2007-02-07
[Mirrored from http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2007/02/fragments-from-dead-city-fragments-2.html]
Or.8212/1144 and Or.8212/1142 are, by themselves, two rather uninspiring strips of paper covered with irregular black marks that Aurel Stein recovered from a rubbish tip in the ruins of the Tangut city of Kharakhoto, and which are now held at the British Library :
However, when you join the two fragments together the black marks resolve into a relatively clear line of Phags-pa text :
It is not very much, but it is the only certain example of the Phags-pa script that I have been able to find in the entire online collection of the International Dunhuang Project. Incidentally, although there is such a paucity of Phags-pa material in the British Library's Dunhuang collection, the library does hold the only known copy of what I would argue is the single most important Phags-pa text in existence, the Phags-pa Chinese rhyming dictionary Menggu Ziyun 蒙古字韵 (Or. 6972).
The top lefthand edge of the joined strips is still cut off, and I have been unable to locate a matching strip of paper in the British Library collection. However, even with this defect the text is still perfectly legible, comprising four Phags-pa syllables, reading ti khung -an tu ꡈꡞ ꡁꡟꡃ ꡖꡋ ꡈꡟ :
This is clearly Chinese, and it does not take a lot of effort to work out that they transcribe the Chinese characters tí kòng àn dú 提控案牘, which is the title of a minor official during the Yuan dynasty who was in charge of official documents at the local government office. The lettering appears to be printed on the paper rather than handwritten, so this was perhaps a stamp that was used by this official sometime during the Mongolian occupation of Kharakhoto between 1226 and 1372 (though of course it must post-date the creation of the Phags-pa script in 1269).