and was responsible for writing more than half of the bamboo strips is the main one among the three. As the Er nian lü ling manuscript was required for the tomb owner’s funeral, it was written by three scribes together within a short time resulting in a number of transcribe errors in the text.
Key words: Handwriting, scribe, legal manuscript, early China, Zhangjiashan

Ching Chao-jung 慶昭蓉. SI 3662 and SI 3663 — two wedge-shaped Kharoṣṭhī documents from Niya in the Petrovsky Collection — 17
Two unedited wedge-shaped wooden documents SI 3662 and SI 3663 (= SI P 138/a and SI P 138/б, respectively) are deciphered in this paper. A preliminary analysis of their content and physical features shows that SI 3663 is very probably the wedge under-tablet to be bound with the wedge covering-tablet N. i. 17 found by Aurel Stein at the N. I. site (Niya, China). SI 3662, a king’s instruction issued to Soṃjaka the Cozbo, is in all probability from the Niya sites, too.
Key words: Petrovsky Collection, Niya documents, Gāndhārī, Kharoṣṭhī

Olga Chunakova. A Sogdian Manichaean Parable — 35
The article is devoted to the first publication of the Sogdian fragment SI 5704 from the Serindia Collection at the IOM, RAS. The fragment contains an excerpt from the popular fable of the turtle and the two birds, widely known in the folklore and literature of different nations.
Key words: Sogdian, Sogdian Manichaean fable, migratory story, Panchatantra

Kōichi Kitsudō and Peter Zieme. The Jin’gangjing zuan 金剛經纂 in Old Uighur with Parallels in Tangut and Chinese — 43
The Jin’gangjing zuan consists of passages abridged from the Diamond Sutra, a miraculous story concerning a girl, and the Ten Feast Days and the Twelve Calendric Days. It expounds the merits of chanting this scripture itself. So far, Chinese and Tangut versions are edited. This paper provides the edition of the texts in Old Uighur attested in manuscripts of St. Petersburg and Berlin. The comparative study of the texts reveals that the Old Uighur version is parallel to the Tangut version.
Key words: Jin’gangjing zuan, Diamond Sutra, Old Uighur, Tangut

Tatiana Pang and Nicholay Pchelin. Portraits of Qing meritorious officers in the collection of the State Hermitage: scroll restoration and revised reading of the texts — 88
The finished restoration of the portraits representing prominent Qing officers kept in the collection of the State Hermitage resulted in a possibility to not only prove their artistic value, but also to read the eulogies written by Emperor Qianlong in Manchu and Chinese. As a follow-up of our previous paper we are presently able to become certain that the State Hermitage has five portraits (of Yeotun, Fusil, Cebdenjab, Bolbunca and Guwandase), originally from the Ziguang-ge Pavilion (Hall of Purple Glaze), which made it to Germany in the early 20th c., and then, after 1945, to Russia. The analysis of the texts has revealed the peculiarities of Manchu and Chinese poetry at the same time proving that both versions of the eulogies were written in accordance with corresponding poetic rules thus becoming variations of the same topic.
Key words: portraits of Qianlong meritorious officers, Qianlong’s poems, the State Hermitage, the Manchu language, the Chinese language

Dmitrii Nosov. A Manuscript of the Mongolian Folk Tale “About old Borontai” from the IOM, RAS Collection — 111
The manuscript “About Old Borontai” kept in IOM, RAS, is one of the earliest written fixations of the cumulative tale common among Mongolian people and well known to scholars working in the field. The present paper contains the first ever publication of the manuscript in transcription and translation of the text written in old Mongolian script based on the Uighur alphabet.
Key words: Mongolian manuscripts, lore, folklore, tales, cumulative tales

Reviews

Zare Yusupova. The Kurdish Dialect Gorani. A Grammatical Description. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2017, by Youli A. Ioannesyan — 119

Mitteliranische Handschriften. Teil 2: Berliner Turfanfragmente buddhistischen Inhalts in soghdischer Schrift, beschrieben von Christiane Reck. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016 (VOHD; XVIII, 2), 473 S., by Olga M. Chunakova — 122