(12 March 2018) China Daily reports that more than 5,300 pieces of ancient Chinese manuscripts have been “returned” from France in digital form and are available online, according to the National Library of China.
The online resources have been provided by France’s national library, which holds more than 7,000 original copies of the Dunhuang manuscripts.
The documents, which date from the fifth to 11th centuries, were discovered in the Mogao Grottos in Gansu province in the early 20th century.
There are more than 50,000 of them, including history, linguistics, art and religious documents. Most of the manuscripts are in Chinese, but some are written in other languages such as Khotanese and Hebrew.
Around 16,000 Dunhuang manuscripts are stored at China’s National Library, while the rest are scattered overseas in Russia, Britain, France and Japan.
ChinaDaily.com has the story.
