[INDOLOGY] A manuscript written in unknown scripts

[Birgit Kellner]

Just for information: these are indeed 61 volumes, of which reportedly 5 
sets were printed. This is the result of a project dedicated to the 
survey (and photography) of all palm-leaf mss in the TAR conducted 
between 2006 and 2011 under the direction of Prof. Tsewang Gyurme. 
Photographs of the cover pages of volume 1 and 61, as well as a 
photograph of the entire set, were reproduced in two 2014 issues of the 
journal "Tibet Palm-Leaf Manuscript Studies" (Lhasa). As Jonathan Silk 
rightly points out, neither scholars in the PRC nor foreign scholars 
have so far been able to officially access these volumes, let alone 
procure them.

The production of these volumes is by the way briefly discussed in Ernst 
Steinkellner's forthcoming paper "Sanskrit manuscripts on palm-leaves, 
paper and birch-bark in the TAR: What now?", delivered as a keynote 
lecture at the Beijing International Seminar on Tibetan Studies in 2016, 
to be published in the proceedings of the Sanskrit manuscripts panel at 
the Seminar edited by Jowita Kramer, Xuezhu Li and myself (Beijing: 
China Tibetology Publishing House).

With best regards,

Birgit Kellner

Am 05.09.19 um 13:03 schrieb Jonathan Silk via INDOLOGY:
> No one yet grabbed on to this, at least on this list, but ...
>
> >> my professor found in Lhasa some large volumes of books in which 
> there are many photographs of South Asian manuscripts. These books 
> belong to a big project of an official committee in Lhasa which aims 
> at preserving palm-leaf manuscripts in Tibet. <<
>
> if this means what it seems to say, this means that someone, at least, 
> namely your professor, has (some?) access to the near-legendary 
> volumes produced a few years ago, a set of 61 if memory serves, in 
> which --again, as I recall--excellent color photos were reproduced of 
> palm leaf manuscripts ( those in good condition, and thought to be 
> complete? I am not certain about this, but anyway apparently not paper 
> MSS), and of which only a very small number of sets were produced, 
> those inaccessible even to scholars in the PRC, much less abroad.
> **IF** someone now has actual access to these volumes ... well, I dare 
> say it is not a big exaggeration to say that this signals a sea 
> change, and I am far from alone in eagerly panting for access to these 
> photos.
> Can you provide any more details?
> (In the plates you offered, on 1b-4b the volume itself is visible, and 
> the color of the binding agrees with what I remember from seeing 
> several years ago a CCTV segment on the publication of these volumes, 
> so I would guess that your professor [I am quite eager to know who 
> this is] seems to have held in his/her hands one at least of these 
> very volumes.)
>
> Jonathan Silk
>
>
> -- 
> J. Silk
> Leiden University
> Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
> Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
> 2311 BZ Leiden
> The Netherlands
>
> copies of my publications may be found at
> https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/JASilk
>
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-- 
----
Prof. Dr. Birgit Kellner
Director
Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Hollandstrasse 11-13/2
A-1020 Vienna
Austria
Phone: +43-(0)1-51581-6420
Fax: +43-(0)1-51581-6410
http://ikga.oeaw.ac.at



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