The article presents the results of a close cooperation of colleagues from the
State Hermitage and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (Union Catalogue of Oriental
Manuscripts). 23 fragments of manuscripts and block prints in five different languages
(Chinese, Old Uighur, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Syriac) are described in detail. Almost all
of them could be identified. They stem from the four German Turfan expeditions (1902–
1914) and were housed in the Museum für Völkerkunde (Berlin) for exhibition reasons,
i.e. they belong to the most important findings of these expeditions. Nevertheless some
of these fragments have never been published before. For a long time it was thought that
they belong to the losses during World War II. Now they have been re-discovered in the
depot of the State Hermitage. In the appendix an Old Uighur fragment of the Säkiz Yükmäk
Yaruk is edited. It belongs to the re-discovered texts and was known up-to-now only
from some quotations in an early edition.
The 15th Conference “Travels to the East - 2023” will be held at the IOM RAS on March 27, 2024. The event is organized by the Department of Central Asian and South Asian Studies and the Department of Far Eastern Studies.
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