Pelliot Tibétain 986: new approaches to a Tibetan paraphrase of a Chinese classic among Dunhuang manuscripts
Résumé
Among Tibetan manuscripts found in cave number 17 in Dunhuang at the beginning of the last century, there are few documents containing versions of some Chinese classics. These documents are: Pelliot Tibétain (PT) 986, 987, 988, 1291 and the fourth chapter of the Old Tibetan Chronicle, PT 1287. In the past, scholars have worked on those texts: Huang Bufan (1981) and South Coblin (1991) both wrote about PT 986, a paraphrase of the Shujing, the Classic of Documents; Rolf Stein (1992) studied PT 987 and 988, a collection of maxims found in the Lunyu and the Liji, respectively the Analects of Confucius and the Classic of Rites; Yoshiro Imaeda (1980) and Ma Mingda (1984) both analysed about PT 1291, a translation of the Chunqiu houyu, the Later Comments on the Spring and Autumn Annals; Tsuguhito Takeuchi (1985) wrote an article on the fourth section of the Old Tibetan Chronicle and its original Chinese text, the Shiji, the Records of Grand Historian. Those texts have been translated and analysed; yet, mainly due of a lack of information, some fundamental questions remained without answers: why scribes composed such documents? Were those texts part of a larger corpus of non-Buddhist texts translated from Chinese into Tibetan? When were they composed? This presentation tries to provide preliminary answers to those and other questions with the help of new approaches involving codicology, palaeography and the comparison of Tibetan documents with other Dunhuang manuscripts. Thanks to the developments of new methodologies applied to the “Dunhuang studies”, it is nowadays possible to analyse the Tibetan manuscripts from different points of view: the material of the documents, their peculiarities, the type of writing and tools used in the composition of the texts as well as their historical context. For example, in the analysis of the PT 986, a text providing a set of information that can be used in the study of the whole corpus of Tibetan versions of non Buddhist Chinese texts, it is possible to see that the paper used was of good quality and, both the recto and the verso present characteristics proving that the documents was probably composed in an official context and was not the result of a single scribe’s initiative or a writing exercise. This assumption is confirmed by the palaeographic analysis of the writing style which seems to be an official pattern, placing then the document in the context of official translations probably sponsored by the imperial power. The analysis of PT 986 can be push further with the comparison with other Dunhuang manuscripts, in particular with the document Stein 799, today kept at the British Library; this is a Chinese version of the Shujing, the Classic of Documents, which is also paraphrased in PT 986. Both Stein 799 and PT 986 present exactly the same portion of the original Chinese text: three chapters of the last book, the Zhoushu, the Book of Zhou; the study of both texts sheds light on the fact that the Tibetan document is a paraphrase of the Chinese classic and of its commentary. If it is not possible at this stage of the research to assert with certainty that the PT 986 is a paraphrase of Stein 799, the analysis of the shared characteristics of the two documents and their content is an important step toward the understanding of the genesis of such Tibetan documents. The study through comparison with other types of documents can also be carried on with the analysis of a series of Tangut manuscripts which also present paraphrases of Chinese classics. Finally, the consideration of the historical context can be a further tool in the study of the Tibetan non-Buddhist texts translated from Chinese: according to the Chinese sources, in 731 the Tibetan court, through the Princess of Jincheng requested a series of Chinese classics to the Chinese court in Chang’an; after many discussions, the Chinese ruler, Xuanzong, accepted to grant the texts to the Tibetan court. Even though the exact list of the texts arrived in Central Tibet is unknown, the Chinese sources, Tang dynastic histories and Song period encyclopaedias, provide series of titles that arrived at the Tibetan court; most of them match with the Tibetan versions of Chinese classics found in Dunhuang. The combination of new approaches in the study of this corpus of texts can provide new information in the study of the circulation of texts, the practice of translation between different languages and the cultural history of Dunhuang.