Khotanese Manuscripts from Chinese Turkestan in the British Library: A Complete Catalogue with Texts and Translations.

• Author: Hansen, Valerie
• Position: Book Review

Khotanese Manuscripts from Chinese Turkestan in the British Library: A Complete Catalogue with Texts and Translations. By PRODS OKTOR SKJAERVO, with contributions to Ursula Sims-Williams. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, part II: Inscriptions of the Seleucid and Parthian Periods and of Eastern Iran and Central Asia, volume V: Saka, Texts VI. London: THE BRITISH LIBRARY, 2002. Pp. 609. $170.

Because this catalogue supersedes, yet scrupulously cites, all earlier publications on the subject, it is the ideal volume for anyone interested in learning more about documents written in Khotanese. Khotanese, an Iranian language with a large vocabulary borrowed from Sanskrit, was used in the oasis of Khotan (in modern-day Xinjiang, China) certainly between the fifth and tenth centuries, and quite possibly before. The language has been the subject of study since 1897, when Augustus Frederic Rudolf Hoernle published the first documents in Khotanese. Explorers from Europe found documents dating to the eighth century in various sites near Khotan (but curiously never in the oasis itself) and dating to the tenth century in the library cave in Dunhuang, Gansu province. Their inherent difficulty has meant that they have been studied primarily by linguists and philologists, But Skjaervo's translations provide unparalleled access for those, like myself, who do not read Khotanese.

This book provides a model for anyone doing a catalogue of documents in the twenty-first century. Using a Macintosh computer, the author prepared camera-ready copy with all the necessary diacritic marks in addition to Chinese characters. Each entry has a header providing the number of the document in either the British Library or the India Office Collection, an abbreviated reference to earlier publications, and the genre of document. When possible, Buddhist texts are classed by the sutra from which they were taken; those that defy identification are simply called "Rel." (for Religious). Secular documents, many relating to the tax system of the eighth to tenth centuries, are classed as "Doc." (Document), but some of Skjaervo's labels are more informative still: report, letter, amulet, exercise, syllabary, bilingual Chinese-Khotanese. Translations follow the transcription except in the case of fragments or excerpts of Buddhist sutras previously translated.

Many of the documents have been published before, but this is the first catalogue raisonne of the holdings of the British Library and...