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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)