Dunhuang Contract Documents Collected and

Author: Sha Zhi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-10-01
Features: Contract documents are an important part of Guoquan social documents. Since the 1920s, Chinese and foreign scholars have paid attention to the compilation and introduction of such documents when studying Dunhuang manuscripts. During his time in France, Mr. Liu Fu copied a batch of manuscripts at the National Library of France, including more than ten contract documents, which were compiled into the book "Dunhuang Snippets" published in 1925. In the 1930s, Japanese scholar Tamaki Tatsuo wrote "Contracts Unearthed in Western China of China," introducing Dunhuang contracts, which, in addition to Liu's book, added more than ten newly copied texts from London and Paris, broadening people's perspectives. In terms of categories, transactions, barter, employment, tenancy, division of books, lending, and wills have largely been covered, though the number of contracts in each category is limited. In the following decades, through the efforts of dedicated scholars, Ling continued to follow Tamaki's work by publishing "The Examination of Liang Hu" and other related papers, citing more contract documents. Chinese scholar Xu Guolin published the contract materials known at the time in the collection "Manuscripts of Dunhuang Stone Rooms and Miscellaneous Records from Dunhuang" from the collection of the Beijing Library.