History
The documents were discovered in a sealed cave by the Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu on June 25, 1900. From 1907 onwards he began to sell them to Western explorers, notably Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot. Russian and Japanese explorers also acquired collections of manuscripts. But largely due to Luo Zhenyu's efforts, most of the remaining Chinese manuscripts were taken to Beijing and are now in the National Library of China. Several thousands of folios of Tibetan manuscripts were left in Dunhuang and are now located in several museums and libraries in the region. Those purchased by western scholars are now kept in institutions all over the world, such as the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. All of the manuscript collections are being digitised by the International Dunhuang Project, and can be freely accessed online.
Read more about this topic: Dunhuang Manuscripts
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“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)