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Bring the Silk Roads to life
Explore manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from the Eastern Silk Roads, as well as a range of associated resources curated for you.
Founded in 1994, the International Dunhuang Programme (IDP) is a pioneering international collaboration that brings together online collections from the Eastern Silk Roads and promotes understandings of the history and cultures of the region.
Featured items
A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang
Virtual Exhibition
Learn about personal stories from ancient Dunhuang in an immersive virtual exhibition.
Dunhuang
Learning resource
Learn about the significance of Dunhuang on the Silk Roads through articles, collection items, a timeline and more.
Lotus Sutra Project
Conservation and digitisation project
See the results and conference from the Lotus Sutra Project, active between 2017 and 2022.
The Diamond Sutra
Collection Item
View the world’s earliest dated printed book, made in 868 CE.
The Story of the Caves
Event
Discover how the remarkable discovery of the “Library Cave” transformed our understanding of the Silk Road.
Our news
Unfolding the Eighty-Fascicle Huayan jing: Tracing Manuscripts from the Stein Collection at the British Library
This guest blog post was written by Wu Luchun 吳廬春 , J. S. Lee Research Fellow at the British Library and an Archive Curator at …
Shaping the Stein collection’s Dunhuang corpus (3): The items from Cave 17's 'regular' bundles
Having focused in a previous blog post on what was in the ‘miscellaneous’ bundles found in Cave 17, we now turn to the second major …
A Silk Road Oasis Symposium Recordings Available Now
To celebrate the successful close of the exhibition A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang, the British Library and the IDP hosted a symposium …
Sister, Master, Guardian of Dharma – Life of Nun Liaokong and the Dating of a Scroll
This blog post is by Zining Zheng, independent scholar and researcher of Chinese Historical Phonology and related subjects. This blog discusses scroll Or.8210/S.2669 which was …
Two Precious Items Copied by a Sogdian Scribe
This blog post is by Ursula Sims-Williams, Lead Curator of Persian at the British Library. This blog discusses the Ashem vohu (British Library, Or.8212/84), which …
Scribes at Dunhuang: Pens, Paper and Punishments
As showcased in the current exhibition at the British Library, A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang (27 September 2024–23 February 2025), the manuscripts …
Programme of 'A Silk Road Oasis Symposium: Exploring Dunhuang's Multifaceted Legacy'
Don’t miss our two-day symposium on February 21-22, celebrating the closing of the exhibition A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang. Held in person …
An Omen-filled Exhibition
This blog post is by Dr. Michael Erdman, Head of Middle East and Central Asia, British Library. This blog discusses manuscript Or.8212/161 which was on display …
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