Mongols China and the Silk Road

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road' Comes To The China Institute

China Institute , Buddhist Art , Buddhist Art China Institute , Buddhist Art Nyc , Buddhist Cave Art , Buddhist Cave Art Exhibition , Buddhist Cave Art Exhibition Nyc , Buddhist Cave Art Nyc , Dunhuang Academy , Arts News

NEW YORK — The China Institute Gallery has been transformed into an ancient cave, taking visitors back more than a millennium to a dazzling world where Buddhist worshippers adorned the walls with colorful frescoes, silk prayer banners and lavishly painted life-size clay sculptures.

"Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road" features a replica of an 8th century cave carved into the limestone cliffs at the edge of the Gobi Desert southeast of the oasis town of Dunhuang from 366 to about 1300.

It is one of 735 Mogao Caves constructed during what is known as the high Tang period (705-781), designed for devout Buddhists to gather and worship. Nearly every inch is covered in art, with a canopy ceiling resplendent in floral and diamond shapes. One end is filled with life-sized sculptures of a Buddha flanked by two monk disciples wearing luxuriously patterned robes, two bare-chested figures and two ferocious-looking guardians in military armor.

While there have been exhibitions that have featured individual pieces from the Mogoa Caves, this is the first exhibition in the United States to put all the elements of the cave shrines into context, said Annette Juliano, a professor of Chinese art history at Rutgers University.

It shows the "relationship between the architecture, the pictures, the subject matter and the (ritual) practices ... the actual use of the cave, rather than just an abstraction," added Juliano, who visited the caves for the first time in 1980.

Many of the caves are exquisitely preserved, but others are fragile due to neglect over the centuries and the conditions of the surrounding desert and sand dunes. To protect them from further erosion, tourist access is limited to several dozen caves a day that are rotated regularly.

The exhibition also features a 6th-century replica of an elaborate square altar called the Central Stupa Pillar that highlights the religious ritual of circumambulation – an act of veneration – in which the faithful walk clockwise around the altar that contains four niches, each holding a Buddha.

"Walking around the stupa pillar helps to empty your mind to allow visualization, to focus on the images of the Buddhas," said Juliano, who contributed an essay to the exhibition catalog.

Exact, hand-painted reproductions of wall motifs and story scenes complete the exhibition space in this gallery. Among the highlights is a Thousand Buddha pattern that covers an entire wall and is symbolic of the deity's omnipresence. Among the narrative paintings is the tale of the Deer King and his journey toward enlightenment.

Authentic silk prayer banners, a handwritten Buddhist scripture in near mint condition, a Yuan dynasty fragment of a mathematical document, small clay figurines, Persian silver coins that bear witness to foreign travelers on the Silk Road, patterned floor tiles and oil lamps used to light the dark caves round out the small two-gallery exhibition.

The Mogao Cave shrines, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, were largely unknown in the West until they were discovered in 1900 by a Hungarian archaeologist, Sir Aurel Stein.

Dunhuang, located at the north and south crossroads of the Silk Road, was a strategic hub of trade and religion. Stein, who made several treks through Central Asia, had heard rumors of a cave room sealed in the 11th century containing tens of thousands of manuscripts, scrolls, silk paintings and textiles dating in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit and other languages.

A local caretaker had uncovered the treasure trove after discovering a crack in the wall of a corridor leading to a larger cave. It's not clear why the room was sealed, but scholars speculate they were walled up to protect them from the threat of invasion from nomadic people.

Stein was able to persuade the caretaker to sell a portion of the material in exchange for money for the cave's upkeep. In subsequent years, almost 80 percent of the contents were taken out of the country by foreign adventurers. Today, the treasures are found in various museums and libraries around the world.

The exhibition, organized by the Dunhuang Academy, runs through July 21. A second exhibition in the fall will focus on paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists inspired by the caves.

p://www.chinainstitute.org

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Tuesday, 7 May 2013

The Making of an Imaginary Archaeological Culture

Sino Platonic Papers No. 237, April 2013

Kungang (昆岗): The Making of an Imaginary Archaeological Culture
Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania, and
Cheng Fangyi, Tsinghua University

This article analyzes the cultural imaging and fictitious construction employed in designating and describing the “Kungang Ancient Tombs,” including their naming to echo an ancient historical site, the collecting and relocation of cultural relics, and the fabricated explanations for these relics. As we explore further, we find that local interests, motivated by the expectation of benefitting materially from attention and tourism, were responsible for instigating the exploration and exploitation of a desert archaeological site. Besides the Kungang Ancient Tombs, we also discuss the Northern Cemetery, which proves to be of the same cultural type as Xiaohe (小河) Cemetery, far to the east.

Friday, 3 May 2013

Exhibition on Cultural Exchange and Cooperation between China and Central ＆ Eastern Europe

National Museum of China, Beijing
Date: May14 - May 20, 2013
Venue: Gallery S8

Central and Eastern European countries are among the first to have established diplomatic relationships with the People’s Republic of China and have a long history of cultural exchanges with China. The Chinese Government has always attached great importance for the cultural exchanges and cooperation with these countries and enjoyed ever-growing fruitful cultural exchanges with them on the basis of mutual respect, equality, sincere and win-win cooperation. The physical and image materials displayed in this exhibition epitomize the highlights in the cultural exchanges between China and Central & Eastern Europe countries over the past six decades, witness the growing exchanges and painstaking efforts of generations of culturati, and arouse “golden memory” in this regard. Approaching to the future with memory of the history is a shared aspiration of all of us.

Thursday, 2 May 2013

Huns and the Central Plains

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The Beijing World Art Museum is using ancient cultural relics to tell a story of conflict and hard-won unity. The show takes us through the turbulent relations between the nomadic Huns and the Central Plains dynasties, many centuries ago.

Centuries-old bronzeware, pottery, jade pieces, gold and silver, and even ancient weapons.

More than 130 artifacts reveal the long road to integration between the Huns and the Central Plains dynasties. This story spans a great swath of history, from the late Warring states period to the Han Dynasty.

The Beijing World Art Museum is using ancient cultural relics to tell a story
of conflict and hard-won unity.

The Huns were an ancient nomadic people in north China. Due to their different beliefs and lifestyles, the Huns and the Han people experienced many conflicts throughout history. But there was also extensive trade, alliances were struck, resulting in the eventual blending of the cultures.

Feng Guangsheng, deputy curator of Beijing World Art Museum, said, "I think this exhibition is meaningful in many aspects. First, it gives us a clear impression of the history, the clashes and convergence of the Huns and the Central plains dynasties. Second, it makes us think about our world, because there are still conflicts and wars. I think looking at how ancient people treated each other will surely benefit us."

The exhibition is not only about cultural relics.

It also features 28 modern creations by contemporary oil painters. Some of the paintings depict well-known historical events. And some reproduce the daily lives of people living in ancient times.

The Beijing World Art Museum is using ancient cultural relics to tell a story of conflict
and hard-won unity.

Feng Guangsheng said, "The exhibition is a combination of cultural relics and modern oil paintings. These modern creations will help visitors get a deeper understanding of the history, and make it more interesting at the same time. Take this painting for example. It depicts a very famous historical event called "Zhaojun departing for the frontier". Zhaojun was a very beautiful lady. She was sent by Emperor Yuan to marry the Xiongnu Chanyu in order to establish friendly relations."

All the artifacts on display come from five museums located in Henan, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Ningxia. The exhibition has already been held in Zhengzhou and other cities.

The Beijing World Art Museum will also invite experts to give lectures on the history of the period described in the exhibit.

Source: CCTV.com

For more information (in Chinese): Beijng world Art Museum

Ancient Asian artefacts under the hammer in UK

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From a rare Buddhist temple step to ancient Indian and Islamic artefacts, one auction house in London is causing quite a stir with their new lots.

This is the first time a 1000-year-old pre-Hindhu stone step has appeared at an auction. The only other such examples of this kind remain in situ in Sri Lanka.

Weighing at three quarters of a ton, the carved stone features a curved procession of animals, including lions, horses, elephants, birds and cows. Despite being moved around and used in English country gardens for decades, it’s surprisingly still in one piece and in excellent condition.

The lot has attracted interest from around the world with private collectors and museums keen to purchase the historic pieces. Works by three of India's greatest painters are also among the highlights at the Bonhams Indian and Islamic sale. They are predicted to fetch record prices.

"The Tyeb Mehta that we have at 400,000 to 600,000 has never been shown on the market before," said Nour Aslam, Bonhams' specialist of modern and contemporary art from South Asia. "It is very rare of this calibre of the artist. He did very few canvases, and he has always had a great record history with everyone. With Bonhams, this is the first time around that we've had such a spectacular piece of his."

Bonhams says all the estimates are set low in order to attract bidders, but they expect the works to eventually sell for much higher prices.

Source: CCTV.com

10 Jan 2013

Rare Buddhist Anuradhapura period (377 BC - 1017 AD) Indian carved stone temple step discovered by Bonhams in a Devon garden will be sold in London

A Sri Lanka Temple moonstone- This item is very heavy please handle with care

A carved granite temple step (Sandakada pahana) similar to those found in the ancient city of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka will be sold in Bonhams Indian and Islamic sale in London on April 23rd.

This magnificent work of art featuring a cow and other animals has come to light in the garden of a Devon bungalow. It is estimated to attract bids in excess of £30,000.

The beautiful 1,000 year old pre-Hindu stone step is one of only six examples known to date from this period, making this discovery the seventh. The temple step is a feature unique to Sinhalese architecture in Sri Lanka.

The massively heavy – three-quarters of a ton stone measure eight ft by four foot and is six inches thick.

Sam Tuke of Bonhams in Exeter says of the discovery: "I met the client when she was collecting an item from our office. She mentioned in passing that she had a large slab of carved granite that had come from her mothers house in Sussex and that she had known and loved it since she was four years old. She loved running her fingers around the animals carved into the stone."

"I said that it sounded an interesting object and she arranged to drop a photograph into me the next day. When I saw the photographs and she explained the full story, I knew that it could be of great historical interest and importance. The house in Sussex had been bought from a tea planter in the 1950's and the stone had been moved six times. Her brother had seen similar stones in Sri Lanka whilst on holiday. She explained that she could not bear to leave the stone behind after her father died and the house was sold. It has been known affectionately in the family as 'The Pebble' and is currently lying outside the front of their bungalow at the end of a concrete path."

The beautifully carved stone features a curved procession of animals including lions, horses, elephants, birds and Brahim cows. Alice Bailey, Head of Department for the Islamic and Indian Art Department, states "It's a truly wonderful find and one of great importance. Identical temple steps can be seen in situ in early 19th century photographs of the monuments of Sri Lanka and the condition and quality of the carving are superb. It is a museum piece."

Anuradhapura and the city of Polonnaruwa are the vitally important attractions in the Sri Lankan cultural triangle. Anuradhapura, the greatest monastic city of the ancient world dates from the middle of the 5th century B.C. and remained the proud seat of kingdom of Sri Lanka until the 11th century A.D. Today Anuradhapura, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is replete with renovated monuments, restored edifices, preserved ruins and historical sites where the archeological excavations are still being continued.

Anuradhapura was the cradle of the glorious Sinhalese Buddhist civilization. The pride of place in Anuradhapura was taken by the ancient stupas and ancient reservoirs. Towering stupas (dagobas) of stupendous domes, the marvels of ancient civil engineering.

Among the other attractions at Anuradhapura are magnificent rock carvings of richness and grace, colossal stone pillars, Buddhist monasteries and temples and magnificent stone cut swimming pools of sophisticated hydrology.

Source: Bonhams.com

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

Surprising Discoveries From the Indus Civilization

Archaeologists say the Indus civilization wasn’t nearly as peaceful as popularly thought.

The Indus civilization was first identified at Harappa, once a city of 80,000 people.

Photograph by James P. Blair, National Geographic

Traci Watson

National Geographic News

Published April 29, 2013

They lived in well-planned cities, made exquisite jewelry, and enjoyed the ancient world's best plumbing. But the people of the sophisticated Indus civilization—which flourished four millennia ago in what is now Pakistan and western India—remain tantalizingly mysterious.

Unable to decipher the Indus script, archaeologists have pored over beads, slivers of pottery, and other artifacts for insights into one of the world's first city-building cultures.

Now scientists are turning to long-silent witnesses: human bones. In two new studies of skeletons from Indus cemeteries, researchers have found intriguing clues to the makeup of one city's population—and hints that the society there was not as peaceful as it has been portrayed.

Peaceful or not, the Indus civilization accomplished great things. At its peak, its settlements spanned an area greater than that of ancient Egypt, a contemporary culture. Indus jewelry was so coveted that examples have been found as far as Mesopotamia, some 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers) away. Indus cities boasted blocks of houses built on a grid pattern and drains that funneled sewage from homes to dumping grounds outside the city walls.

But who was living in those cities? A new study to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science focuses on Harappa, one of the largest and most powerful Indus centers, with a population of up to 80,000. Researchers examined the chemical composition of teeth from a Harappan cemetery used from roughly 2550 to 2030 B.C. The analysis showed that the city was a cosmopolitan melting pot. Many of the deceased had grown up outside Harappa—the first direct evidence that "individuals were indeed migrating to the city," says University of South Alabama bioarchaeologist Lesley Gregoricka, who was not involved in the study.

This skull of an adult male shows traces of a broken nose and a blunt-force injury.

Photograph courtesy Gwen Robbins Schug

Most likely the newcomers came to Harappa from elsewhere in the far-flung Indus area, perhaps for trade. But they may also have come to cut another kind of deal—marriage. Many of the outsiders, surprisingly, are men buried near women native to Harappa. The findings are preliminary, but they suggest men moved in with their brides, even though in South Asia women traditionally move to their husband's homes. Confirmation of these early results, says lead author Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, would point to a "system where women were powerful."

The new study is pioneering, says Indus expert James Shaffer of Case Western Reserve University, and offers "one of the few real insights we have" into the structure of Harappan society. If the study is correct, Harappa's unusual gender roles could mean that social structure in the Indus region was radically different from that of other ancient cultures, Shaffer says. In Mesopotamia, for instance, ancient texts show that women were usually subordinate to men.

Experts have long thought that the Indus region was indeed vastly different from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in one respect: the level of violence. Based on the lack of evidence for mass destruction of any Indus cities, and the lack of depictions of soldiers or killing, the Indus is often described as a "peaceful realm." But recent scrutiny of another group of Harappan skeletons tells a darker story.

Bones from about 1900 to 1700 B.C.—more than a millennium later than those examined by Kenoyer—make it clear that at least some Harappan residents were subjected to savage violence. The skull of a child between four and six years old was cracked and crushed by blows from a club-like weapon. An adult woman was beaten so badly—with extreme force, according to researchers—that her skull caved in. A middle-aged man had a broken nose as well as damage to his forehead inflicted by a sharp-edged, heavy implement.

Of the 18 skulls examined from this time period, nearly half showed serious injuries from violence, researchers reported in a recent paper in the International Journal of Paleopathology. The rate of skull injuries tied to violence is the highest recorded in the prehistory of South Asia, the researchers say. It may be no coincidence that at the time of these burials the Indus civilization was beginning to disintegrate and parts of Harappa were being abandoned, for reasons that scholars are still debating.

The results run contrary to "the myth of the peaceful Indus civilization," says Appalachian State University's Gwen Robbins Schug. "Violence … [was] part of life at Harappa." Schug carried out this study with help from Kelsey Gray, a graduate student, and Veena Mushrif-Tripathy, from Deccan College in Pune, India.

Schug's conclusions divide outside experts. Nancy Lovell, a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta who has also studied Harappan skeletons, says the study's findings are "a really important contribution, because the tendency has been to think of Harappa as being fairly … peaceful." Shaffer argues, however, that the violence reported in the new paper is not unexpected in a crowded city. Schug agrees but says her findings contradict previous opinions that Harappa was an oasis of serenity.

The analysis of more skeletons in the future may settle the matter, but for now, the Indus people are keeping their long-held secrets.

Source: National Geographic Daily News

Monday, 29 April 2013

Animal sculptures to be returned to China

From: CCTV.com

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After over 100 years, two lost Chinese national treasures are finally coming home. After holding talks with Chinese officials in Beijing, Francois-Henri Pinault, a French luxury brand tycoon, has announced that he will return the famous bronze rat and rabbit heads to China.

The sculptures are two of 12 zodiac animal heads originally found in Beijing’s Yuan Mingyuan, also known as the old Summer Palace. The palace was looted and destroyed by French and British forces during the second opium war. The animal heads were scattered around the globe after the war.

In 2009, the rat and rabbit heads were put up for auction in France, drawing sharp criticism from China. The Pinault Family bought the artifacts and now plan to send them back to China later this year.

After over 100 years, two lost Chinese national treasures are finally
coming home.

After over 100 years, two lost Chinese national treasures are finally coming home.

After over 100 years, two lost Chinese national
treasures are finally coming home.

Manuscripts under the microscope

From earlyTibet.com by Sam van Schaik

What I like about working with manuscripts is that there are so many different ways to approach them. You can read the texts written on them (and sometimes that’s as far as you get) but you can also look at their shape and size, how they were put together, how the writing is laid out on the page (codicology) and the style of the writing itself (palaeography). You can get into their materiality, feel the rough and smooth sides of a page, their coarse and fine fibres, the subtle patterns of laid and chain lines. If you’re lucky, you can find out who wrote them, who owned them and how they were used, who repaired and re-used them, and so on.

I like to think this isn’t just the idle curiosity of somebody who’s spent too much time around books. While most studies of the early Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang and other Central Asian sites are focussed on the texts, there’s a lot more we can find out from the physicality of the thing itself. Sure, we can discover what a text is about by reading it and comparing it with other texts. But there are a lot of things we won’t know, like who made the manuscript, who used it, and what it was used for. If we can get some kind of answers to those questions about the manuscript, our understanding of the text will be enriched. Or to put it another way, if we want to know the meaning of a text, we should look at how it was used.

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A few years ago I started working with Agnieszka Helman-Wazny, a scientist specializing in the study of Tibetan and Central Asian paper. Agnieszka’s speciality is the microscopic analysis of paper fibres. She also looks at the patterns left on the paper by the process of making paper (such as the fine pattern of ‘laid lines’) and other aspects of the technology of papermaking. Gradually we developed a plan to bring the results of her analysis of the paper in the Tibetan manuscripts from Central Asia with the work I had done in the palaeography of the manuscripts, and of course the contents of the texts as well. We selected a group of fifty manuscripts, put everything we could find out about them into a table, and looked at the patterns that emerged.

One of the most interesting results was this: those manuscripts that had been brought to Dunhuang from Tibet itself, were made in quite different ways from those that were made locally at Dunhuang. Though our sample was limited, this opens up the possibility of ‘fingerprinting’ a manuscript to find out where it was made.

It looks like the manuscripts made in Dunhuang and other Central Asian areas inhabited by the Tibetans during the 8th and 9th centuries were made with rag paper, which is probably mainly recycled textiles. The technical apparatus of papermaking was a mould made from a sieve made from bamboo or reeds arranged on a wooden frame, which leaves the tell-tale pattern of laid lines on the finished paper. The advantage of this kind of mould is that you can lift out the piece of paper and leave it to dry while you begin to make another one. On the other hand, in places like Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal, the method to this day is to use a wooden frame with a cloth backing stretched across it. With this kind of mould the paper cannot be removed until dry, so the paper dries on the frame. This is obviously a slower method, and the paper produced this way does not have the laid lines characteristic of the sieve method.

Two manuscripts, letters that we already thought may have been originated from Tibet, did turn out to have been made on a woven mould. Also, they were not made of rag paper, like the locally produced Central Asian manuscripts, but paper made from the Daphne orEdgeworthia plants, which grow along the Himalayas. As well as these letters, a sutra manuscript written in the archaic ‘square style’ also turned out to be composed of Daphne fibres.

Then there are the big Perfection of Wisdom manuscripts that were brought to Dunhuang to be used as models by the local scribes who had been ordered by the Tibetan emperor to produce copies. The Perfection of Wisdom manuscripts made in Dunhuang are composed of rag paper made on a sieve mould, like other locally made manuscripts. But those that were brought in are composed of Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia) fibres and were made on a woven mould. Paper Mulberry is not native to Central Tibet, but it is found in Eastern Tibet, so perhaps these Perfection of Wisdom manuscripts were produced in the Eastern regions of the Tibetan Empire, before being brought to Dunhuang. This would give us a triangle of geographic locations to which we can assign the manuscripts: Central Asia, Central Tibet and Eastern Tibet.

* * *

Though I can’t put the article in which we published our results on this site, I am going to make it briefly available for download here. Of course, the 50 manuscripts that we studied are a tiny proportion of the Central Asian manuscripts in Tibetan, so more work needs to be done to confirm what we have suggested. As well as using these results to pin down the geographical origin of early Tibetan manuscripts we can also say a bit more about what ‘Tibetan paper’ means in this early period. If we can begin to speak of a type of paper with specifically Tibetan characteristics, it is a paper composed of Daphne or Edgeworthia (from Central Tibet) or Paper Mulberry (from Eastern Tibet), made on a woven mould — a technology that continues to the present day.

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References

Helman-Wazny, Agnieszka and Sam van Schaik. 2012. “Witnesses for Tibetan Craftsmanship: Bringing Together Paper Analysis, Palaeography and Codicology in the Examination of the Earliest Tibetan Manuscripts.” DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4754.2012.00687.x

Iwao, Kazushi (forthcoming). “On the Tibetan Śatasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā sūtra from Dunhuang.” In Scribes, texts, and rituals in early Tibet and Dunhuang (eds. B. Dotson, K. Iwao and T. Takeuchi). Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

Photographs

1. Paper mulberry (Broussonetia sp.) ﬁbres stained with Herzberg stain, found in IOL Tib J 1560.

2. A large-size ‘ﬂoating’ mould, constructed with a wooden frame and attached woven textile, placed in water (a stream) in Gyantse, c. 1910–1920. Photo 1112/2 (139), © The British Library

3. The flower of the Daphne plant.

4. Sheets of paper left to dry on individual moulds on the mountain slope near Tawang, Arunchal Pradesh, 1914. MSS Eur/F157 (324), © The British Library.

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Final Notes

Paper made from the Daphne and Edgeworthia species is shog shing or dung lo main Tibetan. There is also a Tibetan paper made from the roots of both the Stellera chamaejasme species (re lcag pa in Tibetan) and, more seldom, Euphorbia ﬁsheriana (re lcag gi rtsa ba in Tibetan). It has been suggested that re lcag pa is the “original” Tibetan paper. Though we did not find any of this paper in our study, finds from Tibet itself may help to confirm whether it was produced during the Tibetan imperial period or later. Also, it is hard not to oversimplify this complex research, and I had better clarify here (as we did in the article) that the rag paper in the Dunhuang manuscripts was also often made with the addition of Paper Mulberry and/or Hemp. Agnieszka Helman-Wazny’s continuing work on the Chinese manuscripts from Central Asia will no doubt add much more to our knowledge of Central Asian papermaking.

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Wednesday, 17 April 2013

53 New Books in the Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

The Toyo Bunko (Oriental Library) is a leading library in the field of Asian studies. Its collection amounts to 880,000 books of historical importance, and an especially interesting collection in the Toyo Bunko is "Morrison Library," which consists of 24,000 books about China and Asia written in several European languages. Regarding its relevance, scale and coverage, we decided to start our digital archive project from the Morrison Library, and initiated the digitization of precious books in 2002.

We are in the pursuit of two research directions. The first direction concerns the application of optical character recognition (OCR), machine translation and image processing for the automatic analysis of digitized documents. Our motivation behind this direction is the need for the management of large number of books; that is, we put more emphasis on speed in the speed and precision tradeoff in order to increase the number of books in the digital archive. Although the current OCR technology is imperfect, even imperfect results can support useful search. The second direction is the collaborative annotation environment for digital cultural resources. We begin with closed annotation by domain experts, but in the future we aim at establishing a mechanism for soliciting collective annotation in a collaborative environment.

User interface on the Toyo Bunko Portal is designed so that it suggests as many navigational links as possible to increase for a user the opportunity of browsing deep into the archive. We provide other mechanisms for defining various contexts in which digital archives are to be viewed using our proposed database engine. Finally, this project is within a framework of Digital Silk Road Project.

We added 53 new books to become the collection of 203 books, 59,358 pages.