A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road

Abstract

This study is a tale of the early history of papermaking in the Chinese borderlands as perceived through the materials that compose the manuscripts discovered in Central Asia. The manuscripts and printed books on paper excavated from archaeological sites in the ancient Silk Road kingdoms of Chinese Central Asia were examined for the raw materials used in their manufacture and the technology behind their production. The data retrieved by material analysis revealed the materials used for making the books, and the way that the materials have evolved with technological innovation. A wide range of types and qualities of paper, when interpreted chronologically according to dates included in the manuscripts, contributed to the timeline of the early history of paper. 1 Central Asian manuscripts as repository of early paper Ideas relating to the history of paper began to change at the beginning of the twentieth century, when archaeological excavations revealed vast new collections that were brought to Europe by, among others, Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot. Many authors have described the complex history of the acquisition of these manuscripts. This is done especially vividly by Peter Hopkirk in Foreign Devils on the Silk Road and by Craig Childs in Finders Keepers. A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession. China considers this plundering of its treasures the archaeological crime of the century. The same people who were considered great explorers by the West were referred to as thieves and fortune-hunters by official Chinese authorities. From whatever perspective, this was a time of immense archaeological richness and colonial freedom for Western powers. These extensive collections of manuscripts and books printed on paper, which were excavated from archaeological sites in the ancient Silk Road kingdoms of Chinese Central Asia and from a hidden library cave to east of the Gobi Desert, are the earliest repositories of extant paper that bear witness to the early history of papermaking. These manuscripts are now dispersed among collections || 1 See Hopkirk 1980 and Childs 2013, 119‒131. 424 | Agnieszka Helman-Ważny in Europe and Asia, and they have created new opportunities to review the history of paper. There are vast collections of manuscripts available for research: Britain holds a collection of about 50,000 manuscripts, paintings, and artefacts from Chinese Central Asia, as well as thousands of historical photographs, mostly from the first three Central Asian expeditions led by Stein. Germany holds a collection of c. 40,000 fragments of text, and thousands of frescos and other artefacts yielded by four German expeditions to Turfan led by Grünwedel and Le Coq. France holds a collection of c. 30,000 manuscripts brought back by Pelliot, which also holds the entire collection of Nouette’s photographs of the expedition and Pelliot’s diaries and other archives. Japanese and Russian collections amount to c. 20,000 manuscripts each, and the Dunhuang materials in China amount to around 16,000 items. These vast collections that preserve the archives of early paper in Central Asia are available for study. Dated between the third and thirteenth centuries CE, the extant manuscripts were written in over twenty languages and scripts, including those of the empires and kingdoms on the periphery of Central Asia during this period: Chinese, Tibetan, Iranian, Indian, and Turkic. The oldest paper manuscripts available for study are Sanskrit and Tocharian manuscripts found in Kucha and dated between the third and sixth centuries CE. At that time, paper was used for manuscripts that were written in Sanskrit or Khotanese, dated approximately between the fourth and the eight centuries CE, and found in Khotan. By the fifth century, paper manuscripts were produced in Dunhuang, and this collection contains written and printed texts in Chinese, Tibetan, Khotanese, and Turkic, dated between the fifth and tenth centuries. Another repository of old paper from Central Asia is the Turfan collection in Chinese, Tibetan, Turkic, and Syriac and dated between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. These manuscripts are often imprecisely dated with the exception of the group of Chinese manuscripts fortuitously fixed in time by dates given in colophons. Further manuscripts, however, may also be fixed in time and place by other information, such as the names of specific people and places, or episodes associated with historical dates. Information regarding provenance derives from the archaeological contexts (all of the Silk Road period) in which manuscripts || 2 See British collections: