Chapter 3 Reflections on the Original Form and Function of the Testimony of Ba From Dunhuang

The manuscript from the Dunhuang ‘library cave’ containing a portion of the narrative found in the Testimony of Ba was discovered by Kazushi Iwao and myself, and the textual features of the manuscript have been discussed in a jointly-authored article.1 Named the BL fragment in this book, I shall also refer to it as the Testimony fragment in this chapter in order to distinguish it from other fragments from the British Library’s Dunhuang collection. It remains the earliest exemplar of any portion of the text. My intention here is to complement that earlier work by looking more closely at the manuscript itself, using palaeography and codicology to enquire into its original form, the date of its creation, and the social context in which it functioned. I will also consider the relationship between the BL fragment and the later texts of the Testimony, extending earlier comparisons with the Dba’ bzhed by bringing in the manuscript recently published under the name Rba bzhed in the Dpal brtsegs series.2 The manuscript actually comprises two fragments, clearly from the same original piece, that were separately numbered in the British Library sequence Or.8210 (See Figure 3.1) This sequence was intended for the Chinese scrolls acquired by Aurel Stein from Cave 17 in Dunhuang, and sent to the British Museum for cataloguing and numbering. The first part of the sequence (S. 1–6890) contains scrolls mainly from Stein’s first Central Asian expedition, with some 600 at the end from his third expedition. These are followed by twenty printed documents (Or.8210/P.1–