Research On The Documents From Khara-Khoto In The British Library Print Of Residual Images

This paper focuses on all the prints excavated at Khara-Khoto during Stein’s third expedition to Central Asia,with a focus on fragmentary prints.The study of the artworks excavated at Khara-Khoto is a popular topic of academic research,but most studies of the prints from Khara-Khoto have focused on the clear and complete prints,with less attention paid to the fragmentary prints excavated at the same time.The main collections of the Khara-Khoto prints are in Russia,Britain,China and Japan,with the British collection having been excavated and collated by Stein and his team in a more standard way,on the basis of which subsequent research has been carried out.According to the author,a total of 154 of the British collection’s print remnants have been published,76 of which are openly illustrated,while the remaining 78 are descriptive texts.In this paper,we further collate these fragmentary prints,firstly,by using the records in the books and treatises on Chinese and foreign subjects,such as Stein’s Innermost Asia:Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asian,kan-su and Eastern Iran Oxford,Xiang Da’s Stein’s Chronology of the Khara-Khoto,and the Documents from Khara-Khoto In the British Library,and the Complete Collection of Chinese Prints,to collate the contents of the published prints them in conjunction with the texts of the images,so as to provide the academic community with a more detailed narrative of the British-Tibetan Khara-Khoto prints.Secondly,due to historical and material constraints,most of the documentary artefacts acquired by Stein are incomplete fragments and fragments that are not available in book form,and the images of the prints are also missing or indecipherable and have not yet been studied in depth by the scholarly community.The final table summarises the remnants of unpublished British print collections scattered throughout the various library sources.This paper provides a more complete account of the size,content,and inscriptions of these fragmentary prints,with the aim of providing some basis for subsequent research in the field.