Directory of Patronymics and Titles of Function in the Dunhuang Manuscripts

The “Dunhuang Directory” was created in February 2016 thanks to funding granted by PSL (19 000 euros). This digital tool provides access to a corpus of handwritten index sheets that represent an important directory of patronymics and titles of function in the Dunhuang manuscripts of the “Pelliot Chinois” collection, now kept in the National Library of France. These index sheets (over 20 000 units) are the result of many years’ work carried out by the CNRS team that was to become the 8155 Research Unit. They were drafted between 1973 and 1995 by different members of the “Studying the Dunhuang Manuscripts and Related Materials” research team led by Michel Soymié (EPHE). These documents supplement the Catalogue of Chinese Manuscripts from Touen-Houang (6 vols.) and represent an unpublished archive collection that greatly contribute to the study of these primary sources from the medieval period. A total of about 16 000 index sheets have already been digitalised and catalogued. Right now, this tool only allows users to carry out searches by keywords referring to the title of each index sheet (a patronymic or a function title). Our project aims to integrate the entire text content of these index sheets, enabling a more refined use of this digital tool, through the creation of an extensible database that can be supplemented and expanded. This tool, which will be accessible to the entire international scientific community, is particularly interesting for studying the history, society, economy and religious practices of Medieval China. It joins several research themes hosted by different projects of the Research Unit 8155, and is in line with the research work carried out by the Unit since it was created.