Dr. Efim A. Rezvan
Asiatic Museum. Treasures from St. Petersburg Academic Collection of Oriental Manuscripts (CD-ROM Series)
In 1995 different institutions started the publication of the CD-ROM series connected with the handwritten heritage. The “Memory of the World” program of UNESCO was presented as the realization of the new approach to safeguarding documentary materials and as the first step in creating the decentralized interactive world library.
The first issues of the series will contain the manuscripts and early printed books of the Prague National Library, those of Sofia, the Radzivil Chronicle stored in the Library of the Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia), Memoria de Iberoamerica, the San'a manuscripts, the manuscripts stored in the Kandilli Observatory in Istanbul, 15th -16th centuries Slavic MSS and important archival material from Russia, African postcards, treasures from Dar al-Kutub (National Library in Cairo), MSS of Vilnus University and photographic collections from Latin America and Caribbean. Some of the CD-ROM's mentioned above are already published.
The colleagues from SS Cyril and Methodius National Library in Sofia, in cooperation with Ukrainian programmers of the “Diamed” Company (Donetsk), have published two CD-ROMs containing correspondingly the richly decorated 13th century manuscript of the Qur’an and about 15 thousand images of the Balkan Tetraevangelia, as well as a number of the Qur’ans dated from the 12th-17th centuries.
Now the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Thesa Publishers (St. Petersburg) and “Manuscripta Orientalia”, International Journal for Oriental MSS Research, are happy to introduce another project of this kind:
“Asiatic Museum. Treasures from St. Petersburg Academic Collection of Oriental Manuscripts (CD-ROM Series)”. Among eighty five thousand manuscripts in 65 living and dead eastern languages which are stored in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly Asiatic Museum founded in 1818) there are many unique and rare literary works and religious, historical, scientific treatises which are waiting for the publication.
In 1996-2000 at least ten very interesting manuscripts from the collection are expected to be published in the proposed series.
Issue No 1. “Secret Visionary Autobiography” of the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngag-dbang blo-bzang rgya-mtsho (1617-1682). His work is an outstanding example of Tibetan spirituality, being both the record of Dalai Lama’s years-long visionary experiences and a description of the most esoteric rituals of Tibetan Buddhism as well.
Author of the publication - Dr. Vladimir Uspensky
Issue No 2. A three-volume manuscript of great importance from both the textological and codicological points of view. It appears to represent one of the earliest Arabic translations of the Bible, as well as the oldest copy of such a translation. The manuscript was transcribed in Damascus in 1236 from an original executed in Antioch in 1022. In 1913 it was presented to the Russian Tsar Nicholas II by Gregory IV, Patriarch of Antioch.
Author of the publication - Dr. Valeriy Polosin.
Issue No 3. Zuhar al-riyad wa-nuzah al-murtad (“Flowers of the Garden and the Pleasure of Those who Walk There”), unique 14th-century literary anthology MS from Baghdad composed by Mansur ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn `Abdallah ibn Abi Subaih al-Shanbaki (al-Shunbuki?). This is an autograph of the compiler, who reported from time to time on the progress of his work. Neither the author, nor his work are mentioned by any reference-books on Arabic literature. Most interesting is that the book was created in ravaged Baghdad, then a mere shadow of the empire’s once glorious capital. It provides rare evidence of the form in which literary activities continued in the city at that time and what literary sources were then available.
Author of the publication - Prof. Anas Khalidov.
Issue No 4. One of the most important Qur’anic MSS in the world, dated to the first half of the 8th century AD. 81 large parchment folios in Hijazi script contain about 40% of the text of the Qur’an (full texts of 22 suras and fragments of another 22). The manuscript reflects changes in the orthography and “lay-out” of the sacred text. Such changes were added to the text in red ink, probably a century after the date of copying. Simultaneously, the simple gaps which were left between the preceding sura and the beginning of the following sura were filled with colored ornaments (very interesting compositions of triangles, arcs, intertwined or intersecting lines, sometimes evocative of nomadic jewelry) with sura titles and information about the number of ayat.
Author of the publication - Dr. Efim Rezvan
Issue No 5. An illustrated Turkish manuscript of the “Iskender-name” by Ahmedi (1334/35-1412/13) written in old Anatolyan Turkic at the end of the 14th century, which was displayed at the International Exhibition of Persian art in London in 1931. However, many stylistic elements in the 40 miniatures of the MS testify to their Ottoman provenance and reflect a very special, undoubtedly intriguing, period in the development of Ottoman painting, when its own original manner was emerging. The style of the miniatures is marked by a charming simplicity and naive realism, which almost wholly disappear in the 16th century.
Author of the publication - Dr. Irina Petrosyan
Issue No 6. "Gulshan" (“Flower-Garden”), the unique Qajar MS which will be presented at the exhibition "The Qajar Epoch: Two Hundred Years of Painting from the Royal Persian Courts" organized by the Brooklyn Museum of Art and scheduled for 1998. This huge 18th century MS (68 x 48,5 cm) presents an entire poetical library "in one binding" (103 poems of different genres and lengths by 47 authors of the 11th-18th centuries). It is illustrated with 100 first-class color miniatures by at least 3 miniaturists from Isphahan (the size of the miniatures ranges from 18.2 x 28.5 cm to 37 x 26.5 cm)
Author of the publication - Prof. Oleg Akimushkin
Issue No 7. The richly illustrated fifteenth-century Mamluk treatise “Kitab al-makhzun fi jami` al-funun” by Ibn Abi Khazzam al-Khuttali was not only a kind of manual meeting practical needs for the military training of Sultan guards and Mumluks, but also for arranging Cairo’s colossal furusiyya festivals, forerunners of the carousel festivals at European courts. The St. Petersburg copy of the treatise is of prime importance both for the text’s history and the history of the Mamluk school of book miniatures.
Authors of the publication - Dr. Efim Rezvan and Dr. Alikber Alikberov
Issue No 8. The Manuscript of Kankai Ibun (“Remarkable Facts about the Sea Surrounding [the Earth]”) was produced in 1807 on the basis of questions put to four Japanese sailors who had returned home after nearly 11 years of seafaring. In 1793 their ship was overtaken by a typhoon, but after many adventures in 1803 they appeared in St. Petersburg where Emperor Alexander I granted them an audience. Year later four of them returned home on board the Russian sloop “Nadezhda”. The St. Petersburg MS of the work is one of the most authoritative and close to the autograph and is of great value for the history of the text. The MS is richly illustrated with drawings of everything the sailors saw in the course of their long voyage through all Russia and back from Kronshtadt to Nagasaki
Author of the publication - Prof. Vladislav Goreglyad
Issue No 9. "Conspectus of Sacred Texts, found in Central Asia (Turkmenistan), by a Buddhist Teacher of the early first millennium AD". The publication and analysis of a unique Sanskrit manuscript written in Old Indian script brahmi on birch bark. The manuscript sure was in the possession of a Buddhist preacher, active before the tenth century AD among monks and laymen on the territory of contemporary Turkmenistan. It contains a conspectus of Buddhist dogmatic texts - sutras, the disciplinary code - vinaya, and didactic stories of the jataka and avadana type belonging to one of the Hinayana Buddhist schools, namely Sarvastivada. The conspectus seems to have been written partly by the owner himself, and partly by a professional scribe. The manuscript is in fact worth of immediate publication. It is unique in many respects, not only by reason of its antiquity. The big literature deals with the history of Indian Buddhism, including the history of its spread to other Asian regions. But the historians of Buddhism have never discovered such an ancient text, which shows the everyday professional activity of a preacher and the intellectual scope of that activity. The specialists on Buddhism will find in it new, important information on the history of the Buddhist Canon as well.
Author of the publication - Prof. Margarita Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya
Issue No 10. Illustrated Mongolian manuscripts and xylographs of “One Hundred Thousand Verses” (or “The Great Yum”, Skt. Maha-Prajnapararamita in one hundred thousand slokas) . Two block-print editions and four manuscripts of “The Great Yum” differ both in the number of illustrations (from 24 to 112) and the contents of the pantheon they represent. They are especially valuable for the study of Buddhist iconography and Mongolian iconography in particular.
Author of the publication - Dr. Alexey Sazykin
Issues No 6 and 10 contain the miniatures found in the corresponding manuscripts and block-prints, others present manuscripts as a whole. Every CD-ROM (IBM-MAC hybrid) of the series contains a short video lecture by a scholar, a short excursion through the Institute and its collection, the full text of the research devoted to the MS, a special synopsis of all the material presented, and many multimedia effects. The language of the project is English.
Dr. Efim A. Rezvan,
Author and Coordinator of the project "Asiatic Museum. Treasures from St. Petersburg Academic Collection of Oriental Manuscripts (CD-ROM Series)", Deputy Director of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences; Deputy Editor-in-Chief of "Manuscripta Orientalia" International Journal for Oriental Manuscript Research.
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Web site: http://www.thesa.ru