Dunhuang Project Puts Spotlingt On Teamwork.

                                                                            

                           (Photo: Friends of Dunhuang)

                              by David Parmer

While the media spotlight in Asia focuses on territorial issues and frictions, scholars, historians and preservationists from seven countries are working through the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) cooperate to digitize some of the planet’s most valuable artifacts.

The National Library of China and seven major libraries and research institutions worldwide are cooperating to digitize and share some of the world’s most important cultural data. These countries include China, Britain, Russia Korea, Japan, Germany and France. The data in question is a massive digital representation of the artifacts found in the Mogao caves located 25 km southwest of Dunhuang, China.

Dunhuang, in western China’s Gansu Province, is at the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road. The Dunhuang area, which was declared an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, is home to a system of 492 temples and an amazing 735 Buddhist caves. At the end of the Qing dynasty a treasure trove of ancient scrolls and manuscripts, including one of the oldest known copies of the Diamond Sutra were found.

Materials dating from 100 BC to 1200 AD were removed and dispersed worldwide and now reside in museums in Beijing, St. Petersburg, London, Berlin and Beijing. These materials include scrolls paintings, murals, artifacts, coins and manuscripts in over twenty different languages and scripts. While many are strictly Buddhist in nature others are secular and deal with everyday administrative matters.

Now the IDP is collaborating to make these materials available online. To date, a staggering 400,000 images can now be viewed on the various member sites.
The IDP was formed in 1994 with it directorate at the British Library and has centers in China, Japan, Korea, Germany, Russian and France.
You can find this amazing story on the IDP website. (http://idp.bl.uk/idp.a4d). (DP)