Kucha (modern Aksu, Xinjiang) was a flourishing Buddhist centre, where many Buddhist rock-cut caves built between the fourth and tenth centuries have yielded mural paintings and inscriptions in various scripts such as Brāhmī, Chinese, Uighur and Kharoṣṭhī. These inscriptions, together with thousands of documents, form primary sources for the history of ancient Kucha. In the early twentieth century a small number of Brāhmī inscriptions accompanying murals were taken to Europe and thereafter studied by German and French scholars, but a large part is preserved in situ and has remained unpublished until the appearance of the work under review. It is the fruit of the decade-long efforts of a collaborative project initiated in 2009 that sought to complete a comprehensive survey, record, and study of all Brāhmī inscriptions from Kucha caves.
This three-volume work in Chinese presents the texts and illustrations of over 700 wall inscriptions and inscriptions on 48 miscellaneous objects from seven grottoes (Kizil, Kumtura, Kizilgaha, Simsim, Mazarbach, Subashi, and Ishek) in Kucha, together with some related research papers. With the exception of a few building and verse inscriptions, the wall inscriptions are mostly explicatory inscriptions and graffiti, while the inscriptions on objects relate to economic issues and literature. The texts in Brāhmī script are mainly in the Kuchean and Sanskrit languages, and rarely Tumshuqese. A few are bilingual (Kuchean–Sanskrit, Sanskrit–Uighur) and one trilingual (Kuchean–Old Uighur–Chinese). A number of Sogdian inscriptions are also included.
The Report consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 begins with a brief review of the scholarship, and then introduces the team's six field trips to the caves and related sites (pp. 3–15). Chapter 2 gives an overview of the inscriptions investigated, followed by an account of the languages and scripts, numbering system, categorization, editorial conventions and finally the state of preservation of the cave inscriptions (pp. 19–44). The two core chapters (3 and 4) are, respectively, catalogues of the wall inscriptions in the sequence of the inventoried caves from the above-listed grottoes (pp. 47–338) and of the inscriptions on wooden strips and tablets, potsherds, paper and palm leaf fragments, etc. (pp. 341–405). The entry for each inscription includes a description and text edition. The volume concludes with a bibliography and a concordance table of old and new numbering systems, as well as an index of names of persons, deities, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas. The Plate has two parts: Part 1 presents 42 photos illustrating chapter 1, while Part 2 provides 1,189 images covering the inscriptions edited in chapters 3 and 4. The supplement, Collection of Research Papers, gathers 20 papers, two specially commissioned for this work and 18 updated and revised essays published by the team members between 2008 and 2016.
This work's greatest achievement is that for the first time it makes available a complete corpus of Brāhmī inscriptions from Kucha caves, most of them never previously published. Owing to the expertise of Hirotoshi Ogihara and Ching Chao-jung, two accomplished scholars of the Tocharian languages, the edition of the Brāhmī texts is authoritative, as is that of the Sogdian inscriptions, which was entrusted to the leading expert Yutaka Yoshida. The editing conforms with all inscriptional conventions, providing scholars with the accurate information necessary for a proper understanding of this corpus. For each numbered inscription the authors give an edition of the full text including transliteration and transcription, translation (where possible), and commentary, preceded by a description of its location in the cave, its language, the type of inscription, the way it was inscribed or painted and the layer of the wall surface on which it is found.
The photographs included are of the highest standard. The three volumes include more than a thousand full-colour and black-and-white photos. Apart from a small number from the archives of Western expeditions, these were mostly prepared by the project team. Colour plates offer various types of images of inscriptions. If Brāhmī akṣaras are invisible on an original photo, it is accompanied by enhanced images achieved either by using a light source from the side or by processing the photos with Adobe Photoshop. If even an enhanced image fails to make the inscription perceptible to the naked eye, a photo is provided with the akṣaras traced in bright colours. Taking and processing the photographs must have been an extremely laborious task, but the reward is great. In the first place it results in substantial improvements to the reading and interpretation of the inscriptions. Even more significantly, through numerous photos and full documentation, the team contributes considerably to the preservation of the inscriptions from the Kucha caves, many of which are subject to damage and deterioration.
Throughout the compilation, the editors have kept in mind that inscriptions must be contextualized and viewed from an interdisciplinary perspective. The inscription entries are therefore preceded by a ground-plan, cross-sections, and definition of the type of each cave. Correspondingly, before the images of individual inscriptions, the Plates volume offers overview images of inscriptions or groups of inscriptions, marking their location in the cave and setting them in a spatial context. As some inscriptions can only be correctly interpreted by analysing their pictorial representation (and vice versa), the editors always take into account the paintings they accompany. In such cases, line-drawings of the paintings are provided.
The Brāhmī inscriptions from the Kucha caves, though often brief or formulaic, preserve a wealth of information on many aspects of ancient Kucha. Scholarly analysis highlighting their philological or historical importance is required to make this fully clear to non-specialists. For instances, 16 cave inscriptions from Kizil and Mazarbach displaying archaic (c. fifth-sixth century) Kuchean features were proved by Ogihara on palaeographical grounds to be the earliest ones in Kucha. Ching has discovered several kings previously unknown and reconstructed a genealogical list of kings of Kucha which sets an intelligible chronological framework for understanding Kucha's history. Based on their improved reading and interpretation, Ogihara and Ching have proposed a possible date of the second half of the tenth century (i.e. the Uighur period) for the trilingual inscriptions from Kumtura by analysing their phonological, grammatical and palaeographical features. They further discuss the complex ethno-cultural background of Kucha society during this period, which also witnessed the presence in the Kucha caves of Turco-Sogdian speakers who left the Sogdian inscriptions edited and studied by Yoshida. The editors’ decision to bring together this brilliant research, both those studies published here for the first time and those which previously appeared in a wide variety of journals, is commendable.
Apart from exhibiting a very high level of scholarship, these volumes are also meticulously edited and beautifully printed. In view of the editors’ intention, expressed in the Preface, to issue further publications of Chinese and Uighur inscriptions from Kucha caves in the near future, it may be worth mentioning a few less satisfactory aspects in the hope that they may be taken into consideration. Since Brāhmī texts are beyond my competence, I will focus on matters of presentation.
First, and inexplicably, this publication does not contain even a sketch-map showing Kucha and the distribution of the grottoes and sites, which is not helpful to readers unfamiliar with this region. It also lacks schematic plans of Kizil and Kumtura showing the various sectors, e.g. “Guxi District” (West of the Valley), to which the caves of the inscriptions are keyed in this work and elsewhere.
A second point concerns the arrangement and selection of photos. Of 42 plates in Part 1, Plates 1–11 featuring the team at work and showing the exterior of the grottoes should join others with a similar focus in chapter 1, while the remaining 31 pertaining to the inscriptions investigated should be placed in Part 2. Plates of inscriptions, particularly those from the same cave, scattered in different parts of a single volume, create inconvenience to readers, especially those with no knowledge of Chinese – the plates in Part 1 are numbered in Chinese characters. All plates should have been cross-referenced to the Report. Colour plates illustrating the visual qualities or spatial context of inscriptions are so costly that they should be carefully selected. This principle is well applied with a few exceptions, e.g. a redundant half-page photo almost identical to another with locations of inscriptions marked (Pls. II-288~9), and an unnecessary full-page photo of a Chinese inscription (Pl. III-56). By contrast, ten photos intended to provide spatial contexts for inscriptions in two important caves from Kumtura are rather small or blurry, and none of them indicate the location of the inscriptions (Pls. II-33~6; II-190~5). No infra-red photographs are used, which is somewhat puzzling since they can provide clear images of inscriptions on different mediums.
Lastly, the Collection of Research Papers might be expected to explain how the papers were selected and organized, rather than being presented as a random assembly of miscellaneous papers ranging from surveys of grottoes, reviews of scholarship, and brief archaeological reports on caves to research essays on inscriptions. Furthermore, given the work's focus on Brāhmī inscriptions, I fail to see the relevance of an article on Chinese inscriptions from A'ai Grottoes.
These remarks, which of course represent a personal view, in no way undermine the work's status as a landmark. Together with Zhao Li's recently published 克孜尔石窟壁画复原研究 (A Study on the Restoration of the Kizil Grotto Murals, Shanghai, 2020), it opens up new perspectives in exploring the history and art of Kucha.
