Introduction
In June 1900, an individual named Wang Yuanlu 王圓籙 (1850?–1931) noticed a crack in the wall of the corridor leading to a large cave, Cave 16, at the Mogao Caves site, near Dunhuang, as he was conducting some restoration work. Upon checking what was behind the exposed plaster, he discovered a door behind which a small chamber had been excavated in the rock. Now commonly referred to as Cave 17 or the ‘library cave’, this room is thought to have been sealed off at the beginning of the eleventh century. It turned out to be a real ‘time capsule of Silk Road history’,Footnote 1 containing tens of thousands of manuscripts, as well as printed documents, paintings on paper and silk, textiles, and other Buddhist artefacts.
Wang rapidly alerted local officials to this discovery, but no immediate actions were taken. In 1904, orders were sent to keep the collection in place, and he remained de facto custodian of the cave. In 1910, an official from the Ministry of Education was dispatched to Dunhuang to transport all the manuscripts left in Cave 17 to Beijing for safekeeping. By then, the British-Hungarian archaeologist Aurel Stein (1862–1943) and the French Sinologist Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) had already respectively visited the Mogao Caves in 1907 and 1908, and Wang had agreed to sell them both exceptionally large chunks of the repository’s contents. Later on, he parted with more items against payment. For this reason, Wang Yuanlu has been cast down in Chinese history as a villain, whose name, although associated with the discovery of Cave 17, is even more so linked to the dispersal of its contents. He has often been portrayed as being illiterate and unaware of the significance of the trove held in the cave, which resulted in his being duped by Western explorers. Others have simply considered him to be the prime example of a thief who profited from the sale of Dunhuang relics.Footnote 2 In recent years, several Chinese scholars have started to show that Wang was driven by his piety and desire to protect the Mogao Caves. Yet he remains overall an obscure figure.
Both Marc Aurel Stein’s personal narratives, Ruins of Desert Cathay and On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks, and the expedition reports that he wrote, Serindia and Innermost Asia, provide complementary accounts of his visits to the Mogao Caves and his negotiations with Wang Yuanlu over the contents of Cave 17. These books play a key part in shaping Stein’s self-representation, as he glorifies his own actions and, in doing so, minimises Wang’s role. However, when reading between the lines and bringing in other contemporary sources, it becomes possible to see that Wang Yuanlu had a much more important part in the care, arrangement, and dispersal of the cave’s contents. While Stein’s published accounts had a ‘performative’ dimension, they also contain information about Wang’s custodianship of the caves, his relationship with the wider local community, his motivations for selling Cave 17’s contents, and the way he selected materials for the explorer’s ‘examination’. Therefore, this article critically examines these writings, contrasting them (when relevant) with material from his travel diaries, as well as Pelliot’s account and other contemporaneous sources in Chinese. It proposes a fuller picture of Wang Yuanlu—the ‘priestly librarian’Footnote 3 who could be considered as the first ‘curator’ of the cave’s contents—and highlights his agency in shaping the so-called Stein collection.
Abbot Wang: guardian of the Mogao Caves
Wang Yuanlu and the discovery of Cave 17
Little is known about Wang Yuanlu 王園祿 (Figure 1).Footnote 4 Much of the information we have about him comes from the accounts of Stein, Pelliot, and other foreign explorers.Footnote 5 Originally from Macheng 麻城 County in Hubei 湖北, he was born in circa 1849–1850. Later in life, having fled the drought and famine raging in his native province, he ended up at Jiuquan 酒泉 (then Suzhou 肅州) and served in the military.Footnote 6 During his service, Wang Yuanlu converted to Daoism under the guidance of a master named Shengdao 盛道.Footnote 7 After being discharged from the army, Wang became a Daoist priest. This earned him the nickname of Wang Daoshi 王道士 (‘the Daoshi’ for Stein).Footnote 8 At the extreme end of the nineteenth century, possibly between 1897 and 1899, Wang Yuanlu settled at the Mogao Caves complex 莫高窟 or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas 千佛洞, where he stayed until his death in 1931.
Figure 1. Portrait of Wang Yuanlu taken by Marc Aurel Stein in June 1907. Source: © From The British Library Collection: Photo 392/26(327).
The Mogao Caves are located within a close distance south-east of the oasis town of Dunhuang 敦煌, which was established as a frontier garrison outpost in the second century BCE and came to be a strategic spot at the cross of the Northern and the Southern Silk Roads. The first cave is said to have been carved in 366 CE by a Buddhist pilgrim monk and, over the next millennium, almost 1,000 caves and niches were gradually excavated in the sandstone cliff face, half of them richly decorated with painted murals and clay sculptures. In the fourteenth century, the land Silk Roads began to decline and the site gradually fell into disuse. When the Frenchman Charles-Eudes Bonin (1865–1929) visited the Mogao Caves in 1899, at around the same time as Wang Yuanlu himself arrived at the site, he commented on the fact that the caves on the lower level were in danger of being completely silted up if no one took adequate measures.Footnote 9 Little did he know that Wang had come to the same realisation.
Soon after settling down at the Mogao Caves, Wang Yuanlu started to collect donations from devout locals. With the money, he set about repairing the three-storey complex linked to the eminent ninth-century Monk Wu Hongbian.Footnote 10 By the time Stein arrived at the Mogao Caves, Wang had restored a large Buddhist cave on the ground floor (Cave 16) ‘to what he conceived to have been its original glory’.Footnote 11 Wang Yuanlu hired several workers to clear off drift sand and debris from its entrance. As they were slowly proceeding with their task, they accidentally stumbled upon a small hidden cave in June 1900.Footnote 12 Excavated in the north wall of the corridor and later closed off, the room was only a few cubic metres large. It was filled, from floor to ceiling, with manuscripts, paintings, textiles, and other artefacts. These items dated from the late fourth century to the beginning of the eleventh century—the time around which the cave commonly referred to as Cave 17, or the ‘library cave’, was probably sealed off.
Perhaps hoping to get some form of financial compensation or recognition for his pious endeavours, Wang Yuanlu immediately went to report the discovery to the local county magistrate, Yan Ze 嚴澤 (dates unknown). He took two manuscripts with him as proof, but no actions were taken. When the new county magistrate Wang Zonghan 汪宗翰 (b. 1845) came to Dunhuang in April 1902, he was informed of the existence of Cave 17 and given several of its items. In turn, Wang Zonghan wrote about this to the epigrapher Ye Changshi 葉昌熾 (1849–1917), who was Gansu provincial education commissioner from 1902 to 1906.Footnote 13 Furthermore, it appears that Wang Yuanlu also showed a case of manuscripts to the Qing official Ting Dong 廷棟 (1866–1918), but the latter did not regard these as important.Footnote 14 Based on Stein’s expedition report, ‘news of the discovery having reached distant Lanzhou, specimens of the manuscripts were asked for from provincial headquarters’.Footnote 15 However, ‘hours of diplomatic converse’ with Wang Yuanlu purportedly revealed to the explorer that ‘they had failed to attract any interest there’ and that:
[…] to Wang’s undisguised chagrin no further notice had been taken of his treasured old manuscripts or, indeed, of his pious labours which had led to their discovery. Officialdom had rested satisfied with a rough statement that the whole of the manuscripts would make up seven cartloads, and, evidently grudging the cost of transport or the trouble of close examination, had left the whole undisturbed in charge of the Tao-shih [Daoshi] as self-constituted guardian of the temple.Footnote 16
In any event, in May 1904, the provincial government ordered Wang Zonghan in Dunhuang to take measures for the preservation of Cave 17’s contents.Footnote 17 Some scholars have argued that he was also asked to take an inventory of the manuscripts and paintings.Footnote 18 As for Wang Yuanlu, to whom the overall responsibility of safeguarding the deposit was delegated, there is evidence that he took the necessary precautions to prevent anyone from entering the cave without his consent. In his travel diary, Stein recounts that he first heard of the manuscripts found at the Mogao Caves from Zahid Beg, a trader from Urumchi, who told him that these ‘had been locked by order’.Footnote 19 Indeed, Wang had attached a wooden door to the opening of the cave and kept the key. On 16 March 1907, when Stein and his Chinese secretary Jiang Xiaowan 蔣孝琬 or Jiang Shiye 蔣師爺Footnote 20 (d. 1922) first came to the Mogao Caves and tried to access the small cave, it was carefully locked in the absence of Wang Yuanlu, who had gone begging for alms around Dunhuang with two followers.Footnote 21 Upon returning two months later, on 21 May 1907, the British-Hungarian explorer found out that the narrow opening had been ‘completely walled up with brickwork’, allegedly to protect it from the intrusion of eager pilgrimsFootnote 22 but maybe also as a ‘special precaution taken against [his] inquisitive eyes'.Footnote 23 When the French Sinologist Paul Pelliot went to the Mogao Caves in 1908, the door to Cave 17 was also locked and he had to wait for Wang Yuanlu to meet him with the key.Footnote 24
We have therefore seen that Wang, who was already acting as the self-appointed caretaker of the Mogao Caves, came to oversee the protection Cave 17 and its contents in a semi-official capacity in the years following his extraordinary chance discovery. Having attempted to alert several officials, he was instructed to provisionally look after the small cave and its contents, and locked it for safety. We will now demonstrate that he was assuming this role not as a lone Daoist monk, but rather as a well-integrated member of the local religious community, including resident Buddhist monks.
Wang Yuanlu and the local Buddhist community
In 1894, the Russian officer and explorer Vsevolod Ivanovich Roborovsky (1856–1910) visited Dunhuang and noted that the Thousand Buddha Caves still attracted up to 10,000 worshippers every year.Footnote 25 Over a decade later, the annual celebrations that Stein witnessed on his way back from the Dunhuang Limes demonstrated that the caves, ‘notwithstanding all apparent decay, were still real cult places “in being”’. A few Buddhist dwellers also resided at the site. When Wang Yuanlu first put down roots at the Mogao Caves, three temples were located in front of the caves: the upper and middle temples were already occupied by Tibetan monks, so he moved to the lower temple in the southern section of the site.Footnote 26 Wang Jiqing has suggested that the lower temple was used for Daoist activities in the early 1820s, but that it later went unoccupied for a long time.Footnote 27 In 1907, Stein observed that Wang lived with two ‘humble acolytes’, likely the same two companions who went with him on begging tours, and that he appeared to ‘spen[d] next to nothing on his person or private interests’, channelling all the donations collected over the years ‘upon [these] labours of piety’.Footnote 28 The perception that Wang was dedicated and selflessness was also confirmed in the 1980s by a member of the Dunhuang Academy, Li Zhengyu 李正宇, who had derived the same information from local stories.Footnote 29
Wang Yuanlu was continuing or joining efforts to rehabilitate the site that had started before his arrival.Footnote 30 As explained by the Russian army officer Vsevolod Ivanovich Roborovsky, limited repairs were already underway when he visited the Mogao Caves in 1894:
The heshang 和尚 [monks] living there (4 people) complain that the government is taking no measures to repair the caves, whereas private donations for the purpose are scarce. So far only 5 or 6 caves have been put right; entrances to them have been mended, wooden annexes built and fanzas for heshang repaired.Footnote 31
In some of his correspondence, Stein referred to Wang Yuanlu as ‘the priest chiefly concerned’ with Cave 17,Footnote 32 which makes sense given the specific role he was entrusted with. His published narrative conveys the impression that Wang carried this responsibility with the awareness of resident Buddhist monks, who oversaw the care of the caves with him: ‘The shrine, though full of Buddhist frescoes and sculptures, was in charge of a Taoist priest, the small fraternity of Ho-shangs [he shang 和尚] or Buddhist monks, to which our guide belonged, peacefully sharing with him the guardianship of the site.’Footnote 33 From this description, we gain a picture of Wang Yuanlu not only living alongside local Buddhist monks, but also collaborating with them towards the same ends.
There is evidence that Wang granted them access to some of the items from Cave 17. As mentioned earlier, Stein had to wait before he could access the ‘walled-up library’ and take full measure of its treasures because Wang was not there when he first made his way to the Mogao Caves. In Serindia, Stein wrote that a young monk helped him and Jiang Xiaowan to locate the newly discovered hoard and agreed to show them one of the Chinese scrolls from Cave 17. The ‘beautifully preserved’ manuscript, ‘with its fine texture and carefully smoothed surface’, showed ‘excellent penmanship’ and had been lent to his spiritual master, a Tibetan lama, in order to give ‘additional lustre’ to his small private chapel.Footnote 34 Stein noted in his diaries that the specimen was brought by Jiang from the chapel of an absent monk and that a young monk acted as a guide—an account that appears to align with his published narrative.Footnote 35 A photograph taken in 1908 by Charles Nouette, the photographer of the expedition led by Paul Pelliot, also depicts a Buddhist monk engaged in ritual practice (Figure 2). He is standing before an altar on which he has set up a book, an incense burner, several statues, and a few other ritual objects. We can see paintings hanging in the background, two of which are now in the collections of the Musée Guimet in France.Footnote 36 If these paintings indeed came from Cave 17, then this suggests again that local Buddhist monks used some of the cave’s contents for religious purposes, presumably with Wang’s consent.Footnote 37
Figure 2. Photo of a monk taken between 25 February and 27 May 1908, AP8586. Source: © MNAAG, Paris, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/image musée Guimet.
That such a significant Buddhist complex—even one that had fallen into dereliction and relative disuse—ended up being overseen by a Daoist monk may seem surprising. One should remember that there probably was no real clear-cut divide between Daoism and Buddhism at the time. For instance, Stein remarked that the peoples of Dunhuang were ‘attached with particular zeal to such forms of worship as represent Buddhism in the queer medley of Chinese popular religion’.Footnote 38 Whether Wang Yuanlu was truly Daoist has been debated. For instance, László Bárdi highlighted that Wang was cited in an alternative fashion as a Daoist or a Buddhist, and that some sources indicate he changed status over time from a Daoist to a Buddhist monk.Footnote 39 It is not uncommon for Daoist practitioners to also venerate Buddhist deities, such as Guanyin.
In fact, Wang Yuanlu was most probably initiated to the Longmen branch of Quanzhen Daoism, which was present at Dunhuang then and remains one of the largest Daoist sects in China today.Footnote 40 Scholars have stressed that this particular branch of Daoism includes many elements that are indistinguishable from those of Buddhism.Footnote 41 According to Rong Xinjiang, the aim of Wang’s restorations was to convert Buddhist halls into Daoist shrines.Footnote 42 While Stein’s accounts referred to Wang’s works as ‘tokens of lingering Buddhist worship, genuine though distorted’,Footnote 43 his travel diary did mention an ‘invasion of Taoist imagery’ in the shrines.Footnote 44 Wang’s epitaph, inscribed on the tomb stone erected by two of his disciples in 1931, states that he was put in charge of the county’s Daoist Association by the magistrate Lu Qian 陸前 in recognition of his merits. Importantly, the epitaph stresses Wang’s genuine dedication to restoring the Mogao Caves, including the Buddhist statues, as well as his endeavour to convince people to contribute money towards these efforts.Footnote 45 As attested by a letter on red paper signed in his name, it seems that Wang Yuanlu even sent a plea for a large donation to the local administration following the transfer of Cave 17’s remaining contents to Beijing.Footnote 46
It is therefore clear that being a Daoist did not preclude Wang from revering the Mogao Caves as a Buddhist site and devoting his existence to their upkeep. According to the stele ‘Record of the Thousand Buddha Caves’ Thousand Images Pagoda’ by Ting Dong, Wang Yuanlu collected several damaged Buddha statues in 1910 and placed them in a specially built pagoda.Footnote 47 The pagoda was demolished in the 1940s and the artefacts it contained are now in the collections of the Dunhuang Academy.Footnote 48 There is further evidence that Wang Yuanlu’s worship extended to the contents of Cave 17, particularly textual materials. We know of two instances in which he directly used the manuscripts from the cave for devotional and merit-making purposes. A document in the Dunhuang county archives dated to 1910 recorded that, in 1908, he ‘loaded some Buddhist scrolls into two barrel-like containers, tightly sealed these and placed them on wooden poles inside a Buddhist hall, calling them sūtra-turning wheels’.Footnote 49 In 1944, the Dunhuang Academy also found 72 manuscripts inside a statue located in a Daoist temple built by Wang Yuanlu in the early 1900s.Footnote 50 Given the public and communal nature of these activities, it is highly likely that members of the resident Buddhist community knew of them.
We can now see that Wang Yuanlu, who made it his mission in life to raise funds towards the upkeep and restoration of the Mogao Caves, joined ongoing initiatives that had begun long before his arrival and was deeply connected to the site’s Buddhist monks. Upon finding Cave 17, he became responsible for safeguarding its contents, albeit as a representative of the local religious community at large. Both Wang and the resident monks established at the caves were using some of the cave’s manuscripts and paintings for their ritual activities. Such information calls for a deeper foray into Wang’s relationship with the contents of the small repository.
Wang Yuanlu and the contents of Cave 17
Contrary to what has been said, Wang Yuanlu was not illiterate. He possessed at least some rudimentary literacy and numeracy skills, as demonstrated by the fact he kept a list of the various donations he received.Footnote 51 The letter on red paper mentioned earlier in this article could have been written by Wang, even if it is unconfirmed. Furthermore, a Dunhuang manuscript in Ryukoku University’s Omiya Collection bears two inscriptions that have been tentatively attributed to him by the scholar Fang Guangchang, which could be evidence of his ability to write Chinese.Footnote 52 Stein’s assistant Jiang Xiaowan reported that Wang was ‘ignorant of all that constitutes traditional Chinese scholarship’.Footnote 53 Ironically, the two of them were ill-placed to make this observation: Stein deplored ‘the great hindrance created by [his] total want of Sinological training’ when faced with the mass of Chinese rolls from Cave 17,Footnote 54 while Jiang struggled to make sense of their Buddhist content.Footnote 55
With the help of his local network, Wang Yuanlu might have had an edge over them in identifying some of the texts from the small cave. During his visit in 1908, the French Sinologist Paul Pelliot observed perfectly ordered Tibetan manuscripts enclosed in wooden covers. Relying on information from some Tibetan monks, Wang identified them as a form of Kanjur, which Pelliot interpreted as an early version of the Tibetan Buddhist canon: ‘It seemed probable a priori that the perfectly ordered kia-pan, the only works in order in the whole library, represented a Kandjur; and this is precisely the information that the Wang tao gave me himself, based on the testimony of the lamas who have had access to the cave.’Footnote 56 While this turned out not to be strictly true, as the volumes contained copies of Perfection of Wisdom sutras, the lamas were perhaps identifying the volumes as ‘Kanjur’ because of their appearance and because they contained important canonical texts. Such large volumes could have served a similar ritual function to Kanjur collections in local monasteries. In any case, this indicates that Wang was able to gather valuable knowledge through local sources.
There is further reason to believe that Wang Yuanlu’s limited knowledge was sufficient for him to realise the importance of the manuscripts, paintings, and other relics that the cave contained. On numerous occasions, including some mentioned earlier, Wang gave away discreet batches from the newly found hoard to officials and dignitaries in Gansu, causing the early dispersal of Cave 17’s contents from 1900 onwards.Footnote 57 In doing so, Wang was perfectly able to select the better preserved, most complete, and aesthetically pleasing specimens. He hand-picked several beautiful paintings and removed Buddhist and Daoist scriptures that not only were finely written, but also happened to possess a high scholarly value.Footnote 58 Pelliot’s writings also reveal that there were copper statuettes in the cave, which Wang Yuanlu also used as gifts.Footnote 59 As stressed by Susan Whitfield, to find such exceptional specimens, Wang would have gone through a considerable number of items.Footnote 60
At some point between 1900 and 1904, Wang completely emptied Cave 17 before he received the order to put the whole ‘collection’ back in it.Footnote 61 During this process, he must have had the opportunity to form an overall idea of everything that had been deposited in the small room prior to its sealing-off. Because the scattering of the cave’s contents started very soon after its discovery, this makes Wang Yuanlu the only person who was ever close to knowing their full extent and original arrangement. Stein wrote that Wang was looking for ‘valuables’.Footnote 62 This somehow conveyed the image of Wang Yuanlu as an individual driven by greed. It would be more accurate to say that he was searching for valuable items, which could be understood in terms of their significance as well as their monetary value. Wasn’t the British-Hungarian explorer himself drawn to the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas by the promise of Cave 17’s hidden ‘treasures’?Footnote 63 Wang could have decanted the cave to get a better understanding of what was in there, perhaps even to reorder its contents into an arrangement that he deemed more adequate.
Wang Yuanlu certainly did play a vital role in the organisation of Cave 17’s contents when he rehoused them. Stein described what were two very distinct kinds of bundles in the cave: the ‘regular’ bundles, composed of uniform packets containing canonical Buddhist texts in Chinese and Tibetan that may have once belonged to monastic libraries; and the ‘miscellaneous’ or ‘mixed’ bundles, filled with fragmentary Chinese and Tibetan rolls, non-Chinese texts, paintings, textiles, and other ex-votos.Footnote 64 Wang had sorted and structured these bundles according to their type and physical characteristics. At the bottom, he had put several ‘miscellaneous’ bundles to ‘what he thought appropriate use in turning the floor at the foot of the north wall and on either side of the clay platform into a foundation level with the latter’.Footnote 65 In his diary, Stein recorded that some of these bundles, which contained pictures and waste paper, may even have been placed there to keep off the damp.Footnote 66 He had then built on this base a ‘wall-like array’ of ‘regular’ manuscript bundles, above which lay numerous irregularly shaped bundles with heterogeneous contents.Footnote 67 If anything, the way Wang rehoused the materials in the cave seemed careful and intentional, not haphazard.Footnote 68
Whether to raise awareness of the pious efforts that were being carried out and solicit donations or to genuinely alert people to this extraordinary discovery, Wang Yuanlu hand-picked hundreds of fine manuscripts, paintings, and other artefacts, and gifted them to officials, triggering their slow dispersal as early as 1900. He may not have realised the full historical, cultural, and scholarly value of the objects contained in the hoard, but this is not to say that he did not consider them to be important. Wang knew better than anyone what was inside Cave 17 and carefully reorganised the bundles in a way that reflected, as we will see below, his very own appraisal of the newly found repository’s collection.
Wang Yuanlu: disperser of Cave 17’s contents
Aurel Stein’s first visit to Dunhuang
Aurel Stein first visited Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves Buddhist complex during his second Central Asian expedition (1906–1908). The selection and acquisition of paintings, manuscripts, and other sacred relics from the cave turned out to be a gradual negotiation process, dependent in large part on the goodwill of Wang Yuanlu. In the words of the British-Hungarian explorer: ‘We never knew how long we might rely on the Tao-shih [Daoshi]’s indulgence.’Footnote 69 His writings reveal that Wang played a crucial role from the onset, determining to a large extent what Stein was eventually able to purchase. The whole transaction can be broken down in two distinct phases: the first phase unfolded between 22 May and 6 June 1907, while the second phase took place in around October of the same year.Footnote 70 We will now explore Stein's dealings with Wang Yuanlu on each of these occasions.
When Stein and his secretary Jiang Xiaowan first came to the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in March 1907, Wang Yuanlu was absent. However, they were shadowed by a young monk who revealed the location of Cave 17 and allowed them to examine one of the manuscripts lent to his master. Given how embedded Wang was in the small Buddhist monastic community at the site, he was most likely informed of the explorer’s visit. As Stein waited in town for the local festival and the annual pilgrimage to the caves to be over, Jiang contacted Wang Yuanlu and asked him to wait for them at the Mogao Caves.Footnote 71 Therefore, when Stein returned on 21 May of the same year, Wang immediately came to ‘welcome [him] at what for most of the year he might well claim as sacred ground entrusted to his own exclusive care’.Footnote 72
Stein’s description of Wang was particularly unflattering, conveying the image of a shifty-looking, deceitful, and untrustworthy individual: ‘He looked a very queer person, extremely shy and nervous, with an occasional expression of cunning which was far from encouraging. It was clear from the first that he would be a difficult person to handle.’Footnote 73 This is somewhat hypocritical, as the explorer himself proudly reported, in his published accounts, how he was using subterfuge. The next morning, in an attempt to disguise the main objective of his stay, he ‘avoided any long interview’ with Wang and pretended to be absorbed by ‘the survey of the main grottoes, and the photographing of the more notable frescoes’.Footnote 74 Yet, Stein was keen to ‘ascertain the true character and approximate date of the collection’ contained within the hoard.Footnote 75 He dispatched Jiang Xiaowan to ‘sound [D]aoshi about MSS, wishing to prepare [the] ground slowly. Priest ready to show collection, & before evening S.[hiye] saw it, a large recess crammed full with MSS. to roof!’Footnote 76
Stein had hoped to see the manuscripts ‘in their original place of deposit',Footnote 77 but this initial conversation was not the open sesame they had expected. Wang Yuanlu consented, ‘with various meticulous reservations’, only to let Stein see ‘such specimens of the collection as he might conveniently lay his hands on’.Footnote 78 The mere suggestion that the explorer may wish to acquire a few manuscripts caused Wang ‘manifestly genuine perturbation’.Footnote 79 Concerned that the promise of money might not overcome the religious scruples and fear of popular resentment that Stein believed motivated Wang Yuanlu’s reluctance, he decided to pay him a formal visit.Footnote 80 He asked to see the restored Cave 16, known to be Wang’s ‘chief care’,Footnote 81 as well as ‘the pride and the mainstay of his [Dunhuang] existence’.Footnote 82 In a famous episode from his published accounts (not recorded in his diaries),Footnote 83 Stein sought to win Wang's trust by invoking the seventh-century Buddhist monk Xuanzang 玄奘:
More than once before, my well-known attachment to the memory of Hsuan-tsang [Xuanzang], the greatest of those pilgrims, had been helpful in securing me a sympathetic hearing both among the learned and the simple. Wang Tao-shih [Daoshi], too, had probably heard about it. […] I thought it appropriate to tell Wang Tao-shih [Daoshi], as well as my poor Chinese would permit, of my devotion to the saintly traveller; how I had followed his footsteps from India for over ten thousand Li across inhospitable mountains and deserts; how in the course of the pilgrimage I had traced to its present ruins, however inaccessible, many a sanctuary he had previously visited and described; and so on.Footnote 84
Late that night, Jiang came to Stein’s tent bearing a ‘small bundle of manuscript rolls’ that Wang had secretly given him.Footnote 85 It must have belonged to the ‘regular’ bundles, for it contained several Chinese sutras, ‘all neatly rolled up and enclosed in cotton wrappers’.Footnote 86 A note at the beginning of several scrolls in Chinese stated that they had been first brought from India and translated by Xuanzang, whom Stein called his ‘Chinese patron saint’. Both Stein and Jiang Xiaowan assumed this auspicious sign could only be a coincidence since ‘Wang Tao-shih [Daoshi] in his ignorance could have had no inkling, when he picked up those specimens, of their connexion with [Xuanzang]’s sacred memory’.Footnote 87 Was it just a lucky accident? It is unlikely: these fine manuscripts probably came from the ‘regular’ bundles filled with canonical texts, so Wang must have extracted them specifically. If the conversation about Xuanzang did take place that very afternoon, then it is worth considering whether Wang was using these scrolls as ‘bait’ to start the negotiations with Stein.
The following day, 23 May 1907, Wang Yuanlu finally opened the door to Cave 17, which Stein depicted as a ‘black hole’ where ‘no examination of the manuscripts would be possible’.Footnote 88 It was agreed that Wang would continue to take out a bundle or two at a time and allow them to ‘look rapidly through their contents in a less cramped and dark part of the temple precincts’.Footnote 89 A small room in the antechapel of Cave 16, sheltered from view, was turned into an improvised ‘reading room’ for Stein and Jiang, who had to work quickly for fear that Wang might change his mind.Footnote 90 Responsible for retrieving items, Wang Yuanlu began with the ‘miscellaneous’ bundles he had stacked atop the ‘regular’ bundles.Footnote 91 Stein thus looked through a ‘large bundle of silk and cotton banners and prayer flags’, two Chinese bundles, ‘a large convolute of mixed papers’, and ‘one packet of large C[entral] A[sian] sheets’.Footnote 92
The explorer remarked that ‘it was mere chance, too, what bundles the Tao-shih [Daoshi] would hand [them] out’.Footnote 93 In fact, Wang was carefully planning what to deliver, focusing on the items he valued the least. The position of the ‘miscellaneous’ bundles made them easy to reach, but, more importantly, their selection was deliberate. While Wang Yuanlu appeared indifferent to Stein sifting through these bundles, he was by contrast eager to shield the regular ones from him: ‘The secret hope of diverting by their sacrifice my attention from the precious rolls of Chinese canonical texts or “Ching” [jing 經] made him now more assiduously grope for and hand out bundles of what he evidently classed under the head of miscellaneous rubbish.’Footnote 94
Thanks to Jiang’s persuasion, Wang consented to letting them remove the items that they were putting aside, provided that they exercised the utmost discretion and acted in secret:Footnote 95
The Tao-shih [Daoshi] had summoned up the courage to fall in with my wishes, on the solemn condition that nobody besides us three was to get the slightest inkling of what was being transacted, and that as long as I kept Chinese soil the origin of these ‘finds’ was not to be revealed to any living being.Footnote 96
Wang Yuanlu did not want to be seen outside his quarters at night, so Jiang Xiaowan acted as courier, carrying documents back to Stein’s tent while everyone else slept.Footnote 97 This demonstrates that Wang remained in control and dictated the terms of the transaction.
Stein spent five days working through ‘miscellaneous’ bundles, gathering items he considered of special interest: ‘everything that possessed artistic or archaeological value, and whatever manuscripts in Indian or Central Asian languages could be traced’.Footnote 98 He was surprised and delighted that Wang ‘raised no objection when [he] put aside rapidly “for closer inspection” the best of the pictures on silk, linen, and paper I could lay my hands on’.Footnote 99 He hand-picked some banners, paintings, and several manuscripts in Brahmi, Sanskrit, and Uyghur, written in a variety of formats. He also extracted any secular texts in Chinese, drawings, and woodblock prints that he came across.Footnote 100
Despite the remarkable ‘finds’ already made, Stein was still intent on accessing the ‘rampart’ of regular manuscript bundles ‘rising against the walls of the chapel’.Footnote 101 Wang Yuanlu was initially reluctant, resisting the 'heavy labour of clearing out the whole chamber' and the ‘risk of exposure thus involved', but he eventually started removing the regular bundles with the help of an assistant.Footnote 102 As Stein’s diaries hint, the prospect of a donation may have swayed him:
During morning, Wang opened question as to donation for temple. Took up the theme in order to introduce question of purchase. No definite offer could be made until I had seen the full extent of the collection. So Wang, his helpmate and Sieh [Shiye] slaved all the afternoon in clearing out bundles of MSS. From cella.Footnote 103
By nightfall on 27 May 1907, the entire collection of regular bundles had been arranged in neat rows in the cella of Cave 16 (Figure 3).Footnote 104 Stein and Jiang Xiaowan quickly selected items, without breaking pace to unfold scrolls or check their backs,Footnote 105 mindful that Wang Yuanlu was uneasy about their handling of material he clearly highly valued, particularly the Chinese sutras.Footnote 106 The operation also yielded an unexpected bonus, for several large miscellaneous bundles, placed by Wang Yuanlu at the very bottom, were now revealed. They contained exquisite silk paintings and textiles that Stein set aside among his ‘selections’.Footnote 107
Figure 3. Image showing piled-up manuscript bundles and tables outside of Cave 17, in the corridor leading to Cave 16. Source: M. A. Stein, Serindia: Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost China, etc. (Oxford, 1921), vol. ii, fig. 200.
Having grown increasingly tense, Wang was now keen to conclude his proceedings with the explorer: ‘While asking for a substantial subscription to his temple, he yet protested that any cession of sacred texts or “Chings [jing 經]”—and among these he classed all Chinese manuscript rolls, whatever their contents might be—was impossible.’Footnote 108 Stein then attempted to acquire the whole hoard, but Wang Yuanlu categorically refused, and his insistence only worsened the situation.Footnote 109 In his diaries, Stein wrote that Wang raised difficulties ‘about [the] consent of donors’,Footnote 110 further expanding on this in his published accounts:
The Tao-shih [Daoshi] persisted in urging with all signs of sincere anxiety that any deficiency in those piles of sacred texts was bound to be noticed by his patrons, whose publicly recorded subscriptions had helped him to clear and restore the temple; this would lead to the loss of the position which he had built up for himself in the district by the pious labours of eight years and to the destruction of his life’s task. Former scruples reasserting themselves, he reproached himself for having given up sacred objects which his patrons had as much right to control as he had, and doggedly asserted the need of consulting them before taking any further step.Footnote 111
When Stein went to skim through the regular bundles in search of interesting materials the next day, he realised that Wang Yuanlu had shifted almost all of them back into Cave 17 overnight. In his published accounts, he recounted how they had nevertheless reached a compromise, assuring him of ‘fifty well-preserved bundles of Chinese text rolls and five of Tibetan ones, besides all [his] previous selections from the miscellaneous bundles’.Footnote 112 His personal diaries precise that Wang had left behind between 30 and 40 less well-preserved rolls and was only persuaded to ‘extract from [the recess] about half of [the] finally selected bundles', amounting to ‘5 Tib[etan] rolled bundles; 3 large packets of Tib.[etan] pothis (among them two compl[ete] works & large portions of 7-8 others); 40 Chin.[ese] bundles (among them 2-3 misc.[ellaneous], 1 with frag.[ments])', as well as ‘6 large bundles of silk and other pictures'.Footnote 113 Now that the bundles were safely back in the cave, Wang could choose again which ones he deemed acceptable to part with. For instance, he also presented the explorer with ‘several broken bundles', and a ‘large silk embroidered Buddha curtain, app[arently] lifesize'.Footnote 114 This is most probably the splendid embroidery of the Buddha flanked by two disciples now held in the British Museum collections.Footnote 115
Once the transaction was complete, Wang went to Dunhuang to beg for alms. Considering what he had said about his patrons' right to decide the fate of the manuscripts, he may have used this opportunity to ask them whether they supported his dealings with Stein. Stein’s report notes that, upon coming back from town a week later, Wang seemed ‘reassured that the secret had not been discovered, and that his spiritual influence, such as it was, had suffered no diminution’.Footnote 116 Perhaps encouraged by his sponsors’ approval, Wang was sufficiently emboldened to let Stein purchase 20 regular bundles of manuscripts, with additional selections from the ‘mixed’ bundles.
The explorer left the Mogao Caves on 12 June 1907, with seven cases full of manuscripts and five cases of paintings, embroideries, and other items:
I had the satisfaction of seeing that the shy Tao-shih [Daoshi], honest in his own way, now breathed freely again. It seemed almost as if in a dim way he recognized that it was a pious act on his part to let me rescue for Western scholarship as much as circumstances would permit of those ancient Buddhist relics which local ignorance would allow to lie here neglected or to be lost in the end. When I finally took my departure from the ‘Halls of the Thousand Buddhas’, his quaint, sharp-cut face had resumed its customary expression of shy but self-contented serenity.Footnote 117
For Wang, the true ‘pious act’ was selling the cave’s contents to fund the renovation work that preoccupied him. As he and other monks actively used the manuscripts and paintings for religious purposes, their ‘neglect’ was hardly a concern. Having been conflicted throughout his negotiations with Stein, Wang Yuanlu was undoubtedly relieved to see him go.
The second phase of Stein’s acquisitions took place four months later, when he stopped at Anxi to retrieve the cases of antiquities he had left with the magistrate on his way back from Jiuquan. Through a messenger he sent a written proposal for further ‘selections’ from Cave 17, which was ‘met with a cautious response’.Footnote 118 In his answer, received on 27 September 1907, Wang Yuanlu specified the price he expected per 100 bundles, already setting the tone of the transaction.Footnote 119 To avoid raising suspicions, Stein stayed behind and entrusted negotiations to his Chinese secretary.Footnote 120 Jiang Xiaowan departed for the Mogao Caves on 29 September with 600 taels, intending to reach the site by 2 October and to be back by the sixth.Footnote 121 On the evening of 4 October 1907, the convoy returned with four camels heavily laden with manuscripts, having marched by night to avoid attention.Footnote 122 In his personal narrative, Stein recounted the ‘secret mission’ as a resounding success: ‘How he had managed to secure the timorous Taoist monk, and to induce him for a very reasonable recompense to hand out at night over two hundred additional bundles of Chinese texts, was quite a dramatic story. The whole was managed most discreetly.’Footnote 123
The explorer’s field diary offers slightly different insights. When Jiang reached the caves on 1 October 1907, Wang Yuanlu was away and had to be fetched by his ‘famulus’ on a donkey. Despite Jiang’s efforts, Wang refused to reduce his price or agree to further sales. He was particularly unwilling to part with some Tibetan manuscripts, in which a group of lamas had expressed an interest:
It appears Tib.[etan] Mss. are to be taken over by some 6–9 red-robed Tib.[etan] monks who wish to keep them in a separate shrine. These men made Tao-shih [Daoshi] nervous. 200 bundles were taken out from dark hole without previous selection; but [Jiang Siye] says he rejected ‘lan-di’ ones. Packing done hurriedly within cave and sacks put on shotas within.Footnote 124
This passage demonstrates again that Wang was guiding the selection process and suggests that the local Buddhist community influenced negotiations, as Wang prioritised the monks’ interests in this instance. Although Wang Yuanlu ceded a large share of Chinese and Tibetan manuscripts, he controlled the transaction at every stage. Jiang Xiaowan's rejection of several ‘lan-di’ (spoiled or decayed) bundles also indicates that Wang Yuanlu tried to release manuscripts of lesser value.Footnote 125 By contrast, when selecting gifts for officials, Wang had chosen particularly fine manuscripts, with beautiful handwriting and in excellent condition. Upon leaving Dunhuang in mid June 1907, Stein had taken with him over 90 bundles of manuscripts, containing about 1,200 separate texts in rolls or ‘Pothis’. This new tranche of materials was even more significant: it comprised 230 of the regular bundles, ‘rais[ing] the number of texts to close on 4,000’.Footnote 126
When Stein met Wang, he quickly understood that the preservation of the Mogao Caves was key to him. He saw in his pious endeavours powerful motivation to sell the contents of Cave 17, while Wang saw in Stein an opportunity to get money for the site's upkeep. Yet, throughout the ensuing transactions, Wang Yuanlu proved nervous and conflicted, especially about parting with the ‘regular’ bundles of Buddhist sutras. As we have seen, this was due to the high value the local religious community placed on these materials. Wang set the conditions for their ‘exchange’: he chose most of the bundles for Stein’s examination, stipulated that the items be transferred at night in the greatest secrecy, and probably pre-selected the bundles presented to Jiang when he returned on his own.
Wang Yuanlu and Paul Pelliot
Less than a year after Stein, on 12 February 1908, Paul Pelliot arrived at Dunhuang, where he stayed until the beginning of June 1908. During his sojourn in Urumqi at the end of 1907, he had heard of the newly found repository at the Mogao Caves complex and had been shown an eighth-century manuscript from Cave 17.Footnote 127 This had made him even more eager to reach the Thousand Buddha Caves, which were already on his itinerary when he left France. Once there, Pelliot also purchased a sizeable portion of the cave’s contents from Wang Yuanlu. Stein may have been the first Western explorer to see the newly discovered cache, but I would argue that Pelliot’s luck was to have come in second place. It may have resulted in his securing some of the ‘rarest’ pieces.
By the time Pelliot came to the Mogao Caves, Wang had had several months to see whether there were any repercussions to selling crates’ worth of materials from the small cave to Stein. The benefits must have outweighed the negatives, as he was ready to engage in another such transaction with Pelliot. According to the French Sinologist:
Mr. Stein had worked in the cave for three days, and officially bought a certain number of manuscripts, with the knowledge of the local mandarin; the monk added that our colleague [Stein] had also personally left him a sum, which he said was plump, to get more [manuscripts]. A word to the wise; I knew for certain the procedure to adopt myself.Footnote 128
There is no evidence that Wang Yuanlu ever made any sort of agreement with the local official—if anything, this is at odds with the discretion that Stein was asked to use during their interactions. Could this have been a lie that was meant to put Pelliot at ease and convince him to engage in a financial deal with Wang?
While Wang Yuanlu had resisted giving Stein full access to the small repository, insisting on handing him preselected bundles of materials, he showed no such resistance when the Frenchman came. Interestingly, Wang no longer seemed concerned about people finding out what Pelliot was up to. He had asked Stein and Jiang to work in a screened room during the day and to remove materials ‘for further examination’ (knowing what this implied) at night, yet Pelliot made no mention of any such stipulations. For three weeks, from 3 March 1908, Pelliot used the small space left by the items Stein had removed, squatting inside the niche to examine as many items as possible. He was amazed to find many of the bundles still intact and sewn up.Footnote 129 During the first ten days, he managed to freely check up to 1,000 scrolls a day.Footnote 130 A photograph shows him crouching in Cave 17, with piles of materials behind him.
Several of Pelliot’s selection criteria were similar to Stein’s. He too prioritised scrolls written in languages such as Uyghur or Brahmi: ‘My ignorance simplified the choice of non-Chinese documents. I distinguish many letters and their alphabet, but the meaning escapes me; to leave nothing interesting behind, I acquired everything.’Footnote 131 Pelliot sought to acquire most of the remaining Tibetan documents, putting aside ‘about five hundred kilos of manuscripts dating back to the first four centuries of Tibetan Buddhism’.Footnote 132 He also focused on the Chinese manuscripts with dated colophons, non-Buddhist texts, and other historically significant documents. His mastery of classical Chinese enabled him to better sort through materials in this language, including non-canonical Buddhist texts. Unlike Stein, who had insisted on the ‘regular’ or ‘library’ bundles, Pelliot had little interest in them. He deliberately discarded the Chinese copies of the Lotus Sutra and the Nirvana Sutra.Footnote 133 This may explain why he did not face the same resistance from Wang Yuanlu, who valued canonical sutras most highly.
Overall, Wang did not object to Pelliot’s selections, but he did not let him acquire everything either. Pelliot was keen to have the huge Tibetan pothi stacked in perfect order in a corner of the cave that Wang Yuanlu identified as a form of Kanjur or Tibetan Buddhist canon.Footnote 134 Wang explained that a Mongol prince from Qaidam, who travelled to the Mogao Caves every year, had got into the habit of consulting them each time. He refused to part with them to avoid upsetting the regular visitor.Footnote 135 Despite protracted negotiations, Wang conceded only three volumes.Footnote 136 To divert the Sinologist’s attention and safeguard these Tibetan copies of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, Wang Yuanlu offered Pelliot several paintings. He claimed that they were the best and had been set aside long ago.Footnote 137 Stein was likely correct in thinking that Wang had handed him what he considered to be ‘rubbish’Footnote 138 because he had obviously held onto the items more important to him.
In August and September 1909, Pelliot travelled to Beijing to buy books for the Bibliothèque nationale de France. He brought a small selection of Dunhuang manuscripts, which several scholars examined and photographed. They formed an association to reproduce and publish the most important texts.Footnote 139 This marked a turning point, as Chinese scholars became aware of the value of Cave 17’s contents. They petitioned the Qing Ministry of Education, which ordered in 1910 that the remaining manuscripts should be sent to Beijing for safekeeping. Unfortunately, there were several instances of theft and loss during their transfer to the capital.Footnote 140
Wang Yuanlu’s attitude was markedly different during Pelliot’s visit in 1908. Although it is often said that Pelliot gained better access thanks to his excellent Chinese, other factors were probably at play. By then, Wang had established his own boundaries regarding what could and could not be sold, possibly in accord with his lay patrons and the local monastic community. Furthermore, unlike Stein, who insisted on purchasing materials from the regular bundles, Pelliot was not interested in collecting Buddhist canonical texts, which may have reduced tension in his dealings with Wang.
Acquisitions by other explorers and Stein’s second visit to Dunhuang
As we have seen, most of Cave 17’s remaining manuscripts were transferred to Beijing in 1910. In the letter written on red paper mentioned in the first part of this article, Wang Yuanlu complained that he had not received the amount of money promised for his restoration work. He also mentioned ‘donating’ thousands of scrolls to Stein and Pelliot, although he was careful to use a turn of phrase emphasising the piety of this act.Footnote 141 This shows that Wang did not attempt to hide that he had given a large number of items to the two foreigners, even if he did not mention that he did so against payment. What he kept quiet, however, is that he had disobeyed official orders and secreted hundreds of items.
In 1911–1912, Wang Yuanlu sold several hundreds of manuscripts from his stash to members of the third Ōtani expedition (1910–1914).Footnote 142 While waiting for Tachibana Zuichō 橘瑞超 (1890–1968), the leader of the expedition, Yoshikawa Koichirō 吉川小一郎 (1885–1978), began examining the Mogao Caves and taking photographs of the murals on 17 October 1911. At the site he bought two carved statues from Wang, who made a special journey to Dunhuang the next day to sell him some ‘Tang sutras’. In December, Wang visited again, explaining that the country’s turmoil would prevent him from getting funds from Suzhou’s Yamen for the restoration of the caves. He was asked to come back with a better set of manuscripts and returned in early January 1912 with scrolls written in a script Yoshikawa identified as Mongolian and preferred not to buy. In his diaries, the Japanese explorer wrote that he suspected Wang Yuanlu of having made a secret arrangement with his landlord.Footnote 143 He also compared the attitude of the Daoist priest with Cave 17’s Tang sutras to that of a thief ‘carrying stolen goods’.Footnote 144
After months of delay, Tachibana Zuichō finally arrived in Dunhuang and went to the Mogao Caves with Yoshikawa. They bought 169 scrolls and asked Wang Yuanlu to bring better manuscripts. Wang came back with 200 additional items, some of which they thought were forgeries, prompting them to sort the scrolls into three categories by quality. On 4 February 1912, Wang brought another batch of 200 Buddhist scrolls in Chinese that Yoshikawa and Tachibana also purchased.Footnote 145 They left town a few days later. Yoshikawa returned to Dunhuang on his own in February 1913 and acquired approximately 80 scrolls from Wang.Footnote 146 A large proportion of these were Tibetan copies of the Aparamitayus Sutra, which would presumably have been in the regular ‘library’ bundles.Footnote 147
When Stein stopped at Dunhuang again in 1914, during his third Central Asian expedition (1913–1916), Wang was still in possession of manuscripts from Cave 17. Wang Yuanlu welcomed Stein to town and cordially invited him to the Mogao Caves, hinting that his own store of ancient manuscripts had not yet been exhausted.Footnote 148 Wang also told him ‘with a bitterness only too justified’ that he had received none of the large sum assigned by the Central Government as compensation for the removal of the manuscripts.Footnote 149 The money had vanished on the way, ‘duly absorbed in transit through various offices’,Footnote 150 and he regretted ‘not having previously had the courage and wisdom to accept the big offer that [Stein] had made through Jiang S[h]iye for the whole collection en bloc’.Footnote 151 Wang Yuanlu’s patrons felt the same and were probably aware of his actions. As Stein wrote:
His devout clientèle among the Tun-huang population, seeing how well he had laid out the sums received, first from myself and then from Pei Ta jên, i.e. M. Pelliot, in building new gaudy chapels and a large, comfortable hospice, seemed to agree in sharing his feelings. They, no doubt, fully approved too of the shrewd precaution which the honest Taoist monk had taken against the official spoliation of the temple becoming too complete.Footnote 152
Stein made his way to the site on 2 April 1914. The following day, he received confirmation that Wang had indeed put away a ‘nest egg’ of Chinese manuscripts.Footnote 153 Wang showed him two large boxes crammed with sutra rolls whose handwriting, high-quality paper, Buddhist content, and dating indicated they came from the ‘regular' bundles that ‘Wang Tao-shih [Daoshi], under the influence of quasi-religious scruples, had in 1907 been least willing to part.’Footnote 154 Almost all these scrolls, Stein noted, were large (often complete) and in remarkably good condition.Footnote 155 Wang had deliberately retained the finest specimens, displaying the very qualities that had guided his choice of gifts for Gansu officials as early as 1900.
This time, Stein did not ‘reasonably hope for any finds of outstanding importance’, since Pelliot had likely examined most of the manuscripts and selected all the non-Chinese texts, along with any Chinese texts of obvious interest.Footnote 156 Frustratingly for Stein, however, Wang Yuanlu now demanded a much higher ‘donation’ than in 1907. Not only had Wang learned from his dealings with other explorers, but he also wanted appropriate compensation for scrolls he regarded as especially valuable:
his shrewd sense of business had been awakened by the payments received from subsequent visitors to a keener comprehension of the money value of what he retained. He consequently held out at first for a price per roll which, being about four times as much as that paid on the occasion of [Jiang Shiye 師爺]’s big haul of October, 1907, seemed distinctly too high. No doubt Wang’s estimate was greatly influenced by the fact that the rolls he was now prepared to part with were almost all large ones and particularly well preserved.Footnote 157
In the end, Stein purchased 570 Buddhist manuscripts, filling a total of five cases, ‘each as large as a pony could conveniently carry’.Footnote 158 What he acquired was once again shaped by Wang Yuanlu, who had mainly Buddhist canonical texts in Chinese, some dating as early as the fifth and sixth centuries. In addition, to seal their deal, he also presented him with a collection of relief stucco plaques that he had supposedly found in another cave.Footnote 159
During Stein’s second visit, Wang showed him his accounts and the new structures that had appeared over the past seven years, largely funded by the 1907 payments in exchange for his ‘selections’. Right opposite Cave 16 and Cave 17 now stood a guest house, a series of shrines, and a few facilities that ‘attested the little priest’s single-minded ambition to restore, according to his lights, the glory and popular attractions of the ancient sacred site’.Footnote 160 Several wall paintings and stucco sculptures had also been restored. Elsewhere, substantial work had been done to remove the drift sand blocking the lower-level caves and to render the upper-level caves accessible by ‘cutting passages from one cave-shrine to another right through the rock wall separating them’.Footnote 161
As Stein left with his new acquisitions, he could not help but wonder ‘whether the contents of the two big boxes of manuscripts which Wang Tao-shih [Daoshi] kept in his store-room really represented the whole of the reserve he had managed to retain’.Footnote 162 There is no way to confirm his suspicions. In August 1914, the Russian orientalist and Buddhist scholar Sergey Oldenburg (1863–1934), who was leading his second Russian Turkestan expedition (1914–1915), travelled to Dunhuang. His team systematically studied and reproduced the pictorial and sculptural remains of the Mogao Caves, compiling an account of all caves, making floor plans, taking photographs, and copying murals. They gathered 19,000 Dunhuang manuscripts, mostly fragments, as well as over 350 paintings, acquired primarily from other caves rather than Cave 17.Footnote 163
By the time Stein returned to Dunhuang in 1914, most of Cave 17's contents had been removed. Even so, he secured another 600 fine Buddhist scrolls from Wang Yuanlu, who still possessed manuscripts from the small cache. Having learned from his dealings with Pelliot and the members of the Ōtani expedition, Wang was now determined to obtain fair payment to finance his restoration work. These manuscripts are now held at the British Library. Again, Stein was only able to choose from the materials that were made available to him and, in that sense, Wang played a determining role in shaping the collection that the explorer was gathering.
Conclusion
Wang Yuanlu—the man whose pious restoration work led to one of the most astonishing discoveries of the twentieth century—is a fascinating character. This article provides a more nuanced understanding of Wang by examining his relationship with the Mogao Caves and their wider ecosystem (especially the community of local Buddhist monks and the lay donors who funded his enterprises), by tracing how he conducted his transactions with Stein in 1907 and 1914, and by contrasting these with his dealings with other explorers. We argue here that Wang is not so much an ‘obscure’ as an ‘obscured’ figure.
Aurel Stein’s detailed writings and other sources belie the simplistic image of a ‘quaint priest, with [a] curious mixture of pious zeal, naïve ignorance, and astute tenacity of purpose’,Footnote 164 who was swayed to sell thousands of manuscripts and other artefacts out of his and Stein's shared admiration for Xuanzang or a belief that letting Stein take some of the manuscripts to Buddhism's homeland would earn him some spiritual merit.Footnote 165 Wang exercised far more agency than he is usually credited with, yet he should not be reduced to a thief or even a shrewd businessman who treated Cave 17's contents as mere commodities. As noted by Justin Jacobs, he ‘sought to control access to his “goods,” carefully manage his “stock,” and “sell” them on his own terms’.Footnote 166 This insight, however, does not reflect the full range of his motivation.
Wang Yuanlu, who took it upon himself to act as guardian of the Mogao Caves and joined ongoing restoration efforts, can be considered the first ‘curator’ or ‘keeper’ of Cave 17 and its contents. He alerted the authorities to the newly found hoard and, left in charge of preserving the collection, installed a locked door and reorganised the room according to what he deemed a more suitable arrangement. Contrary to Stein’s accounts, Wang was far from unaware of the nature of the cave’s contents. He collaborated with resident Buddhist monks, drawing on their expertise to identify some materials and lending them items for ritual purposes. He also hand-picked fine specimens as gifts for Gansu officials. Finally, having completely emptied and restacked Cave 17, he would have had a good grasp of its contents.
Equally important is Wang's role in shaping the now so-called Dunhuang Stein collection. Throughout his transactions with Stein, he was concerned with controlling the conditions of the exchange. When Stein first visited the Mogao Caves in 1907, he was not allowed free access to the repository and largely had to rely on Wang’s choice of bundles to make selections. Stein and Jiang had to act in quasi-secrecy to avoid arousing suspicion. Wang Yuanlu was particularly protective of the Buddhist canonical texts that formed the bulk of the ‘regular bundles’, which he had safely sandwiched between top and bottom layers of ‘miscellaneous’ bundles. To distract Stein, he supplied one miscellaneous bundle after another, filled with materials he considered ‘rubbish’ or almost worthless—that is, paintings, drawings, printed documents, and texts in Central Asian languages. This is how the embroidery of the Buddha at the Vultures Peak or the 868 printed copy of the Diamond Sutra ended up in the United Kingdom.Footnote 167 Stein nevertheless secured a substantial number of ‘regular’ bundles in 1907 and 1914, explaining why the British Library’s Stein collection contains multiple copies of the same scripture, including the Lotus Sutra and the Diamond Sutra in Chinese.
Ultimately, Wang Yuanlu made a judgement call between the relative importance of the Mogao Caves site as a whole versus that of Cave 17’s contents. For him, enabling repair works to what had been a thriving Buddhist pilgrimage centre was a pious duty to which he devoted his life, channelling money from his begging tours and the sale of manuscripts into clearing sand, repairing statues and paintings, and restoring shrines. His decision was made not only from the perspective of living practice as opposed to that of scholarship but also collectively. Although Wang avoided drawing attention to his dealings with Stein, it is likely that local Buddhist monks were aware. Wang himself told Stein he was keen to consult the donors funding his initiatives. This may explain why his later transactions with Pelliot and others were conducted more openly. What seems clear is that his reputation was not diminished when he died in 1931; his disciples obtained permission from local authorities to erect a stupa in his honour, opposite the caves.Footnote 168
Acknowledgements
The research underpinning this article was made possible by a British Library Coleridge Research Fellowship.
Conflicts of interest
None.
