Dunhuang Tibetan manuscripts kept in Britain, France now ful

LANZHOU, March 17 (Xinhua) -- After two decades of collaborative efforts, the content of Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang in northwest China, currently held in Britain and France, has been fully compiled and published, Northwest Minzu University announced on Tuesday.

A total of 61 volumes of Dunhuang manuscripts written in the Tibetan language, kept in collections in the British Library and the National Library of France, were taken abroad from the Library Cave of the millennium-old Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang in the early 20th century, according to Tsering, director of the institute of overseas ethnic documents at the university, a key project participant based in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province in northwest China.

The publication project was carried out collaboratively by the university and Shanghai Classics Publishing House in cooperation with the British Library and the National Library of France from 2005 to 2025.

Tsering said that the publication of 35 volumes of the ancient manuscripts from France was completed in 2021, containing 3,174 cataloged items and more than 28,000 high-resolution images, while the 26 volumes held in Britain were completed in 2025 in the same format. Prior to this, only a small portion of these manuscripts had been reproduced in print.

The research team at Northwest Minzu University overcame challenges, such as incomplete characters, blurred handwriting and the complexity of the language, to establish a Chinese-Tibetan bilingual catalog for the manuscripts, said Tashi Dondrup, a professor at the university.

Dunhuang, a city along the ancient Silk Road in Gansu, is home to three UNESCO World Heritage sites and over 260 cultural relic sites.

The Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang are the oldest known extant paper Tibetan documents. Their content covers Buddhist scriptures, historical works, contracts, official documents and legal texts, spanning a wide range of fields including the history, politics, economy and culture of the Tubo Empire (618-842). The manuscripts at the British and French libraries are of great academic value.