Bibliothèque nationale de France donates digital versions of Dunhuang manuscripts to National Digital Library of China

More than 5,300 digital copies of historical documents and more than 13,000 pictures related to the ancient grottoes in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, are now available on the website of the National Digital Library of China. After signing up, visitors can search and go through all these sources by simply clicking on the ancient books button.

Since 2015, when the Bibliothèque nationale de France donated the painting series Forty Scenes of the Yuanmingyuan to the National Library of China, the two organizations have worked together on the digitization of materials from Dunhuang.

Over the years, digitization efforts overseas have enabled numerous significant ancient works to return to China in digital form, such as Forty Scenes of the Yuanmingyuan, copies of the Yongle Canon located at Harvard University, Oxford University, The British Library and the National library of Berlin, as well as the Si Xi Zang at the Kaiganzan Iwayaji Temple of Japan.

Currently, there are more than 25,768 documents and over 10 million pictures available to the public in the database of ancient books on the National Digital Library of China website.

Dunhuang was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road and is well-known for its Mogao Caves, in which numerous manuscripts dating back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907) were discovered.