Asian and African studies blog

31 January 2014 is the first day of the Year of the Horse, according to the traditional lunisolar Chinese Calendar.  According to this system years are counted in a series of sixty-year cycles, each identified by a combination of two Chinese characters – the first from a cycle of ten known as the Heavenly Stems representing the elements – wood, fire, earth, metal and water, the second from a cycle of twelve known as the Earthly Branches represented by animals: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, cock, dog and pig.

People born in each of these years are traditionally believed to display particular characteristics –those born in the Year of the Horse, for example, are said to be passionate, talented, adventurous and independent but also self-centred and headstrong.

The Chinese Calendar was widely used in East and at various times was adopted in Japan, Korea, Tibet and Vietnam. In all these cultures the horse had a prominent role in practical life and was widely depicted in art.

Part of a printed almanac from Dunhuang dating from AD 877. Babylonian, Persian and Indian influences can be seen including the animal zodiac. (Or.8210/P.6)

In Chinese culture the horse is an animal that represents health and persistence and the written character for horse 馬 mǎ is found in many metaphors and idioms related to fortune and well-being.  For example, 千里馬 qiān lǐ mǎ (literally: 10,000-mile horse) is a metaphor used for talented people and 馬到成功 mǎ dào chéng gōng (literally: riding to success) is used to wish someone good fortune.

In pre-modern Japan the horse was highly prized by the warrior class and horsemanship was one of the key skills of the Samurai.  The image below is taken from Riō busshoku zusetsu ‘An illustrated explanation of the selection of strong horses and cows’ (Or.15562), an album dated 1647 depicting 97 horses and 14 cows, with anatomical annotations, by Kurosawa Sekisai 黒澤石齋 (1622-1678), an expert adviser on horses to the Tokugawa Shogunate.

A selection of different kinds of horses from the Japanese Riō busshoku zusetsu (Or.15562)

Although the Chinese calendar is not widely used in Thailand, the zodiac is important for fortune-telling. According to Thai horoscopes, people born in the year of the horse almost always achieve prosperity and wealth during their lifetime. They are often successful, but not always kind-hearted. They have to be careful in their thirties, sixties and eighties as there are certain years in which they can face danger or even death. It is important at these times to make much merit (in the Buddhist sense).

Horoscope for those born in the year of the horse (ม้า ma, as in Chinese). This illustration also shows the female avatar for the year of the horse and the banana tree. (Or.13650, f 4r)

Curators of the East Asian Section, Asian and African Studies

• Over 300 important biblical manuscripts including the London Codex dating from c. 10th century, one of the oldest Masoretic Bibles in existence and the Torah Scroll of the Jewish community of Kaifeng.
• Anglo-Jewish charters in Hebrew and Hebrew/Latin attesting to the Jewish presence in England before the expulsion of the Jewish population in 1290 by King Edward I. They include debt acquittances (releases from debt), attestations (formal confirmations by signature), and other types of contractual transactions between Jews and non-Jews.
• A collection of 142 Karaite manuscripts, one of the best Karaite resources in the world, comparable only to the Abraham Firkovitch Karaite manuscript collection in St. Petersburg.
• Some 150 illuminated and decorated manuscripts representing the schools of medieval Hebrew illumination in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Treasures include the Golden Haggadah, the Lisbon Bible, the North French Hebrew Miscellany, the Duke of Sussex German Pentateuch, the Harley Catalan Bible, and the King’s Spanish Bible.
• About 70 manuscripts containing texts of the Mishnah and the Talmud (Jewish legal code),  and  about 130 manuscript compendia and commentaries on Talmudic and Halakhic topics by some of the greatest Jewish luminaries such as Moses Maimonides, Rashi, Moses ben Jacob of Coucy, Isaac of Corbeil, and others. Many of these manuscripts date from the 14th and 15th centuries, with some dating back to the 12th century.

Ilana Tahan
Lead Curator, Hebrew and Christian Orient Studies 

Anyone who has been in the vicinity of the Brunei Gallery SOAS during the last few weeks could hardly have failed to notice the frenzied activity in preparation for ‘The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination’ which opened last Friday (see also my earlier post on this subject). Put together by Sarah Stewart, Lecturer in Zoroastrianism in the Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS, together with Pheroza Godrej, Almut Hintze, Firoza Mistree and myself, it is a first in almost every sense. Not only has the theme, Zoroastrianism from the 2nd millenium until the present date, never been presented in this way before, but the majority of the over 200 exhibits have never been on public view.


Bishop Eznik Kolbac‘i wrote this Refutation of the Sects around 440 AD. His criticism of Zoroastrianism was directed principally against the various forms of dualism. His work is valuable as a contemporary account of the religion at a time when the scriptures were still transmitted orally, a fact which Eznik mentions himself as a reason for the existence of so many conflicting views. The frontispiece of this first edition, published in Smyrna in 1762, shows Eznik instructing his pupils (British Library 17026.b.14)


I first met Sarah almost 30 years ago when we were students together in an elementary Pahlavi (a Middle-Iranian language) class at SOAS! Since then we have often discussed her dream of mounting an exhibition. The more familiar I became with the Zoroastrian material in the British Library, the more impressed I was with the incredibly wide range of materials we had. The Library's unique collection of Zoroastrian sacred texts, collected from the 17th century onwards, had been left untouched since the 19th century and I worked closely with our conservation department to restore them, hoping to get the opportunity to be able to exhibit them! The final choice of what to include was difficult, but I’m glad to say the British Library has made a significant contribution with over 30 major loans.


A 12th or 13th century copy of the Babylonian Talmud. The Talmudic period in Babylonia largely overlapped with the Sasanian empire (224-651 AD) and during this period the Babylonian rabbis shared numerous intellectual and cultural concerns with their neighbours, the Zoroastrian priests at Ctesiphon, capital of the Sasanian empire. These affected matters of civil and criminal law, private law, theology, and even ritual (British Library, Harley 5508, ff.69v-70r)


Several people have asked me what my ‘favourite’ exhibits are! The 7th century BC cuneiform tablet from Nineveh, thought to contain the name of the principal Zoroastrian deity, Ahura Mazda (‘Wise Lord’), and a 4th century Achaemenid document from northern Afghanistan attesting the earliest use of the Zoroastrian day names and offerings for the Farvardin (spirits of the dead) must be amongst the most significant items. Equally impressive are the stunning ossuaries from 7th century Sogdiana and the beautiful Parsi portraits and textiles dating from the 19th century, the result of flourishing trade with China. A gallery on the top floor also includes works by the modern artists Fereydoun Ave, Mehran Zirak and Bijan Saffari. I mentioned a few British Library favourites in a previous post (The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination). Here are a few more:


The concept of Zoroaster as a magician or philosopher from the East is widespread in European literature, particularly after the Renaissance with its increased awareness of Greek and Hellenistic literature. This Italian translation by Bono Giamboni of Li Livres dou Trésor by Brunetto Latini (1230–94) dates from 1425. Of Zoroaster he writes: ‘And at that time a master called Canoaster [i.e. Zoroaster] discovered the magic art of spells and other wicked words and wicked things. These and many other things happened during the first two ages of the era that finished in the time of Abraham.’ (British Library, Yates Thompson 28, f. 51r)



‘The woman who didn’t obey her husband’. This engraving, dating from 1798, from the Persian Arda Viraf Nameh (the visionary journey of Viraf the Just to heaven and hell), is displayed in the exhibition alongside the original which is now part of the John Rylands Collection, Manchester (British Library, SV 400, vol. 2 part 3, facing p. 318)


The exhibition is free and open until 15 December, Tuesday- Saturday 10.30 - 17.00 (late night Thursday until 20.00, special Sunday opening on 15 December). For more details, follow these links to the exhibition website and facebook page.

The exhibition catalogue, edited by Sarah Stewart, includes 8 essays and photographs of every item in the exhibition. It is available from the publishers I.B. Tauris and from the SOAS bookshop (at a special discount price of £17).

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

Follow us on Twitter @BLAsia_Africa

Cave 16 at the Mogao caves, Dunhuang. Photograph by M. Aurel Stein, c. 1905.

Little was known of the Silk Road until archaeologists uncovered ancient cities in the desert sands, revealing astonishing sculptures, murals and manuscripts. The Buddhist cave library near Dunhuang in western China was one such remarkable discovery. Sealed around AD 1000 and only re-discovered in 1900 it contained over forty thousand manuscripts and paintings. Other sites have yielded tens of thousands more artefacts. These unique items have fascinating stories to tell of life on this ancient trade route. Owing to international archaeological activity most, however, were dispersed in the early 1900s to institutions worldwide.

The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) was formed in 1994 by the major holding institutions with the vision of reuniting these artefacts through digital photography, using web technologies to make them freely accessible to all and ensuring international standards for their preservation and cataloguing. Directed by a curatorial and imaging team at the British Library, IDP UK went online in 1998 and multilingual websites hosted by IDP partners soon followed, starting with IDP China in 2002. The international teams have an immense task but their work in conserving, cataloguing and digitising the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts has started to give a voice to the people who once lived in the cities, worshipped in the temples and traded in the markets of the Silk Road.

Hundreds of thousands of images of manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts along with catalogues, translations, historical and modern photographs, explorers’ archives and more are already freely available to all on IDP’s multilingual website and are widely used by scholars, schoolchildren and others.

As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, IDP will be arranging a series of events over autumn 2013 to spring 2014. These will include an exhibition of photographs, a conservation show and tell, an afternoon of lectures and a reception, a selection of twenty favourite items from IDP’s patrons, partners, supporters and users, and a special edition of our newsletter, IDP News. Further details will be announced shortly and will also be publicised on the IDP home page, the IDP blog and our Facebook page.

Our launch event will be a lecture given by Tim Williams (UCL). ’Mapping the Silk Road’ will take place at the British Library Conference Centre (map) on November 1 2013 at 6.30pm. Entrance is free and all are welcome. For further details and online booking visit the British Library What's On pages.

Frontispiece of a printed dated copy of the Diamond Sutra.

IDP is dependent on external funding. Our work so far has been enabled by the generous and loyal support of individuals, foundations and funding bodies worldwide. Your help is essential. You can donate directly online, Sponsor a Sutra or if you wish to discuss support of a major project please visit the IDP website to contact us.

Vic Swift, International Dunhuang Project

An exciting project I’ve been working on during the last few months is ‘The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination’ a new exhibition opening this autumn at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies London.

One of the world’s oldest religions, Zoroastrianism originated amongst the Iranian peoples in Central Asia during the second millennium BC spreading east along the Silk Road as far as China and south-west to Iran where it was the religion of the Achaemenid kings (550-330 BC) and their successors until the Arab conquest in the mid-seventh century AD. The Zoroastrian sacred texts were composed in the Avestan (Old Iranian) language, but were transmitted orally and were not written down until the late Sasanian period (c. 224-651 AD). Even after that Zoroastrianism remained essentially oral in character with the earliest surviving manuscripts dating from the late 13th century. Central to the religion is the belief in Ahura Mazda (‘wise lord’), his spokesman Zarathustra (Zoroaster) and the dichotomy between good and evil.


One of the holiest Zoroastrian prayers, the Ashem Vohu, discovered at Dunhuang by Aurel Stein in 1917. Transcribed into Sogdian (a medieval Iranian language) script, this fragment dates from around the ninth century AD, about four centuries earlier than any other surviving Zoroastrian text (British Library Or.8212/84)

This exhibition will be the first to provide a visual narrative of the history of Zoroastrianism and its rich cultural heritage. It will include sections on the spread of Zoroastrianism along the Silk Road, the Judaeo-Christian heritage, and Zoroastrianism in Iran from the Achaemenid empire up to and including the Islamic period. Further sections are devoted to Zoroastrianism in India, the Parsis and the Parsi diaspora. In addition to texts, paintings and textiles the exhibition will include a walk-in fire temple and a 10-metre glass etching based on the cast of the western staircase from the palace of Darius at Persepolis from the British Museum.

The exhibition is being curated by Sarah Stewart (lead curator) together with Pheroza Godrej, Almut Hintze, Firoza Mistree  and myself. As you can imagine, we have been having a wonderful time sourcing material to include. Not surprisingly — since I have been involved  — the exhibition will include a large number of loans from the British Library, which is fortunate in posessing one of the most important collections of Zoroastrian manuscripts. It will run from 11 October to 15 December 2013. A catalogue will be published by IB Tauris and there will be a two-day conference associated with the exhibition, ‘Looking Back: The Formation of Zoroastrian Identity Through Rediscovery of the Past’, on 11 and 12 October 2013.

During the next few months I’ll be writing about several of the exhibits, but meanwhile here are a few select items:

An illustrated copy of the Avestan Videvdad Sadeh, the longest of all the Zoroastrian liturgies. Copied in Yazd, Iran, in 1647 (British Library RSPA 230, ff. 151v–152r)

The martyrdom of the lady Tarbo, her sister and her servant who died during the reign of the Sasanian ruler Shapur II (r. 309-379). While the historicity of martyrologies such as this is questionable, they nevertheless represent a literary tradition of the early Christian community which is based on the realities of intermittent persecution under Sasanian rule. This very early Syriac manuscript dates from the fifth or sixth century AD (British Library Add.14654, ff. 13v-14r)

Zoroaster, founder of the seven liberal arts, as portrayed in the French world chronicle, Le Trésor des histoires. Medieval Christian interpretations of Zoroastrianism, based on classical literature, often focussed on the figure Zoroaster who came to be regarded as a master of magic, a philosopher, and an astrologer, especially after the Renaissance, with its increased awareness of Greek and Hellenistic literature. Depicted here at his desk, Zoroaster is described as the founder of necromancy and the seven liberal arts. This copy dates from c.1475–80 (British Library Cotton Augustus V, f. 25v)




Parsis at prayer, the shoreline of Bombay in the distance. Early 19th-century oil painting by Horace Van Ruith (1839–1923) who visited Bombay between 1879 and 1884 and is known to have established a studio there (British Library Foster 953, detail) Images online

For more details, follow these links to the exhibition website and facebook page.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

Follow us on Twitter @BLAsia_Africa

One of the manuscripts in the British Library’s Thai, Lao and Cambodian collections is unusual for its distinctive smoky smell, but its real significance lies in the fact that few such manuscripts survive following the Burmese occupation of the Ahom Kingdom in Assam (1817) and the First Anglo-Burmese war (1824-26).

Our manuscript (Or.2925) is the library’s only original manuscript in the Ahom language, a Tai dialect similar to Khamti and Shan that is believed to have been spoken by the founders of the Ahom Kingdom in the 13th century. By the 19th century, the Ahom language was regarded extinct, but it was possible to reconstruct it from surviving manuscripts and with the help of Ahom traditional priests (mo, or Deodhai). An Ahom-Assamese-English Dictionary was published in Calcutta in 1920.

Ahom manuscripts, often called “Ahom Puthi”—an Assamese term for religious books in the Ahom language—, usually contain legends and stories connected with the ancestry of Ahom kings. Hence these manuscripts were regarded as sacred and they were kept by the Ahom priests.


Strand Road in Gauhati (Guwahati), an administrative centre and seat of many Deodhai in the former Ahom Kingdom. Photo by Oscar Jean Baptiste Mallitte, 1860. (Photo 913/23)


The text is written in black ink known as mahi in Assamese. It is produced from the fruits of the Silikha tree (Terminalia citrina), sometimes mixed with extracts from false daisy leaves (Eclipta prostrata) and other natural substances. The writing material is made from thinly sliced pieces of wood of the Sanchi tree (Aquilaria agallocha), cut to a size of 24.5 x 7 cm. There are 36 folios altogether, with an additional front cover made from Sanchi bark that has no text on it. The front cover and the edges of all folios were rubbed with an unidentified substance which could be resin from a tree or yellow arsenic. The whole manuscript must have been stored for quite some time over a fire place to prevent it from being attacked by ants, mites and mould, hence the remarkably strong smoky smell which persists today.

The manuscript is undated, but considering the fact that such manuscripts would hardly have been produced during or after the First Anglo-Burmese war it can be assumed that it dates back to well before 1824.

Folios 8 and 9 of the Ahom manuscript Or.2925 (British Museum foliation)


In a letter dated 6.9.1977, Dr J. N. Phukan, then teaching history at Guwahati University and author of various publications on Ahom language and history, wrote to Dr Henry Ginsburg, at the time Curator for Thai, Lao and Cambodian at the British Library, that the manuscript actually contains two fragmented texts. He was able to establish that the main part, folios 5-12 and 15-34 belong to a manuscript containing the legend of Leng-don, who in Ahom folklore is the Lord of Heaven who sent his grandsons Khunlung and Khunlai to rule on earth and to follow certain laws and rituals. Folios 2, 3, 4, 12 and 14 belong to another text dealing with Lak-ni, the Ahom method of year calculation. The remaining fragments were not identified.


Ahom-Assamese-English Dictionary printed by the Baptist Mission Press in Calcutta, 1920.


Not much is known about the provenance of the manuscript. An inscription on the box made at the British Museum to store the manuscript in reads “MS in Chinese Shan. Brit. Mus. Oriental 2925”. A note written in black ink on folio 1 gives some more information: “B’t of M. Terrien de la Couperie through Cha’s Pembo 5 Oct. 1885”.

Terrien de Lacouperie (d. 1894) was a linguist and sinologist of French descent who started his career as a silk merchant in Hongkong. He later turned his attention entirely to the study and comparison of East and Southeast-Asian languages and scripts. In 1879 Lacouperie settled in London and was elected a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Five years later he accepted a post as professor of Indo-Chinese philology at University College, London, and from 1886 on he also edited the Babylonian and Oriental Record. He worked temporarily for the British Museum, compiling the Catalogue of Chinese coins from the VIIth century BC to AD 621 (published 1892). His publications include The languages of China before the Chinese (1887), The oldest book of the Chinese, the Yh-king and its authors (1892), Beginnings of writing in Central and Eastern Asia (1894).

Lacouperie was particularly interested in languages of indigenous ethnic groups in China. He collected materials on their vocabulary and grammar, particularly of the Lolo language. The Lolo material, however, had originally been gathered by his close friend Edward Baber.

Edward Baber had gone to China as a student interpreter in 1866, followed by his appointment as Vice-Consul in Tamsui, Formosa in 1872. In 1879, he was promoted to the post of Chinese Secretary of Legation at Peking, and in 1885/6 he served as Consul-General in Chefoo (NE China) and Korea. He then became political resident in Bhamo, Burma, up to his death in 1890. Baber travelled extensively in  Central China and Upper Burma and built up a huge collection of documents, maps and indigenous language material.

It is possible that Lacouperie, who never himself travelled to Assam, Burma or South-Western China, might have received the Ahom manuscript from Edward Baber together with the Lolo material. However, in the absence of records this remains a matter of speculation. Only the initial catalogue record saying “Manuscript in Chinese Shan”, based on Lacouperie’s information, is a hint that Baber may have found the manuscript on one of his travels. 

The other person mentioned in the acquisition note, Cha’s Pembo, who apparently brought the manuscript to the British Museum, may be Charles Pembo who worked for the Old Bailey in London as an interpreter for French, Lacouperie’s mother tongue, around 1900.

The manuscript was kept in the library of the British Museum until 1973, when the Department of Oriental Manuscripts & Printed Books was integrated into the newly established British Library. An important question it raises is whether or not the scent should be part of an item’s catalogue record. If so, how can we make sure that it is described in an objective manner since the sense of smell is a very individual experience? An even bigger question is how to conserve the scent of an item for future generations?

The British Library's Endangered Archives Program is currently helping to digitise a further 500 Ahom manuscripts from Assam (EAP373).  So far they have received images of about half. You can read about their progress so far on their recent blog Digitised Ahom Manuscripts arrive at the British Library.

Jana Igunma, Asian and African Studies

Follow us on Twitter @BLAsia_Africa

Further reading:
Baruah, S. L.: Last days of Ahom monarchy: A history of Assam from 1769 to 1826. New Delhi, 1993.
Carlyle, E. I., rev. Rev. Janette Ryan: "Terrien De Lacouperie, Albert Étienne Jean Baptiste (d. 1894)" in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Goswami, Hemchandra: Descriptive catalogue of Assamese manuscripts. Calcutta, 1930.
Obituary: "Edward Colborne Baber". In: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, New Monthly Series, Vol. 12, No. 8 (Aug., 1890), pp. 468-471.
Phukan, J. N.: An introductory Primer and Grammar of Ahom (Tai) language.

On 31 May 2013, Frances Wood retired as curator of the British Library’s Chinese collections. Some of us in Asian and African Studies have known her for almost the entire period and can honestly say that her retirement leaves a gap that is impossible to fill. This is a sentiment shared by her younger colleagues also, as well as readers and visitors to the Library over the years. Frances has on frequent occasions gone out of her way to help and advise, far beyond the call of duty, and her integrity, support and committed engagement to subjects ranging from minute Central Asian woodslip fragments to matters of personal concern has been a source of constant inspiration to us all. We'll miss her as a member of staff, but now that she'll be free of administrative duties, we look forward to seeing the results of her future collaborations and research.

In this post, Beth McKillop, now Deputy Director at the Victoria and Albert Museum, has written an appreciation of Frances and her work. Beth was a British Council scholar with Frances in Beijing in 1975/76 and worked as her colleague at the British Library from 1981 until 2004.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Collections

Frances Wood

Frances Wood has recently retired, after more than 30 years first as curator, and later lead curator, of the British Library’s outstanding Chinese collections. She has overseen momentous changes in the understanding and treatment of the collection for which she has been responsible, as well as the physical moves of the collection from Bloomsbury to Blackfriars to St Pancras and (in part) to Boston Spa.

As a young curator, her exceptional energy and intellectual curiosity were already apparent. While researching and writing independently, she also shouldered responsibility for collective and departmental projects, including the British Library’s substantial contribution to the 1984 British Museum exhibition ‘Buddhism Art and Faith’. In the mid-1980s, she began the long movement towards collaborative work with Chinese and Japanese scholars which, years later, led to the founding of the International Dunhuang Project. That enterprise, hosted and directed from the British Library, was visionary and truly cross-disciplinary. Its origins lie in the pre-digital age, but Frances was quick to understand the potential of digital technology to link scholars, conservators and curators who needed to share collections and expertise of various kinds. The Dunhuang and other Central Asian collections are of course much more than a Chinese concern, but the Chinese section of the Library’s Asian collections, led by Frances, pushed the work forward, establishing and later sustaining, the IDP and the numerous scholars and curators who have worked with it. From the outset, Frances enlisted colleagues from SOAS, where she had worked before joining the British Library, to help bring expertise to the library. In the 1980s, SOAS Sinologists Sarah Allan and Roderick Whitfield facilitated visits from Chinese scholars, long before such contacts were straightforward. The first big achievement from these visits by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences historians and others was the 20 volume series  Dunhuang manuscripts in British collections co-published over several years by the Sichuan People’s Publishing House and the British Library. This large-scale set incorporated previously unpublished parts of the Stein Chinese manuscripts, documents that Frances and the Chinese visiting scholars had worked on with conservation support. While stressing Frances’ readiness to collaborate with Chinese scholars, mention should also be made of the Japanese researchers who visited regularly and who also uncovered much valuable new knowledge about the Dunhuang collections.

Frances Wood with the Tangut scholar Ksenia Kepping during her last visit to the British Library

Important though Frances’ work on the Dunhuang collections has been throughout her career, her China interests have encompassed many other aspects of Chinese life and society. As a sought-after lecturer and broadcaster, she has done much to take ideas and debates from scholarly circles and present them to a wider audience. Did Marco Polo go to China?  argued that Marco constructed his famous account of travels to Yuan China from other travellers’ accounts, and caused controversy and dispute. Frances’ wide-ranging interests have led her into subjects as disparate as Cultural Revolution student life, the First Emperor, Treaty Ports, and even the translation of Dai Houying’s moving novel Stones of the Wall. Other strings to Frances’ bow have included the Blue Guide to China, reflecting encyclopedic knowledge of Chinese sites and monuments, gained over decades of travel, particularly in the 1970s to 90s. At one time Frances would accompany parliamentary delegations to China, led by the indomitable Lord Rhodes of Saddleworth, the only person to have persuaded Frances to wear a suit.

All those who know Frances are in awe of her published output, but probably most people outside the British Library are unaware of the huge amount of fundamental bibliographic work she has completed during her long career. As her colleague between 1981 and 1990, and again from 1993 until 2004, I would regularly accompany Frances to Guanghwa Bookshop in Soho to select new publications for the collection. Frances had the true bibliophile’s conviction that examination of the copy was the way to buy well. Before the advent of machine-readable cataloguing, we would carry heavy boxes of catalogue cards in a taxi, checking carefully to avoid selecting duplicates. We also worked doggedly through the boxes of Hong Kong copyright publicationsthat arrived in the Library with depressing regularity until 1997. These had to be sorted into material for full cataloguing, and other publications like children’s literature and other genre publishing which was assessed and forwarded to public libraries.

After the India Office Library and Records joined the British Library in 1984, and particularly after 1992 when the former British Museum Oriental Collections left Bloomsbury to join the India Office library at Blackfriars, Frances diligently catalogued the Chinese Buddhist texts in that collection. Her contribution to the exhibition 'Chinese Printmaking Today' (2003), the first major Chinese show in the St Pancras exhibition galleries, led to continuing support for the Muban Education Trust, the lender to the exhibition. Recently, she has published an exemplary account of the history and conservation of the Diamond Sutra of 868AD, jointly with Mark Barnard who was formerly a conservation manager in the Library. Frances’ years at the British Library have been notable for curatorial interests of an exceptionally diverse nature, and for energetic and extensively networked contributions to the China field in the UK and beyond.

This brief note barely scratches the surface of Frances’ interests and generous contributions to Chinese studies, which are familiar to scholars and students around the world. Frances’ expertise in architecture, for example, the subject of her London University doctorate, will doubtless continue to bring a steady stream of colleagues and enquirers to her door. Her research on maps, on illustration, and on export painting has been substantial. Her 2010 interview with Kirsty Young in Desert Island Discs gives some personal recollections of her long career. Her stewardship of the collection leaves an impressive legacy.

Beth McKillop, Victoria and Albert Museum

The British Library’s Asian and African department is home to a vast collection of Chinese artefacts, books and manuscripts. These include the oldest items in the Library: the oracle bones – some 3500 years old, 18th-century Chinese books from Sir Hans Sloane’s own collections, and the Diamond Sutra – the earliest printed ‘book’ in the world, dated AD 868.

As of yesterday, these collections will now be joined by a new acquisition generously donated by Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. A host of delegates including Mr Jin Deshui, Chairman of University Council, and representatives from the Cultural Section of the Chinese Embassy in London, visited the Library in order to deliver an impressive set of volumes, which you can see below.

The 21 volumes, entitled Complete Collection of Paintings of the Song Dynasty, fully exhibit in beautiful high-resolution images the approximately 1000 paintings produced during the Song dynasty, which ruled China between 960 and 1279.

Over a three year period, Zheijang University painstakingly compiled the collection of paintings, with supporting text and documents, contacting different organisations who keep the originals of the paintings and organising for them to be photographed and brought together for the first time.

This donation, received gratefully by Caroline Brazier, Director of Collections at the British Library and me, will be a remarkable resource for researchers using the Library and we hope will bring many new discoveries around this fantastically rich period of art and scholarship.

Frances Wood, Lead Curator of Chinese Studies