A Chinese bamboo slip of the "Cang Jie Pian" from the Niya site obtained by Stein for the Fourth Central Asian Investigation

Journal article

《斯坦因第四次中亞考察所獲尼雅遺址〈蒼頡篇〉漢簡一枚 》
[A Han Strip with Cang Jie Pian Content Collected at Niya during Aurel Stein’s Fourth Expedition to Central Asia]
Wuhan daxue Jianbo zhongxin Jianbo wenku, 19 October 2018

Aurel Stein’s fourth expedition to China (1930-1) is remembered mostly as a tragedy, with the artifacts he collected confiscated and then subsequently lost to posterity. Stein, however, took photographs of the Han period wood strips he discovered at Niya 尼雅, a settlement deep in the heart of the Taklamakan Desert. These photographs were long forgotten, but their recent “rediscovery” has brought Stein’s Han strips back into the limelight. This article offers a new transcription for one of these strips, #N.XIV.20, and identifies its content as belonging to the Cang Jie pian 蒼頡篇 scribal primer, a fact that has gone unnoticed in previous studies of the cache. This identification has many important implications. In 1993, another Cang Jie pian strip, #N14:1, was collected at Niya, though its discovery is not documented fully. My analysis of #N.XIV.20 clarifies the location where both these pieces were found at the site. #N.XIV.20 and #N14:1, moreover, record different chapters of the Cang Jie pian, showing that a significant portion of the text’s content was available at Niya. This strengthens Wang Yue’s hypothesis that scribal officials (e.g., “Chief Interpreters 譯長”) were sent by the Han court to serve in foreign kingdoms as diplomats, translators, and educators. Finally, #N.XIV.20 includes content from the Cang Jie pian seen only in the Peking University manuscript. As this data was not widely known before the Peking University purchase of Han manuscripts, it further supports their authenticity.

Authors: Foster, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publication date: 2018-10-19
• Acceptance date: 2018-10-19
• Language: Chinese
• Keywords: FFR