Exploring Written Artefacts

Studies in Manuscript Cultures

Edited by
Michael Friedrich
Harunaga Isaacson
Jörg B. Quenzer

Volume 25
Exploring
Written Artefacts

Objects, Methods, and Concepts

Volume 1

Edited by
Jörg B. Quenzer
ISBN 978-3-11-074545-0
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Contents

Volume I

Jörg B. Quenzer
Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XIII

Matters of Materiality

Alessandro Bausi
‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’: Once More on the Gǝʿǝz Inscription of
Ham (RIÉ no. 232) | 3

Kaja Harter-Uibopuu
Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 35

Lothar Ledderose
Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care | 53

Piotr Michalowski
They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone: Some Thoughts on Early Mesopotamian
Writing | 67

Cécile Michel
What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 89

Ondřej Škrabal
How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? New Answers to Old
Questions | 115

Barend J. ter Haar

What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 139

Measuring, Analysing, Computing

Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn
A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 161
VI | Contents

Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

Mass Spectrometry-Based Proteomics and Metaproteomics Analysis of Ancient
Manuscripts | 183

Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza

Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript with Anatomic Drawings and
Notes | 213

Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination | 229

Ralf Möller
Humanities-Centred Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) as an Emerging
Paradigm | 245

Stefan Thiemann
How Can Research on Written Artefacts Benefit from Collaboration with
Computer Science? | 267

Changing Media

Camillo A. Formigatti
Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 281

Marco Heiles
Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition: A German Priamel
Booklet from Nuremberg, c. 1490 | 307

Shamil Jeppie
About a Manuscript on Tea Found in Timbuktu, Mali: Mamma Haidara
Collection, MS 125, Tārīkh al-shāy fī ’l-Maghrib | 333

Sabine Kienitz
From Mouth to Ear to Hand: Literacy as Recorded Orality in Nineteenth- and
Early Twentieth-Century German Courts | 345
 Contents | VII

Realms of Codicology

Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 369

Malachi Beit-Arié
The Advantages of Comparative Codicology: Further Examples | 395

Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 405

Agnieszka Helman-Ważny
A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road | 423

Tilman Seidensticker
Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project ‘Katalogisierung der
Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland’ | 441

Repositories of Knowledge

Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts: Introducing Categories Based on
Content, Use, and Production | 459

Imre Galambos
Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 491

Matthieu Husson
The Art of Astrological Computations: Conrad Heingarter and the Manuscript
Paris, BnF latin 7295A | 513

Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Staats- und
Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg: Observations on Cod. hebr. 252 | 533

Jürgen Paul
Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 563
VIII | Contents

Stefano Valente
Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages: Notes on the
Manuscript Vaticanus Barberinianus gr. 70 of the Etymologicum
Gudianum | 583

Volume II

Paracontent

Christian Brockmann
A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning: Some Glimpses into the Scribal
Practices Evident in the Aristotelean Codex Vaticanus graecus 244 | 603

Heidi Buck-Albulet
From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 623

Jost Gippert
Hidden Colophons | 647

Volker Grabowsky
Sealed Manuscripts in Laos: New Findings from Luang Prabang | 667

Eva Wilden
Naming the Author: The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic
Tradition | 689

Visual Matters

Dmitry Bondarev
A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts: Languages, Layout and
Research Perspectives | 707

Andreas Janke
Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in Nineteenth-Century
Europe | 729
 Contents | IX

Luigi Orlandi
A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu: The Scribe-Bishop
Makarios | 753

Bruno Reudenbach
Enigmatic Calligraphy: Lettering as Visualized Hermeneutic of Sacred
Scripture | 773

Dick van der Meij

Sailing-Ships and Character Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic
Manuscripts | 795

Hanna Wimmer
Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden: Marginal Multigraphic Discourse in
a Medieval Latin Multiple-Text Manuscript | 821

Rethinking Philology

William G. Boltz
Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 845

Giovanni Ciotti
Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies: Object Oriented
Ontology and the Pothi Manuscript Culture | 865

Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

Collation in Early Imperial China: From Administrative Procedure to Philological
Tool | 889

Markus Friedrich
Loss and Circumstances: How Early Modern Europe Discovered the ‘Material
Text’ | 913

Michael Grünbart
The Letters of Michael Psellos and their Function in Byzantine Epistolary
Culture | 933
X | Contents

Felix Heinzer
Preaching with the Hands: Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting and its
Medieval Reception | 947

Performance and Ritual

David Holm
Where did the Ngạn People Come From? Ritual Manuscripts among the Ngạn in
Northern Vietnam | 967

Oliver Huck
(Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme | 989

Silpsupa Jaengsawang
A Ritual Manual of Healing: The Body-Balance of the Four Elements and the
Four Key Factors of Manuscript Production and Usage | 1005

Charles Ramble
The Volvelle and the Lingga: The Use of Two Manuscript Ritual Devices in a
Tibetan Exorcism | 1025

Martin Jörg Schäfer

‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books from the French
Period | 1043

Transmission in Time and Space

Paola Buzi
The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book and its Physical Metamorphosis| 1063

Uta Lauer
Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1077

Zhenzhen Lu
Touched by a Tale of Friendship: An Early Nineteenth-Century Zidishu
Manuscript | 1099
 Contents | XI

Charles Melville
On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1123

Contributors | 1147

Indices
Index of Manuscripts and Other Written Artefacts | 1155
General Index | 1161
© Michael Friedrich and Behörde für Wissenschaft, Forschung,
Gleichstellung und Bezirke der Stadt Hamburg
Jörg B. Quenzer
Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich

1 Commemorating a caesura
This two-volume work is exceptional in the series Studies in Manuscript Cul-
tures (SMC). In contrast with the previous publications of that series, which
were primarily either the outcome of long-standing individual research or the
result of workshops or thematic discussions, the occasion for these volumes is
personal. Michael Friedrich, undisputed godfather and spiritus rector of the
Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC)1 at the Universität Hamburg,
will formally retire in October 2021 from his position as ordinary professor. Al-
though this administrative and legal caesura does not necessarily mean the end
of his activities at the centre, there was a consensus that this occasion should
not pass by unnoticed; so a group of colleagues at the centre took the initiative
to promote the publication of a Festschrift in honour of our much esteemed
colleague.
There was also a clear consensus that such a Festschrift should go beyond
a mere collection of articles, a ‘bouquet of flowers’ of quite different prove-
nance – e.g. remembrances, anecdotes, and the like – often to be found in this
genre, and instead feature scholarly, peer-reviewed contributions, embracing
the broad range of topics and themes that have been subject to profound re-
search at the centre since its formal inauguration in 2012 and earlier. In this
regard, the editor of these volumes was able to draw on an outstanding exam-
ple. Michael Friedrich himself, as editor of a Festschrift with the programmatic
title Han-Zeit, dedicated to Hans Stumpfeldt (1941–2018), who was a renowned
sinologist at the Universität Hamburg for more than twenty-five years, has set
the highest standards for a publication that, despite the ambivalent genre, is
convincing both in its conceptualization and in the quality of its contributions.2
Those familiar with the centre and its manifold activities during the last two
decades are well aware of the fundamental role of its founder. Michael Friedrich
acted and acts as spokesperson for the three past and present institutional

||
1 Even though the formal establishment of the CSMC only dates to the year 2012, the term
‘centre’ has already become a loose designation for adjacent activities at Hamburg and is some-
times used anachronistically in the following pages.
2 Friedrich 2006.

Open Access. © 2021 Jörg B. Quenzer, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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XIV | Jörg B. Quenzer

incarnations – the Forschergruppe (research unit) Manuscript Cultures in Asia

and Africa (2008–2011), the Sonderforschungsbereich (collaborative research
centre) 950 Manuscript Cultures in Asia, Africa, and Europe (2011–2019), and
the present cluster of excellence Understanding Written Artefacts (2019– ). He
was and is the pivot point, either conceptually, organizationally, politically, or
at a personal level, of all activities and the driving force behind several more or
less closely related projects. This introduction, therefore, serves a twofold pur-
pose. It unfolds the multifaceted academic career of Michael Friedrich, and at
the same time integrates, in a rather abridged manner, the institutional frame-
work he has established during the last twenty years.
The scope of the following laudatio, however, has its limits. The main per-
spective of this two-volume collection, the background shared by all the col-
leagues who have come together to praise the achievements of the dedicatee, is
the field of manuscript studies and the understanding of written artefacts. Here
we can only hint at Michael Friedrich’s other academic personalities during the
last thirty to forty years, each deserving their own appraisal by experts in the
respective fields.
First among these personalities is the renowned sinologist, who started his
career at the Universität Freiburg, before moving to the Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität München. In sinology, he specialized foremost in the history of ideas
– with a dissertation on Daoism3 and a Habilitationsschrift (postdoctoral thesis)
focusing on the relationship between thought and language in Chinese intellec-
tual history4 – but always open to other realms within the field: literature, my-
thology, linguistics, and much more. Since 1994, Michael Friedrich has held the
chair for the Language and Literature of China at the Universität Hamburg. Dur-
ing the last twenty-seven years he served as the primary supervisor for more
than thirty doctoral students; more than five of his students are now professors
in the fields of sinology or East Asian studies. Neither should his many years of
commitment as member of the prestigious review board (Fachkollegium) in the
German Research Foundation (DFG) for his field be overlooked.
Second, we ought to mention his long-standing interest in Buddhism, both
with regard to the history of ideas in East Asia, and as a cultural momentum,
spanning the Indian subcontinent as well as Central and East Asia. 5 For a long
time, he served together with colleagues from Sanskrit studies as representa-
tive for the Numata Foundation (later institutionalized as the Zentrum für

||
3 Friedrich 1984.
4 Friedrich 1989.
5 Friedrich 2000.
 Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XV

Buddhismuskunde) at the Asien-Afrika-Institut (AAI), Universität Hamburg,

until the inauguration of a Numata Chair for Japanese Buddhism with an em-
phasis on its historical setting in East Asia. In recent times, he has to his credit
the inclusion of East Asian studies at Hamburg in a worldwide project for the
academic study of Buddhism and East Asian cultures, founded by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the GloriSun Group.
A third field of interest, which we mention here because of its interdiscipli-
nary focus and because it serves as an early example of Michael Friedrich’s
ability to bring together expertise from very different fields, was embodied in
the working group Hermeneutik interkulturell – intrakulturell – transkulturell,
active during the late 1990s and early 2000s.6 In hindsight, the intention that
would later become the basic principle of the CSMC’s approach to manuscript
studies is evident: to expand a field that the European traditions have already
dealt with extensively, by comparing it with non-European traditions and thus
forcing both sides to adopt new perspectives and thereby generate previously
unknown insights. At the same time, this approach created an opportunity in
basic research (Grundlagenforschung) for those fields whose textual, material, or
methodological basis did or does not have the same degree of development.
From discussions within this group, one comprehensive contribution emerged:
an extensive exposition of classical commentaries on some verses from the Book
of Odes (Shijing 詩經).7

2 Chinese manuscripts and beyond

Michael Friedrich has studied the tomb library of Mawangdui 馬王堆, an im-
portant archaeological site in Changsha that was discovered in 1972, since the
mid 1980s and held his first seminar on related topics just a few years later. In
1986, on the occasion of a conference in Shanghai, he came into contact with
some of the most renowned Chinese scholars dealing with the texts found in
this tomb; this contact would expand and intensify during the following years.
The topic first becomes manifest with an article on two versions of the famous

||
6 With Friedrich Niewöhner (1941–2005), another leading force behind this group, Michael
Friedrich shared not only an interest in the history of ideas but also in practices of reading and
writing; see Niewöhner 1994 on the ‘Lese- oder Schreib-Maschine’, arguing that the famous
book wheel (Bücherrad) at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel was used as a writing
instrument by the cataloguers.
7 Friedrich 2007.
XVI | Jörg B. Quenzer

Laozi 老子 texts found at the site, already taking into consideration various
aspects of the physical object, even though the main objective of these studies
was rather a question of textual criticism and orthography.8 The tomb of
Mawangdui – the manuscripts it contains, its functions, and the question of the
persons involved – is also the subject of later essays.9
With the research project on Yao manuscripts, conducted between 1995 and
1999 together with his colleague Thomas O. Höllmann and others at the Ludwig-
Maximilians-Universität München, Michael Friedrich expanded his expertise
beyond Chinese manuscripts in the narrow sense. The impetus for this project
was the collection of more than 1,000 Yao manuscripts acquired by the Staats-
bibliothek München (Bavarian State Library Munich). The project’s realization
was part of the large-scale Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in
Deutschland (KOHD), the results of which are published in the series Verzeich-
nis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland (VOHD).10
A notable feature of this project on Yao manuscripts is that the actual use of
the artefacts, i.e. their role in a religious and performative context, was under-
stood as essential for building the catalogue.11 The idea of an exhibition for the
interested public, accompanied by a catalogue,12 is also something that will be
returned to later at Hamburg. The interaction of the Chinese writing system with
other languages, especially in South-West China and South-East Asia (including
Vietnam and Laos), remained an area of Michael Friedrich’s interest in the
decades to come and is also present in the current research framework of the
cluster of excellence under the heading ‘Multilingual manuscripts’.
It is possible only to mention some other contributions. These include a
thorough analysis of the statement by a Chinese editor from the first century
BCE; the analysis highlights early philological methods in the realm of manu-
script studies avant la lettre and elaborates on the historical terminology used.13
Of very recent interest are matters of provenance within the framework of

||
8 Friedrich 1996.
9 Friedrich 2008, 2009b, and 2010 (a Chinese translation of 2008).
10 Friedrich et al. 2004. For this undertaking see the contribution of Tilman Seidensticker in
the present collection, who deals in detail with the history of the Arabic section of this mam-
moth German academic project.
11 On a general level, the relationship between manuscripts and ritual was taken up again as
a research field of the SFB 950; see below.
12 Höllmann et al. 1999.
13 Friedrich 2009a.
 Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XVII

monetary or ideological interests best examined in the realm of forgeries, a

recurrent theme of the tomb findings mentioned above.14
The enormous influence of the image of China on European intellectual his-
tory is reflected in a contribution on the reception of Chinese script in Europe,
published by Aleida and Jan Assmann in the famous series Archäologie der
literarischen Kommunikation.15 This article provides an in-depth examination of
another research focus of the dedicatee: the history of the intellectual discovery
and functionalization of ‘China’ in Europe. In this article Michael Friedrich
scrupulously traces the difficulties of understanding the unknown writing sys-
tem according to the Aristotelean conception of writing and its medieval recep-
tion. The constant friction between such an understanding of signs and the
matrix of the alphabetic script on the one hand and the Chinese writing system
on the other led to the supposition that the latter had pictorial character or se-
cret scripts (ciphers) – the impact of that supposition can still be seen today,
and not only in popular literature.

3 The path to institutionalization

The nucleus of what would later become the success story of a huge research
institution can be located in the broader context of the dissertation project by
Matthias Richter under the guidance of Michael Friedrich.16 Both Friedrich and
Richter organised the first two of several workshops on manuscripts from early
tombs in China, bringing together colleagues from Europe and overseas.17 The
field of interest even at this early stage included not only manuscripts written
with brush on wood, bamboo, or silk, but also inscriptions, which became a
central topic much later in the cluster of excellence. The shared interest of the
participants took institutional form in the European Association for the Study of
Chinese Manuscripts, with Michael Friedrich as its first chairman.18
Palaeographic discussions emanating from a follow-up project by Matthias
Richter led to initial contact with the Department of Informatics at the Universität

||
14 Friedrich 2020; for the topic of forgeries in general, see Michel and Friedrich 2020a and
2020b.
15 Friedrich 2003.
16 Richter 2005a.
17 For the results see Richter 2003 and 2005b.
18 More details on this group can be found on its website: <https://www.zo.uni-
heidelberg.de/eascm/> (accessed on 15 July 2021).
XVIII | Jörg B. Quenzer

Hamburg; the manuscript scholars were looking for OCR applications that could
help identify scribal hands on an objective basis – e.g. through automatic,
large-scale analysis of stroke angle and stroke order – rather than by relying on
the eye and expertise of a few specialists. This cooperation with computer
science became a cornerstone of the research unit discussed below.
Finally, in 2004, the author of this introduction joined the sinologists at
Hamburg with an interest in Japanese medieval manuscripts, thereby taking the
project one step further towards an interdisciplinary research agenda.

4 The Asien-Afrika-Institut (AAI)

Michael Friedrich’s long-standing interest in matters pertaining to manuscript
studies in his own field was one necessary condition for the interdisciplinary
approach to manuscript studies that Hamburg is known for today. In order to be
successful on a sustainable basis, this approach had to be complemented by an
institutional framework that could facilitate lasting engagement with the sub-
ject. Michael Friedrich found this framework in the Asien-Afrika-Institut. This
discovery, however, was not a coincidence, since he was able to draw on exper-
tise and interests within a structure that he himself had decisively helped to
create. And even today, projects from Africa and Asia account for more than 50
per cent of the total number of projects at the centre. For these reasons, too, a
brief digression into the history of the AAI is in order here.
The Universität Hamburg has a long tradition in the study of non-European
languages and cultures, a tradition that reaches back before the founding of the
university itself.19 The so-called Kolonialinstitut, originally established for train-
ing merchants and colonial officials, established the chair for East Asia (later:
Sinology) in 1909. One year later, a chair for African languages was added, and
in 1914 a chair for Japanese studies, before these and other chairs related to
overseas and especially to Asia became part of the Universität Hamburg, which
was founded in 1919.
Michael Friedrich was one of the colleagues in the former Fachbereich Ori-
entalistik (Department of Oriental Studies) who argued for a realignment of the
department in the mid-1990s, guided by existing models in Europe, such as the
famous School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of

||
19 On the history of the Asien-Afrika-Institut in the broader context of the city of Hamburg and
its university, see Friedrich 2002 and Paul 2008.
 Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XIX

London. He was the first to clearly recognize that in times of financial and polit-
ical pressure the idea to unite all non-European languages and cultures under
one umbrella would not be sufficient. Of course, the ‘gaze of the Other’, the in-
terest in cultural and linguistic diversity, or the challenges in teaching (e.g. very
few students enrol with adequate language knowledge) did ensure an internal
basis of support for the umbrella idea. But such mutual understanding was no
help in the face of threats to cut chairs and budgets. This was the crucial point
at which Michael Friedrich identified the study of writing, and especially the
subject of manuscripts, as a unifying factor both for internal scientific coopera-
tion and as a strategic means to demonstrate the significant potential of such an
infrastructure of officially labelled Kleine Fächer (small subjects).
The conditions beyond his own field were promising too. Sanskrit studies at
the Universität Hamburg long hosted the Nepal-German Manuscript Preserva-
tion Project (NGMPP, 1982–2002) and its follow-up, the Nepalese-German Manu-
script Cataloguing Project (NGMCP, 2002–2015). Other colleagues (e.g. Thai
studies, Ethiopian studies) had taken part in the previously mentioned nation-
wide cataloguing project KOHD, or conducted individual research projects on
specific manuscripts (e.g. Japanese studies). The mutual interest continues to
this day. Owing part of its institutional base to the Asien-Afrika-Institut, the
CSMC continues to operate as a magnet attracting colleagues from non-
European disciplines to join both the AAI and the centre’s own activities.

5 From manuscripts to written artefacts: About

these volumes
The academic and institutional history of the three incarnations mentioned at
the beginning of this introduction is only partly a thing of the past. That alone is
a good reason for not trying to retrace the entire research programme of the last
fifteen years – the ongoing discussions are too complex for such an attempt. We
can content ourselves here with reiterating the main credo: written artefacts
remain the starting point and the central point of reference. The written artefact
is to be studied as a material object, in its interaction both with other objects
and with humans at a given time, and with a view to its transmission both in the
course of time and between cultures. Further details concerning the history of
XX | Jörg B. Quenzer

the three core institutions and the prominent figures affiliated with them can be
found on the centre’s website.20
In the context of these volumes, however, it may be more appropriate to
point out a few stations along the way that are particularly relevant to the im-
pact of Michael Friedrich – topics that form at the same time a constitutive part
of these volumes, its articles, and its structure. The Festschrift consists of ten
main chapters comprising fifty-four articles by sixty-seven contributors. The
overall structure of the book picks up on a number of central concepts devel-
oped or redefined over the last two decades in the broader context of the activi-
ties at the centre, thus allowing readers to trace parts of the centre’s history
(though not in a chronological order). As an aside, the integral approach inter-
nalized by the contributors is evident in that many of the articles could have
been assigned to different chapters, the final arrangement reflecting only one of
several possibilities.
Many of these concepts are tied in with traditional approaches, e.g. codicol-
ogy, palaeography, and others, often labelled ‘auxiliary sciences of history’. It
is, however, part of the centre’s aim to overcome the perception of these disci-
plines as merely auxiliary, and to regard them instead as integral to the new
field of manuscript studies; this aim entails adapting those traditional ap-
proaches to a broader perspective.
To give a striking example from the field of codicology: readers might encoun-
ter throughout the volume the rather unfamiliar abbreviation MTM (‘multiple-text
manuscripts’), a term coined to differentiate more precisely what has often been
called a miscellany in the European scholarly traditions. The abbreviation MTM,
to quote Friedrich, ‘designates a codicological unit “worked in a single opera-
tion” […] with two or more texts or a “production unit” resulting from one pro-
duction process delimited in time and space’.21 The subject of MTMs has been
addressed quite often during the centre’s workshops and seminars and appears
in many of its publications.22 In these volumes, one will find a separate chapter,
‘Realms of Codicology’, reflecting aspects of the ongoing discussion, and there
are repeated references to MTMs in other chapters.
For many projects, the relation between the physical object and its function
as a carrier of text – in other words, the philological dimension of written arte-
facts – is crucial. It is no coincidence that many of the suggestions that play an
important role in establishing the centre’s research framework come from the

||
20 See <https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/sfb-950/about.html> (accessed on 27 July 2021).
21 Friedrich and Schwarke 2016, 15–16.
22 See, for example, Friedrich and Schwarke 2016, and Bausi et al. 2019.
 Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XXI

European traditions of philology, especially medieval studies and its meta-

discussions. These suggestions have been and are being taken up and devel-
oped across the research fields, especially with regard to their applicability to
non-European cultures. The chapter ‘Rethinking Philology’ gives an impression
of the range of theoretical and methodological considerations in this area, with-
out neglecting the contributions of indigenous discourses.
Another topic addressed from several angles and in different contexts is the
variable setting of the artefacts in time and space. The chapter ‘Transmission in
Time and Space’ contains compelling examples of transcending or, from anoth-
er perspective, connecting time and space via written artefacts, with some of the
artefacts even providing new linkages that constitute social groups. Such evi-
dence of movability, both of the objects and their content, often comes in the
form of paracontent, e.g. colophons or other accompanying parts of manu-
scripts.

5.1 Research unit, collaborative research centre, and cluster

of excellence
But back to our history. In retrospect, the early decision of Michael Friedrich to
start with the two major regions of Asia and Africa has proven to be the right
one, enabling the respective fields to conduct basic research and to reach a
common level of discourse without the need to follow from the very beginning
the complex methodological achievements of the European cultures. The re-
search unit consisted of eight sub-projects in Asian and African Studies together
with the previously mentioned project from computer science. The group was
united by a common guiding question, variance in dependency on the medium,
thus focusing on the interchange between handwriting and manuscripts in the
larger context of other ways of producing and receiving information. This, too,
is an ongoing topic, reflected in these volumes under the heading ‘Changing
Media’.
After four years, the research unit was ready to evolve into a larger entity,
from that point on incorporating projects from European fields such as Europe-
an art history or Greek studies: the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB 950) Manu-
script Cultures in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The complexity of the new institu-
tional framework demanded new forms of conceptual organisation, and not
only because of the sheer numbers of projects approved. The SFB framework
also allowed for the association of individual projects both on an organisational
level and as conceptual complements. During its eight years of existence, the
SFB research unit identified various thematic priorities dealt with in working
XXII | Jörg B. Quenzer

groups (also known as ‘research fields’); each working group included scholars
of various manuscript cultures, dealing with different time periods and genres
but adopting one common perspective. Our volumes rely heavily upon these
perspectives and reflect many of their major aspects.
The impact of the newly integrated field of art history can easily be detected
in the subject of the working group for visual organisation. This topic highlights
one of the basic strengths of handwriting to the present day – its capacity to
arrange visible signs in a flexible way across a given layout, combining, for
example, text, images and notation, mixing different scripts or categories of
scripts, or forming the setting for a given artefact’s various modes of use. The
chapter ‘Visual Matters’ deals with all the visual aspects of a handwritten arte-
fact, ranging from the design of a single character to the overall layout of a
codex.
The working group for paratexts, to name another of these topics, dealt with
all accompanying handwritten parts located before, beside, or beyond the main
text. In an attempt to overcome the conceptual restrictions of Genette’s original
term, deriving from Early Modern book history in Europe, the term was coined
anew during a later stage due to internal theoretical discussions as ‘paracon-
tent’.23 Among other matters, the eponymous chapter ‘Paracontent’ deals with
typical examples including marginal comments, colophons, and object-related
phenomena such as seals.
Learning and collections, two different but related research groups, provide
the background for the chapter ‘Repositories of Knowledge’. Manuscripts as
repositories in a broad sense can also be identified as a residuum of handwrit-
ing, even in the digital age: depending on the situation, many people still prefer
to scribble notes with pencil and paper, or organize drafts and notes in note-
books. In earlier days, it was both a convenience and a necessity to compile
texts from different sources for one’s own use or to supplement those texts with
one’s own findings.
We have already briefly touched on the subject of rituals. Manuscripts can
act, in the same manner as the aforementioned repositories, as containers that
allow knowledge about rituals or the content of a specific performance to be
recorded, preserved, and transmitted. But the working group for rituals dis-
cussed, among other matters, a quite different use, partly reflected in the chap-
ter ‘Performance and Ritual’: manuscripts can also become an integral part of a
ceremony or a ritual, whose agency results directly from the written artefact.

||
23 Ciotti et al. 2018.
 Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XXIII

The third and current institutional phase, the cluster of excellence Under-
standing Written Artefacts, which is based on all the aforementioned activities,
has also brought the most far-reaching changes, both in thematic diversity and
the quantity of projects. The SFB provided a first systematic testing ground for
close cooperation between the humanities, computer science, and the natural
sciences. In the cluster of excellence, this collaborative research has reached a
new level. Both the collaboration and the diversity of fields involved, ranging
from chemistry, biology, mineralogy, and physics to computer science, as well
as the variety of methods used, focusing especially on non-destructive and non-
invasive technologies, are discussed in the chapter ‘Measuring, Analysing,
Computing’.
The integration of epigraphy and related phenomena into the study of
manuscript cultures represents a paradigm shift, with the resulting change in
language from ‘manuscripts’ to the category of ‘written artefacts’. This perspec-
tive, which allows all written artefacts made by humans, by hand, to be studied
together, overcomes previous limitations and constraints. In the present vol-
umes, the new research field focusing on inscriptions, together with artefacts
such as clay tablets, is reflected in the chapter titled ‘Matters of Materiality’.
Unsurprisingly this chapter contains contributions on the oldest written arte-
facts to be treated in these volumes: Mesopotamian writing, inscriptions from
the Greco-Roman world, and Chinese bronze inscriptions.

5.2 Outreach
Since its inauguration, the centre has functioned as a huge umbrella, offering
shelter and support for many other projects. Among these quite different activi-
ties, a personal interest of the dedicatee must be singled out. One thing that the
history of written artefacts can teach us is the tension between durability and
fragility. At first glance, this is a matter of materiality – stone inscriptions have a
tendency to last longer than a paper slip from the mid-twentieth century, not
only because of their different cultural settings. For many regions in Asia, texts
that are not repeatedly copied are simply lost due to the interaction of climatic
conditions and the properties of the writing materials (e.g. paper or palm
leaves). As this example shows, the question of durability or sustainability is
always tied to cultural practices. And here we touch on the realm of cultural
heritage, which, for various reasons, has attained utmost importance, especially
in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The preservation of endangered
written artefacts was and is one of Michael Friedrich’s main concerns at the
centre, both with respect to the objects themselves and with respect to improving
XXIV | Jörg B. Quenzer

expertise in their preservation and conservation. The project Safeguarding the

Manuscripts of Timbuktu24 and the Kairouan Manuscript Project are just two
examples of his commitment in this regard.
Research activities are of little use if they cannot be observed, discussed,
and developed by other members of the scientific community. This, among
other reasons, is why publications are still the main currency in the academic
world. Since the beginning of the centre Michael Friedrich has insisted on pro-
moting different publication formats for different purposes, but on an equal
level. Consequently he acts as editor-in-chief not only for the series in which
this volume appears (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 2012– ), but also for an
academic journal (manuscript studies) and the monthly presentation of particu-
larly interesting or peculiar objects (Manuscript [now: Artefact] of the Month,
primarily accessible via the internet),25 to name just the most visible formats.
Anyone who has ever published a monograph or an article in the context of the
centre is familiar with his intensive guidance, scrupulous comments and pains-
taking corrections, all of which ensure the high quality of the centre’s output.

6 Some final words

Even if the genre of the laudatio may suggest otherwise, these volumes are no
mere look back. On the contrary, the articles reflect the contributors’ current
research interests as well as new approaches of a methodological or thematic
nature whose demonstration and elaboration will be a task for many years to
come. In this respect, our Festschrift is a promise for the future. It takes serious-
ly the central attitude of the dedicatee: without his forward-looking approach,
without his focus on a common goal, the accomplishments briefly surveyed
here would not have been possible. It is to this attitude, beyond all his personal
encouragement and valuable advice, important as they are, that the colleagues
who have contributed to this Festschrift probably owe the most.

||
24 See <https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/timbuktu.html> (accessed on 27 July 2021).
25 Partly reprinted in Friedrich 2014 and 2018.
 Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XXV

Formal matters
A volume of this size poses a number of formal challenges. Among the most
important decisions are the following:
– For longer citations, the original text is given first, followed by the translit-
eration, translation, or both.
– As for transliteration, we follow the style guide for all publications at the
centre (e.g. Pinyin instead of Wade-Giles). When justifiable, exceptions to
this rule are allowed (e.g. in linguistics).
– East Asian names are given in the customary order, with surnames preced-
ing given names. Within the bibliographical references, the precise repre-
sentation takes into account the language of the work cited (e.g. original
language contribution versus an article in English).
– Although the reader will easily detect a tendency to a common terminology,
which has been developed over the last two decades at the centre, we have
restrained ourselves from requiring contributors to adopt it: some research
traditions still have to stick to their terms and concepts.
– A certain standardization is, however, required of an index. Building an
index for a two-volume work such as the present one is a particular chal-
lenge. In favour of interdisciplinary and comparative references, we have
refrained from overly specific terms or names that are primarily of interest
to specialists in a given field. The need for such indexing is adequately
served by the digital version of this work: each article can be downloaded as
a searchable PDF file. The index is also useful for readers interested in ex-
ploring a particular field of study, e.g., ‘Sinology’ or ‘Assyriology’, since the
relevance of an article to a field is not always easily detectable from the arti-
cle’s title and since some articles pertain to more than one field.

Acknowledgements
As already mentioned, the publication of this collection was made possible in
the first place by the following members of the centre, in alphabetical order:
Alessandro Bausi, Markus Fischer, Markus Friedrich, Oliver Hahn, Kaja Harter-
Uibopuu, Oliver Huck, Sabine Kienitz, Ralf Möller, Jürgen Paul, Bruno
Reudenbach, Eva Wilden, and the author of this introduction.
During the process of putting together this Festschrift, we were lucky to
have a very helpful and supportive group of colleagues:
For critical remarks and comments at various stages and on various sub-
jects: Alessandro Bausi, Dmitry Bondarev, Steffen Döll, Markus Friedrich, Enno
Giele, Jost Gippert, Volker Grabowsky, Oliver Hahn, Jürgen Paul, Ira Rabin,
XXVI | Jörg B. Quenzer

Bruno Reudenbach, Tilman Seidensticker, Jan van der Putten, Sam van Schaik,
and all the anonymous peer reviewers.
Further advice and help: Max J. Fölster, Eva Jungbluth, Christina Kaminski,
Monika Klaffs, Thies Staack, Jana Talke, and Irina Wandrey.
For turning the text into correct English and placing more than 400,000
words into a stylish order – and in so doing discovering the most hidden
errors – we are deeply indebted to Richard W. Bishop. For the challenge of com-
bining text, tables, and images, and giving all of it such a convincing form, our
sincere thanks and appreciation go to Laurence Tuerlinckx.
The final and most prominent word of thanks is reserved for Caroline Macé,
a perspicacious reader and stern critic who was always coming up with a bril-
liant solution to any problem and who last but not least kept a tight rein on the
schedule.

References
Bausi, Alessandro, Christian Brockmann, Michael Friedrich and Sabine Kienitz (eds) (2018),
Manuscripts and Archives: Comparative Views on Record-Keeping (Studies in Manuscript
Cultures, 11), Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bausi, Alessandro, Michael Friedrich and Marilena Maniaci (eds) (2019), The Emergence of
Multiple-Text Manuscripts (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 17), Berlin: De Gruyter.
Ciotti, Giovanni, Michael Kohs, Eva Wilden, Hanna Wimmer and the TNT working group (2018),
Definition of Paracontent (Occasional Paper, 6), Hamburg: Centre for the Study of Manu-
script Cultures <http://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-hamburg.de/papers_e.html>
(accessed on 30 June 2021).
Friedrich, Michael (1984), Hsüan-hsüeh, Studien zur spekulativen Richtung in der Geistesge-
schichte der Wei-Chin-Zeit (3.– 4. Jahrhundert), PhD dissertation, Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität München.
Friedrich, Michael (1989), Sprache und Denken: Zu einem ungeklärten Verhältnis in der chine-
sischen Geistesgeschichte, insbesondere im Neokonfuzianismus von Chu Hsi, Habilitati-
onsschrift, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
Friedrich, Michael (1996), ‘Zur Datierung zweier Handschriften des Daode jing’, TextKritische
Beiträge, 2: 205–217.
Friedrich, Michael (2000), Lecture transcript: ‘Die Sinisierung des Buddhismus’, in Buddhis-
mus in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 5: Die Geistesgeschichte des Buddhismus II, Uni-
versität Hamburg, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Abteilung für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und
Tibets, 110–123 <https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/4-publikationen/
buddhismus-in-geschichte-und-gegenwart/bd5-k08friedrich.pdf> (accessed on 15 July
2021).
Friedrich, Michael (2002), ‘Zurück ins Herz der Stadt? Die Hamburger Asien- und Afrikawissen-
schaften’, in Jürgen Lüthje (ed.), Universität im Herzen der Stadt. Eine Festschrift für
Dr. Hannelore und Prof. Dr. Helmut Greve, Hamburg: Christians, 170–179.
 Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XXVII

Friedrich, Michael (2003), ‘Chiffren oder Hieroglyphen? Die chinesische Schrift im Abendland’,
in Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann (eds), Hieroglyphen. Stationen einer anderen abend-
ländischen Grammatologie (Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation, 8), Munich:
Fink, 89–116.
Friedrich, Michael (ed.) (2006), Han-Zeit, Festschrift für Hans Stumpfeldt aus Anlass seines 65.
Geburtstages (Lun Wen, Studien zur Geistesgeschichte und Literatur in China, 8), Wies-
baden: Harrassowitz.
Friedrich, Michael (2007), ‘Wer war der Vater? – Zur Auslegung einiger Verse aus dem kanoni-
schen Buch der Lieder’, in Michael Quisinsky and Peter Walter (eds), Kommentarkulturen.
Die Auslegung zentraler Texte der Weltreligionen: ein vergleichender Überblick (Menschen
und Kulturen: Beihefte zum Saeculum, 3), Cologne: Böhlau, 133–201.
Friedrich, Michael (2008), ‘The “Announcement to the World Below” of Ma-wang-tui 馬王堆 3’,
manuscript cultures, 1: 7–15.
Friedrich, Michael (2009a), ‘Der editorische Bericht des Liu Hsiang 劉向 zum Chan-kuo ts'e 戰
國策’, in Monika Gänssbauer and Harro von Senger (eds), Den Jadestein erlangen. Fest-
schrift für Harro von Senger, Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck, 239–257.
Friedrich, Michael (2009b), ‘Wer war der Grabherr von Ma-wang-tui?’, in Roland Altenburger,
Martin Lehnert and Andrea Riemenschnitter (eds), Dem Text ein Freund. Erkundungen des
chinesischen Altertums; Robert H. Gassmann gewidmet, Bern: Lang, 125–143.
[Michael Friedrich] Fu Minyi 傅敏怡 (2010), ‘Lun Mawangdui 3 hao hanmu “gaodishu” 论马王堆
3号汉墓'告地书’, Hunan daxue xuebao (shehuikexue ban) 湖南大学学报 (社会科学版),
24/4: 42–47 [translation of Michael Friedrich 2008].
Friedrich, Michael (ed.) (2014), Manuskript des Monats 2012–2014, Hamburg: Sonderfor-
schungsbereich Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa.
Friedrich, Michael (2016), ‘Introduction, Manuscripts as Evolving Entities’, in Friedrich and
Schwarke (eds) 2016, 1–26.
Friedrich, Michael (ed.) (2018), Manuskript des Monats 2015–2017, Hamburg: Sonderfor-
schungsbereich Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa.
Friedrich, Michael (2020), ‘Producing and Identifying Forgeries of Chinese Manuscripts’, in
Cécile Michel and Michael Friedrich (eds), Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts from
Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 20), Berlin: De
Gruyter, 291–336.
Friedrich, Michael and Thomas Höllmann (eds) (2004), Handschriften der Yao. Teil I: Bestände
der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München Cod. Sin. 147 bis Cod. Sin. 1045 (Verzeichnis
der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, 44), Stuttgart: Steiner.
Friedrich, Michael and Cosima Schwarke (eds) (2016), One-Volume Libraries: Composite and
Multiple-Text Manuscripts (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 9), Berlin: De Gruyter.
Höllmann, Thomas O., Michael Friedrich, and Lucia Obi (1999), Botschaften an die Götter,
Religiöse Handschriften der Yao: Südchina, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar (Ausstel-
lungskataloge / Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 71), Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
Michel, Cécile and Michael Friedrich (eds) (2020a), Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts
from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 20), Berlin:
De Gruyter.
Michel, Cécile and Michael Friedrich (2020b), ‘Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts, An
Introduction’, in Michel and Friedrich (eds) 2020a, 1–24.
Niewöhner, Friedrich (1994), ‘Lese- oder Schreib-Maschine – Das Bücherrad in der Herzog
August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel’, Kultur & Technik, 18/4: 28–29.
XXVIII | Jörg B. Quenzer

Paul, Ludwig (ed.) (2008), Vom Kolonialinstitut zum Asien-Afrika-Institut (Deutsche Ostasien-
studien, 2), Gossenberg: Ostasien Verlag.
Richter, Matthias (ed.) (2003), Special Section: Hamburg Tomb Text Workshop, Monumenta
Serica, 51: 401–628.
Richter, Matthias (2005a), Guan ren: Texte der altchinesischen Literatur zur Charakterkunde
und Beamtenrekrutierung (Welten Ostasiens, 3), Bern: Lang.
Richter, Matthias (ed.) (2005b), Methodological Issues in the Study of Early Chinese Manu-
scripts: Papers from the Second Hamburg Tomb Text Workshop (Asiatische Studien, 59/1),
Bern: Lang.

Tabula gratulatoria
Roswitha Auer, Universität Hamburg
Christof Berns, Universität Hamburg
Bidur Bhattarai, Universität Hamburg
Michaelle Biddle, Universität Hamburg
Ulrich Bismayer, Universität Hamburg
Stefanie Brinkmann, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig
Jonathan E. Brockopp, Pennsylvania State University
Alberto Camplani, Sapienza Università di Roma
Giuseppe De Gregorio, Università di Bologna
Philippe Depreux, Universität Hamburg
Steffen Döll, Universität Hamburg
Jörg Fromm, Universität Hamburg
Enno Giele, Universität Heidelberg
Alessandro Gori, University of Copenhagen
Sabrina Grabe, Universität Hamburg
Arlo Griffiths, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris
Jens-Uwe Hartmann, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München
Stefan Heidemann, Universität Hamburg
Karsten Helmholz, Universität Hamburg
Konrad Hirschler, Universität Hamburg
Harunaga Isaacson, Universität Hamburg
Thomas Jacobsen, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg
Philip J. Jaggar, University of London
Eva Jungbluth, Universität Hamburg
Christina Kaminski, Universität Hamburg
Margit Kern, Universität Hamburg
Roland Kießling, Universität Hamburg
 Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich | XXIX

Beatrice Kitzinger, Princeton University

Gabriele Klein, Universität Hamburg
Susanne Knödel, Museum am Rothenbaum, Hamburg
Ulla Kypta, Universität Hamburg
Frances Ligler, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & North Carolina
State University
Caroline Macé, Universität Hamburg
Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
Hussein Adnan Mohammed, Universität Hamburg
Costantino Moretti, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris
Raoul Motika, Universität Hamburg
Lawrence Nees, University of Delaware
Denis Nosnitsin, Universität Hamburg
Juliane Noth, Universität Hamburg
Merryl Rebello, Universität Hamburg
Ivana Rentsch, Universität Hamburg
Susanne Rupp, Universität Hamburg
Richard Salomon, University of Washington, Seattle
Christian Schroer, Universität Hamburg
Doreen Schröter, Universität Hamburg
Cosima Schwarke, Universität Hamburg
Silke Segler-Meßner, Universität Hamburg
Johanna Seibert, Universität Hamburg
Anselm Steiger, Universität Hamburg
Frank Steinicke, Universität Hamburg
Jan van der Putten, Universität Hamburg
Jochen Vennebusch, Universität Hamburg
Ronny Vollandt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München
Oskar von Hinüber, Universität Freiburg
Irina Wandrey, Universität Hamburg
Alessandro Bausi
‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’:
Once More on the Gǝʿǝz Inscription of Ham
(RIÉ no. 232)
Abstract: First published by Giorgio Brunetti in 1927 and re-edited by Carlo
Conti Rossini in 1939, the inscription of Ham (RIÉ no. 232) has since received
attention from several scholars in Ethiopian and Eritrean studies, from Ugo
Monneret de Villard to Enrico Cerulli, Sergew Hable Selassie, and, in the last
twenty-five years, Gianfranco Fiaccadori and Manfred Kropp. The latter author
has proposed a precise dating to 873 CE, before the recent appearance of the
posthumous contribution by Abraham Johannes Drewes, who is the last one to
have systematically discussed the inscription. Without pretending to solve all
problems that arise from the inscription, the scope of the present note is to pro-
vide a fresh re-examination of some of the palaeographic and linguistic features
of the Ham inscription, which remains a Gǝʿǝz epigraphic document of excep-
tional importance for the Ethiopian and Eritrean Middle Ages, and to propose a
dating to 23 December 974 CE.

Michaeli Friderico
grato dicatum animo

1 Introduction
The quotation ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ (‘Palaeography as a sci-
ence of the spirit’) refers to the title of a well-known contribution by the great
classical philologist Giorgio Pasquali, where he praises palaeography as a ‘spir-
itual science’ that transcends its assumed auxiliary role becoming ante litteram
an all-encompassing history of a given manuscript culture.1 The present study, in
reconsidering the evidence afforded by the inscription of Ham, does not set out
to provide an exemplary application of this approach to palaeography, nor will

||
1 See Pasquali 1931; the essay was republished several times in Pasquali’s Pagine stravaganti
(1934, 1968, 1994).

Open Access. © 2021 Alessandro Bausi, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-002
4 | Alessandro Bausi

this be the last word on a much debated issue – since I am not proposing here a
fully satisfactory explanation of the most debated passage. Nevertheless, I
would argue that these considerations have at least the merit of not only spot-
ting some weaknesses in the previous proposals, but also developing previous
intuitions towards a still unexplored direction, and highlighting some over-
looked palaeographic and linguistic features of the inscription, also in the light
of new manuscript evidence.
The Gǝʿǝz inscription of Ham (RIÉ no. 232, here Fig. 1), with its fifty-four
words, or better, orthographic units marked by vertical word dividers, that are
distributed in fifteen lines of text, is a true milestone of Ethiopian epigraphy,
since it provides – according to the hypothesis advanced by Manfred Kropp – a
precise date: the 27 (፳፯) of the month of Taḥsās2 of 590 (፭፻፺) of the Era of
Diocletian (or Era the Martyrs, or Era of Mercy according to the Ethiopian
denomination), which corresponds to 27 Taḥsās 866 of the Ethiopian calendar
(or Era of the Incarnation), and to 23 December 873 CE in the Julian calendar
(Figs 2 and 3).3 This dating would be essential for placing the inscription in its
precise historical context as well as for providing an exactly dated term of
comparison for palaeographical and linguistic features.
The inscription was once placed on the façade of the old church of St Mary
(Beta Māryām) in the village of Ham, in the Eritrean region of ʾAkkala Guzāy,
although we have no certain evidence that this was its earliest and original

||
2 Since the name of the month is given in this form in the inscription, and since there is no
apparent binding etymological reason to write Tāḥśāś (see Leslau 1987, 573a) as normally given
by the later tradition, for the sake of simplicity I will always write the name of the month ac-
cording to the orthography of the inscription, that is, Taḥsās.
3 See Kropp 1999, who, following Fiaccadori 1993, 325–331, provided the bibliographical state
of the art to date. One might observe that Uhlig 1988, 155, 159, 166, 170–175 does not provide
any decisive consideration for dating the inscription; and that this, more than rare, unique
written artefact from the Post-Aksumite time, is not even mentioned in the comprehensive
overview offered by Phillipson 2012; in this respect, the synthesis on Aksumite history by
Munro-Hay 1991, 247–248, which provides more than just a tentative translation after Carlo
Conti Rossini and Ugo Monneret de Villard (for which see below), is still worth reading, even if
it does not propose any new hypothesis, as noted by Kropp 1999, 165, n. 7. A short mention
with due importance given to the site of Ham provides Schmidt et al. 2008, 324–325. The exer-
cise of translation and commentary drafted by Damien Labadie (to which Manfred Kropp kindly
drew my attention), a ‘Travail effectué dans le cadre du cours d’épigraphie sémitique de l’Institut
Catholique de Paris, dispensé par M. Axel van de Sande’, available for some time on a blog
(<http://damienlabadie.blogspot.com/> in the ‘Série Byzance et l’Orient chrétien’) and apparently
now removed from the internet, misses the bibliography of the last thirty years and has the stand
of a term paper. Hatke 2020, 324, attributes the inscription of Ham all importance it deserves as
one of the few evidences available from the dark phase of the early Ethiopian Middle Ages.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 5

location. The inscription was later removed from the old church and incorpo-
rated into the inside wall of the new church of St Mary in the same village,
where it was documented, to my knowledge, for the last time in 1993 and 1994, a
few years after the new church had been built. The village of Ham is located on
the highland next to an escarpment where the historical monastery of Dabra
Libānos is located. The latter monastery, which lies opposite to other historical
sites in Tǝgrāy and is located above a valley that marks the Eritrean-Ethiopian
border, is at the centre of an area that was prominent from the late Aksumite
period (at the latest) to the Post-Aksumite period.4
First published by Giorgio Brunetti in 1927 and re-edited by Carlo Conti
Rossini in 1939, the inscription of Ham has since received attention from a
number of well-known scholars, including Ugo Monneret de Villard – who
keenly observed its material relationship with Nubia given its peculiar shape
resemblance to Meroitic offering tables –, Enrico Cerulli – who discusses it in
his history of Ethiopian literature –, and Sergew Hable Selassie.5 In the last
twenty-five years the three most important contributions on this inscription are
those by Gianfranco Fiaccadori, who tried to re-examine the whole question
from a new point of view;6 Manfred Kropp, who dated the inscription to 873 CE,
as reported above, within a comprehensive interpretation of the inscription that
set out to tackle all the problems posed by its most difficult passage (ll. 4–5);7
and Abraham Johannes Drewes, whose contribution appeared posthumously.8

||
4 See Bausi and Lusini 1992, 26–31, pls 4–7, figs 7–15; fig. 10 is reproduced also on the cover of
Lusini 2018; to my knowledge, my field trips to Ham in 1993 and 1994, within the framework of
the Missione Italiana in Eritrea (1992–1997) led by Irma Taddia, were the last visits carried out
within a research programme by a non-Eritrean who documented the site; as I remarked, the
lack of the technical equipment unfortunately prevented me from taking pictures of the inscrip-
tion in its new placement; on the site of Ham (not ‘Ḥam’ as given by some authors), see ‘Däbrä
Libanos (in Šǝmäzana)’, EAe, II (2005), 28a–29b (Alessandro Bausi); ‘Ham’, EAe, II (2005),
980b–981b (Alessandro Bausi); see also Derat 2018, 96–98, on the inscription (following
Kropp’s proposal), and passim, for the historical context; for the nearby ecclesiastic and mo-
nastic context on the Ethiopian side of the border, see Nosnitsin 2013. The geographical coor-
dinates of the old church of Ham are 14°30'53.2"N 39°18'24.2"E (14.514775, 39.306726), those of
the nearby new church are 14°30'54.0"N 39°18'24.3"E (14.514985, 39.306747).
5 See Conti Rossini 1939; Monneret de Villard 1940; Cerulli 1968, 18–19; Sergew Hable Selassie
1972, 198–199.
6 See Fiaccadori 1993, 325–331, § 1 ‘Sull’iscrizione di Ḥam’; in addition to the criticism by
Kropp 1999, see the further arguments against Fiaccadori’s hypothesis by Drewes, in RIÉ IIIB,
328–332.
7 See Kropp 1999, who remarks that a picture of the inscription of Ham, photographed by Guy
Annequin, is available also in van der Stappen 1996, 219, n. 4. I note here that Manfred Kropp
must have written this important article ‘ganz in der Eile’, as Germans would say, with the
6 | Alessandro Bausi

2 The state of the art up to Manfred Kropp’s

interpretation
To sum up the state of the art: there is a general agreement that the text of the
inscription is clear and plainly understandable, with the only exception of a
passage in lines 4–5 that poses serious problems. Aside from Fiaccadori, who
had suggested a new reading as well as a new interpretation – and whose
hypothesis I will not discuss here in detail, because I think, along with others, it
cannot be accepted for reasons of palaeography and linguistic plausibility –
there is agreement on the reading of the text that I give here, which is based on
the edition in transcription by Abraham Johannes Drewes and Roger Schneider,

||
intention of revealing a breath-taking true interpretation of the dating of the inscription. This
results in a few inconsistencies that affect the flow of his argument. I note the following: Kropp
1999, 169, ll. 14–19: ‘Nach Ende des ersten großen 532-Jahreskalenderzyklus im 9. Jhdt. kam es
beim linearen Durchzählen der Diokletian-Ära, im Gegensatz zum Neubeginn mit dem Jahre 1
im Zyklus der Jahre der Gnade, zu einer häufigen Gleichsetzung “Jahre der Gnade” = “der
Märtyrer” = “Diokletians”, für die wir in der Inschrift von Ḥam den ersten äthiopischen Beleg
haben, nämlich aus dem Jahre 690 Diokletians’: correct ‘690’ to ‘590’; Kropp 1999, 169, n. 18:
‘Zu dem Aufkommen und Gebrauch der Ära Diokletians als Ära der Märtyrer im christlichen
Nubien vgl. nun MacCoull/Worp 1997. Die ältesten Belege stammen aus den Jahren 502 (785/6
n. Chr.) und 600 (833/4 n. Chr.); vgl. Łajtar 1997: 107 f. Ich danke Herrn Kollegen Łajtar für
wertvolle Auskünfte und eine – notwendige! – Kontrolle der Datumsumrechnungen.’: correct
‘MacCoull/Worp 1997’ to ‘MacCoull/Worp 1990’; ‘Łajtar 1997’ is not in the bibliography, where
there is only ‘Łajtar 1993’, which does not contain any page 107; in the same title, the pages
‘243–247’ must be corrected to ‘245–247’ (pp. 243–244 in the same journal contain another
separate note by Łajtar, with a different title); Kropp 1999, 170, n. 20: ‘Eine erste Vermutung, es
könne sich um nubische Zahlzeichen handeln, zunächst geboren aus einer falschen Identifizie-
rung des Datums mit dem Jahr 690, scheidet nun aus’: here too, correct ‘690’ to ‘590’. In a
previous contribution (Bausi 2019a, 87, n. 37) I had already noted one more inconsistency,
probably connected with the wavering between 590 and 690 noted above, concerning the
parallelism established by Monneret de Villard 1940, 67, with the Nubian inscription of ʿAlwa
dated to 897: ‘Damit ist sie lediglich 125 Jahre jünger als die Inschrift aus Ḥam’, where ‘125’
should be first corrected to ‘25’ and then also to ‘24’ (897 – 873 = 24). Also note that in Kropp
1999, 176, the line numbers are wrong (‘Zahl “27” Zeile 1’ refers to line 2 and ‘Zahl “590” Zeile 2’
refers to line 4), see here Figs 2 and 3. I must instead withdraw my observation concerning
Kropp’s transcription of ‘ʾǝla’, without gemination, which in fact corresponds, in the edition
(Kropp 1999, 167), to the general criterion (also adopted in RIÉ I) not to render morphological
gemination, whereas gemination is noted elsewhere as expected (see Kropp 1999, 168, ‘ṣärrǝ-
nä ʾǝllä-sahl’, this latter so written in order to highlight that they form a noun phrase, even
though ʾǝlla śahl are clearly separated by the word divider in the inscription).
8 See RIÉ IIIB, 326–333.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 7

with the only addition of morphological gemination in round brackets where

required, the corresponding text in Gǝʿǝz script, and my English translation of
the lines where there is agreement, whereas the end of line 4 and the entire line
5 are not translated:9

||
9 See RIÉ I, 134. The first editor, Brunetti 1927, 82, reads: (1) ሞተት፡ ጊሐ፡ ውለተ፡ መንገሣ፡
በወር|(2) ኅ፡ ታሕሳስ፡ አሜ፡ ሸ N፡ ለሠርቀ፡ አ|(3)ሜ፡ መኃታዊሁ፡ ለጌና፡ በዕለተ፡ ረ|(4) ቡዕ፡
ወዓርፋ፡ ዓመተ፡ እኔን፡ (but suggesting ፮፻፺) ጸረ|(5)ኔ፡ (but suggesting ጸርኁ፡) አለ፡
ሣህል፡ …, and translates: ‘(1) Morì Gihä, figlia di Mängäsa, nel me-|(2)se di taḥsas, nel 28
all’alba, nel-|(3)la viglia del Natale, in giorno di mer-|(4) coledi e riposò l’anno, 790. Io procla-
|(5)mai tuttavia la Misericordia [di Dio]’, with ‘viglia’ for either ‘veglia’ or more likely ‘vigilia’ in
the text. Conti Rossini 1939, who is the only scholar working on the inscription of Ham who was
able to use a calque of the inscription provided by Antonio Mordini (cf. p. 7, n. 2), does not
provide an edition, but his readings can be deduced and reconstructed from his commentary
and translation (pp. 11–13): ‘(1) È morta Giḥo figlia di Mangaśā nel me- |(2)se di tāḥsās, addì 27,
all’alba, nel |(3) dì precedente la vigilia di Natale, in giorno di mer-|(4) coledì, e la sua … |(5) … Ella
Sàhel’, with the following presupposed readings: (1) ሞተት፡ ጊሖ፡ ውለተ፡ መንገሣ፡
በወር|(2)ኀ፡ ተሕሳስ፡ (or ታሕሳስ፡) አሜ፡ ፳፯፡ ለሠርቀ፡ አ|(3) ሜ፡ መኃትዊሁ፡ ለጌና፡
በዕለተ፡ ረ|(4)ቡዕ፡ ወኀሪፋ፡ ዓመተ፡ እኔን፡ ጸራ|(2)ኔ፡ እለ፡ ሣህል፡ …. Cerulli 1968, 18,
translates: ‘Morì Ghiho figlia di Mangascià nel mese di “tahsâs”, il giorno 27, all’alba, il giorno
precedente alla vigilia di Natale, giorno di mercoledì; essendo questo l’anno … Ella Sahel’.
Sergew Hable Selassie 1972, 198, reads as follows: (1) ሞተት፡ ጊሖ፡ ወለተ፡ መንገሣ፡ በወር፡
(sic) |(2) ኀ፡ ታሕሳስ፡ አሜ፡ ፳፰፡ ለሠርቅ፡ አ|(3)ሜ፡ መኀተዊሁ፡ ለጌና፡ በዕለተ፡ ረ|(4)ቡዕ፡
ወኀሪፉ፡ ዓመተ፡ እኔን፡ ጸረ|(5) ነ፡ እለ፡ ሠህል፡ …, and translates: ‘(1) Giho the daughter of
Mengesa died in the mon-|(2)th of Tahsas (Dec.) on the 27th day, on |(3) The (sic) eve of Christmas
on the day of We-|(4)dnesday. And died a year later after we had (conquered?) Our en-|(5)emy
Ella Sahl’. Fiaccadori 1993, 325–327, reads as follows: (1) ሞተት፡ ጊሖ፡ ውለተ፡ መንገሣ፡
በወር|(2)ኀ፡ ተሕሳስ፡ አሜ፡ ፳፯ ለሠርቅ፡ አ|(3)ሜ፡ መኃትዊሁ፡ ለጌና፡ በዕለተ፡ ረ|(4) ቡዕ፡
ወኀሪፋ፡ ዓመት፡ እኔን፡ ጸረ|(5) ኁ፡ (as suggested by Brunetti) እለ፡ ሠህል፡…, and translates:
‘È morta Giḥo figlia di Mangaśā nel mese di tāḫsās (sic), il 27, all’alba, nel dì precedente la
vigilia di Natale, in giorno di mercoledì; e l’età sua (era di) un anno. “Ahimè” – gridarono
quanti furono mossi a pietà [o: al compianto]’, supposing an Amharism (ʾǝnen, ‘said if a child
falls – i.e. if only what happened to you had happened to me instead’, see Kane 1990, 1211a,
based on Guidi 1901, 460) and a reading ጸረኁ፡ that is not supported by palaeography. Kapeliuk
1997, 494, discussing the possibility that ḫarifu might be a gerund, translates ‘a year having
elapsed from [the time of] Ella Sāhl the Ṣarane’. Finally Kropp 1999, 167, follows faithfully RIÉ
I, safe for ጸረነ፡ instead of ጸረኔ፡ (ll. 4–5, for which variance I did not find any explanation in
his article, see below), in turn emended to ጸርነ፡, and, as we will see, ፭፻፺፡ (l. 5) instead of
እኔን፡. Concerning other contributions, Mordini 1959, 48 accepts a dating to the eighth
century. No further light comes from the short entry by Irvine 1975, who places Giḥo in the
seventh century (‘in the reign of Emperor ʾEllä-Śähel, but the King Lists record several rulers of
this name in the century or so before Emperor Gäbrä-Mäsqäl’) and the inscription in the
seventh or eighth century. Out of focus are the sparse remarks on the inscription by Ricci 1991,
196, 200, and 203 (dating dubitatively the inscription between the fifth and seventh century),
8 | Alessandro Bausi

(1)
motat giḥo wǝlata mangaśā bawar|(2)ḫa taḥsās ʾame 27 laśarq ʾa|(3)me maḫātǝwihu
lagen(n)ā baʿelata ra|(4)buʿ waḫarifu ʿāmat ʾǝnen ṣara|(5)ne ʾǝl(l)a śahl …

(1)
ሞተት፡ ጊሖ፡ ውለተ፡ መንገሣ፡ በወር|(2)ኀ፡ ተሕሳስ፡ አሜ፡ ፳፯ ለሠርቅ፡ አ|(3)ሜ፡
መኃትዊሁ፡ ለጌና፡ በዕለተ፡ ረ|(4)ቡዕ፡ ወኀሪፉ፡ ዓመት፡ እኔን፡ ጸረ|(5) ኔ፡ እለ፡ ሠህል፡…

(1)
Giḥo, the daughter of Mangaśā, died on the mo-|(2) nth of Taḥsās, on the 27, at dawn, on
| the day before the eve of Christmas, on Wednes-|(4)day; and the present year was the
(3)

year … |(5) …

While the text is overall quite legible, the words ʾǝnen ṣarane ʾǝl(l)a śahl require
additional explanation or emendation. The first editor of the inscription of Ham,
Brunetti, had a fundamental intuition that was rejected by all following inter-
preters, from Conti Rossini to Fiaccadori, until Kropp resumed his idea. His
intuition was that the stonecutter who worked on the inscription must have
tried to reproduce some numerical signs with which he was not familiar and
which he did not understand completely: in Brunetti’s hypothesis, the day of
the month was 28 (ሸN ፡ = ፳፰፡) and the year was 790 (እኔን፡ = ፯፻፺፡, but he
wrote ፮፻፺፡, that is, 690).10 No doubt Brunetti committed several trivial mis-
takes in his reading and interpretation, but most of all he did not consider that
28 Taḥsās 790 was a Sunday, and even 28 Taḥsās 690 would have been a Mon-
day, while the inscription mentions a Wednesday.
Resuming Brunetti’s idea, Kropp defined very precisely which calendrical
parameters needed to be matched in order to have a consistent hypothesis that
would explain with certainty the date hidden under the enigmatic ʾǝnen
(እኔን፡), which the preceding words presupposed. In doing so, however – and
this is a key point – Kropp had to start from a firm basis rooted in some indis-
putable evidence. This firm basis consisted in two points: the first is that the
mention of an ‘eve’ before Christmas night made it necessary to read ‘27’ in the
first numerals (፳፯), since Christmas is 29 Taḥsās and the Christmas night

||
commenting on the remarks by Zuurmond 1989, 37–38; and Lusini 1999, 414–415, suggests a
dating to the tenth/eleventh and finally opts for the twelfth/thirteenth century.
10 In Brunetti’s own words (Brunetti 1927, 81), ‘La parola እኔን፡ della linea 4, che, a prima
vista, ci richiamerebbe all’amarico, deve essere intesa come l’errata trascrizione del numero
፮፻፺፡ fatta da chi non era molto pratico ancora delle nuove forme numerali. Anche a linea 2 il
lapicida scrive ሸ N invece di ፳፰ (28) riattaccandosi ai numeri dei monumenti più antichi’.
Number ፮፻፺፡ corresponds to 690, while Brunetti gives ‘790’ in his translation; he is in fact
uncertain on this point, see Brunetti 1927, 80, ‘La data 790 che leggo sull’iscrizione può anche
non essere esatta, potendo alcuno leggere 690 od 890, ma credo sia la più verisimile, sia per il
complesso di indizi che ci dà l’iscrizione, sia per la maggior affinità tra le lettere ፮ ed እ che
vennero confuse dal lapicida, il quale ha commesso diversi altri errori di scrittura’.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 9

(gennā) starts on 28. In leap years, however, Christmas is 28 Taḥsās, the Christ-
mas night (gennā) starts on 27, and its eve is on the 26.11 The second firm point
was the identification of the letter n (ን) with the numeral ‘90’ (፺), on the basis of
an apparent similarity. However, the belief that the date had to end with ‘-90’
led to a sort of inexorable line of reasoning, which, in my opinion, ended up
overlooking the graphic and palaeographic evidence afforded by the inscription
itself. Kropp thus supposed that ne (ኔ) had to be interpreted like a ‘100’ (፻)
turned upside down to express the hundreds, and looked for all possible com-
binations of ‘-90’ years with a 27 Taḥsās on Wednesday. This led him to con-
clude that 590 of the Era of Diocletian (or Era of the Martyrs or Era of Mercy),
which corresponds to 27 Taḥsās 866 of the Ethiopian calendar (= 23 December
873 CE), was the fitting solution to the problem and one that worked quite well.12
In fact, the year 750 CE would also work, but such a date would be too early
because at that point in time the first great cycle of 532 years has not yet ended
and because the Era of Mercy, with this designation, is not yet attested.13

||
11 Important in this regard is Drewes’s (for whose hypothesis see below) explicit comment on
line 2 (RIÉ IIIB, 328): ‘3: gennā veut dire “nativitas Christi”, et “parasceue festi natalitii”,
“Noël”, et “veille de Noël”’, with references to Dillmann 1865, 1175, and Leslau 1987, 196;
‘Maḫātǝw, pluriel de māḫtot, “lampe”, signifie “vigilia”, “la veille”’, with references to Dillmann
1865, 604, and Leslau 1987, 258; ‘Le passage ʾame maḫātǝwihu lagennā est ambigu. Au lieu de
“la vigile de Noël”, C. Conti Rossini l’a traduit par “nel dì precedente la vigilia di Natale”, ce qui
correspond à la date du 27 Tāḥsās; nous l’avons suivi’. On gennā see also ‘Lǝdät’, EAe, III
(2007), 538b–540a (Steven Kaplan, Emmanuel Fritsch, and Gianfranco Fiaccadori), where
gennā is interpreted as the eve of Christmas (either on 28 or 27 Tāḥsās). An unclear comment by
Sergew Hable Selassie 1972, 198, n. 94, refers to the same point: ‘From the picture of the
inscription it is not clear whether it is ፯ or ፰. Historically both are possible. The former
indicates that it was a leap year and the latter that it was a normal year’. Concerning the leap
year, one has to observe that the leap year in the Ethiopic calendar, with six days in the
thirteenth month of P̣āgʷmen, is year of Luke, that precedes the Julian and Gregorian leap year
with a February of 29 days, which corresponds for the most part to year of John in the Ethiopic
calendar; see very clearly on this point Cody 1991, 433b, ‘in the Alexandrian system the extra
day is intercalated at the very end of the Alexandrian year preceding the one in which the
Julian calendar’s 29 February will occur’.
12 A pioneer in the use of digital tools, Kropp was able to use digital devices which facilitated
this search. Among other useful tools available at present, see the recently released Ḥassāba
Zaman (<https://cal.ethiopicist.com/>, accessed on 11 Febr. 2021), developed by Augustine
Dickinson, which I used for the preparation of this note.
13 The Era of Diocletian, introduced already in the first half of the fourth century in Egypt and
probably also in Ethiopia, began to be called ‘Era of the Martyrs’ in Egypt from the end of the
eighth century at the latest (785/786), see Luisier 2015, 306, who rightly stresses that the origin
of the name of ‘Era of Diocletian’ has nothing to do with the role of Diocletian in persecution;
cf. also Kropp 1999, 169, with n. 18. Concerning Luisier’s remark on the occurrences of the Era
10 | Alessandro Bausi

Consequently and without any doubt, the first two signs of ʾǝnen (እኔን፡) had to
mean 500, and hence the equivalence እኔ = ፭፻, that is 5 (×) 100, was necessarily
established.

3 The open questions after Manfred Kropp’s

hypothesis
To suppose that the number 590 is hidden under ʾǝnen brings about a number of
difficulties and does not consistently explain the way of rendering numerals in
the inscription. Furthermore, other difficulties arise from the interpretation,
required to support Kropp’s hypothesis, of ṣarane ʾǝlla śahl as an expression
that designates the Era of Diocletian (or Era of the Martyrs or Era of Mercy),14 as
Kropp translates lines 1–5 as follows:

||
of Diocletian in the Gadla P̣anṭalewon recorded by Brita 2010, 80, 105–106 and ‘P̣änṭälewon’,
EAe, IV (2010), 111a–113a (Antonella Brita) (noted by Luisier 2015, 302, nn. 22 and 23), in the
first passage three manuscripts, attesting to the majority of the families, bear the date of 111 of
the Era of Diocletian, while four (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Éthiopien, d’Abbadie
110, i.e. the one adopted by Conti Rossini, plus three manuscripts depending from the subar-
chetype ε) have 1001 (one manuscript cannot be read); for the second date, all manuscripts
which have it (subarchetype ε omits the date and one manuscript cannot be read) have 236,
including d’Abbadie 110: Conti Rossini’s reading (246) is erroneous (see Conti Rossini 1904,
text 43–44 and 60, transl. 40 and 56). Also note that Kropp’s remark concerning an early occur-
rence of the Era of the Martyrs (inscription from Meroe dated to 613 = 897 of the Common Era),
‘Dies ist wichtig für die Verwendung der Ära des Diokletian, aber mit der neuen Benennung
“der Märtyrer” […]. Äthiopien scheint nach Ausweis der Inschrift von Ḥam diese Benennung
später übernommen zu haben, ohne daß sich die vorherige, alternativ christliche “Jahre der
Gnade oder Erbarmung” gänzlich verdrängen ließ, wie auch die Ambiguität der Bezeichnung
(entweder auf Geburt Christi oder Diokletian bezogen) weiter bestand’ (Kropp 1999, 164, n. 4),
is not so clear: in fact, there is no non-Ethiopian evidence for the designation of the Era of
Diocletian or Era of the Martyrs as ‘Era of Mercy’. In view of this latter point it is also necessary
to review some other statements (Kropp 1999, 171, ‘Die Verbindung zum christlichen Nubien ist
nun auch aufgrund der Datierung und der Kalenderbezeichnungen wie auch der Zahlzeichen
klar geworden’). Still essential are the contributions by Bagnall and Worp 2004, and the earlier
contribution by MacCoull and Worp 1990, with important addenda et emendanda, MacCoull
and Worp 1995; see also the monograph on calendar and computus in Nubian evidence by
Ochała 2011. Lastly, see the monograph by Hidding 2020, which mostly focuses on the percep-
tion of the ‘Great Persecution’.
14 I already listed and commented upon some of these difficulties in a previous contribution,
see Bausi 2019a, 85–89.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 11

(1)
Es starb Giḥo, Tochter des Mängäša, im |(2) Monat Täḥsas am 27. des morgens am Vor-
abend |(3) des Weihnachtsfestes, an einem |(4) Mittwoch und das (laufende) Jahr war das
Jahr 590 ‘unseres Feindes’ |(5) (= Diokletian) (d.h. aber auch) ‘der Gnade’. …

[(1) Giḥo, daughter of Mängäša, died in |(2) the month Täḥsas on the 27th of the morning the
eve before |(3) Christmas night, on a |(4) Wednesday and the (current) year was the year 590
‘of our enemy’ |(5) (= Diocletian) (but also) ‘of Mercy’. …]

This translation obscures a number of linguistic difficulties: on the syntactic

level, the supposed genitive ‘unseres Feindes’ is not expressed, since there is no
genitival construction in the text and one does not see how the noun phrase
holds. Equally problematic is the value of ʾǝlla, taken as the plural of the rela-
tive pronoun, of which the function and construction are also not clear. There
are also serious lexical problems: Kropp maintains that the inscription of Ham
contains a reference to the year of the Era of the Martyrs, indicated by the term
śahl (also read by some editors as śāhl, but that is irrelevant here). This would
be a manifestation of the well-known alignment of the Era of Mercy with the Era
of Diocletian, from which it originally differs by 76 years, in turn renamed in
time ‘Era of the Martyrs’. However, while the phenomenon of the overlapping of
the two systems and denominations is well known in Ethiopia, the term śāhl (or
śahl, ‘clemency’), although synonymous, is never attested in this function, be-
cause the technical term used exclusively is mǝḥrat (‘grace, mercy’). Kropp, who
was well aware of this issue, tried to solve it by suggesting a possible interfer-
ence of a Greek Nubian model, that was literally followed, but without provid-
ing other elements.15 Although the possibility of a change in technical and even
administrative terminology between the ancient and more recent periods must
always be taken into account, this is not a minor problem.16 Another significant

||
15 See Kropp 1999, 170, ‘So ergibt sich die Gewißheit, daß im spätaksumitischen Reich nach
Jahren “der Gnade” datiert wurde – wenn auch, als zusätzliche Information, bezeichnet in
einer später aufgegebener Terminologie, die sich aber als direkte Übersetzung aus dem (altnu-
bischen) Griechisch erweist: “unseres Feindes” = Diokletian; vgl. die ständigen Epitheta
Diokletians in der äthiopischen Übersetzung des Synaxars), aber auch “der Gnade”, statt
später mit dem Quasi-Synonym “der Erbarmung”’, that is mǝḥrat; yet Kropp himself translates
mǝḥrat with ‘Gnade’ and not with ‘Erbarmung’, see for example Kropp 1988, 11. As is often the
case, the authors are prodigal in explaining what is quite certain from the point of view of their
hypothesis, much less so from the point of view of the arguments against it. Yet it would be
unfair and ungenerous to place this responsibility on Kropp alone, who has the great merit of
having proposed a complete explanation.
16 See for example, the unicum of the use of the verb ʾaksama ‘to give as feud’, for the oldest
feudal acts of the Zāgʷe period, which never occurs at a later date, cf. lastly Derat 2018, 30–61,
with extensive commentary; but on the other hand, consider also the surprising continuity of
12 | Alessandro Bausi

issue is the occurrence of Diocletian, which would be related to the epithets

attributed to him in the Synaxarion: the name of Diocletian is not in the inscrip-
tion, and the emperor would be simply evoked by the epithet ‘our enemy’, that
is, ‘the enemy of the Christians par excellence’.17 Yet, this reading is dubious,
because both RIÉ I and Conti Rossini read this term as ṣarane or even ṣarāne,
rather than ṣarrǝna, which would be required for interpreting the passage as
‘our enemy’.18 Moreover, even if the reading ṣarrǝna, ‘our enemy’, was accepted,
the concerned etymological root ḍrr is well attested in the Aksumite epigraphy
always with ḍ and not ṣ. Therefore, this would precisely be one of those cases
where there has been a graphic confusion between ḍ (ፀ) and ṣ (ጸ) as is common
in later manuscript tradition. However, Kropp himself quite rightly argues that,
for what concerns the orthographic peculiarities of our inscription, the discrep-
ancies from standard orthography are not of the kind of uncertainties otherwise
found in manuscripts regarding the writing of laryngeals and ḍ as well.19

||
some formulas that in medieval times seem to resume Aksumite ‘protocols’, cf. Bausi 2013, 173–
175.
17 See Kropp 1999, 168, n. 17, ‘Es genügt hier, auf die stehenden Epitheta bei der Nennung des
Namens von Kaiser Diokletian im äthiopischen Synaxar hinzuweisen’, but after a cursory
analysis undertaken on the edition published in the Patrologia Orientalis I could not trace any
occurrence of ‘enemy’ as an epithet used for Diocletian, see the index in Colin 1999, 35.
18 See Kropp 1999, 168, ‘ṣärrǝ-nä ǝllä-śahl “unseres Feindes, der Gnade”’, with footnote 16
(‘Hier ist die für sprachliche Nachlӓssigkeit der ganzen Inschrift nicht unangemessene
Konjektur ር anstatt ረ angenommen’) takes into account only the conjecture rǝ instead of ra (rä
in Kropp’s transcription), while he has nothing on na (nä in Kropp’s transcription) instead of
ne, and states that the alternative forms in ll. 8 (ṣǝḥuf) and 12 (ṣǝḥǝf), l. 6 (yǝtwällädä, instead
of the expected yǝtwälläd), and l. 1 (wǝlättä instead of the expected wälättä), ‘lassen ṣärränä
statt ṣärrǝnä (Z. 4.) als ganz in der “Norm” dieser Inschrift erscheinen’. In fact, also in RIÉ IIIB,
the only alternative reading discussed and rejected regards the possibility of reading ṣarani
instead of ṣarane (see RIÉ IIIB, 333, ‘Le mot ṣarane, lecture bien préférable à ṣarani’). Having
said this, Kropp 1999, 165, in fact and with good reasons, criticizes the edition provided by RIÉ
I, ‘Im RIE No. 232 und pl. 165 ist nur die Bibliographie, eine materielle Beschreibung und eine
neue Umschrift (die freilich in einzelnen Punkten zu verbessern ist) zu finden’. There is little
doubt, however, that the inscription reads ṣarane (see Fig. 1), as clearly appears from the pic-
ture taken by Mordini and here reproduced with a better resolution than in the article by Conti
Rossini 1939, a reading, of course, for which one might always invoke an error of the stonecutter.
19 See Kropp 1999, 167–168, ‘Diese Abweichungen betreffen weniger die sonst in Handschrif-
ten anzutreffenden Unsicherheiten in Bezug auf die Schreibung von Pharyngalen und ḍ’. For
the root ḍrr in Gǝʿǝz inscriptions, see RIÉ IIIB, 611–612. This is a serious point, since the etymo-
logical coherence of the orthography of the inscription is apparent; see Nosnitsin and Bulakh
2014 for an exemplary evaluation in this regard of an archaic manuscript fragment.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 13

4 The interpretation of Abraham Johannes Drewes

Before coming to the crucial point of how it is possible to interpret the numerals
of the inscription of Ham in a different way, it is worth considering the recently
and posthumously published proposal by Drewes in RIÉ IIIB, who translates
lines 1–5 as follows:

(1)
Est morte Giḥo, fille de Mangaśā, le mois |(2) de Taḥsās, le 27 de ce mois, |(3) l’avant-veille
de Noël, le jour de mer-|(4)credi; l’année <de sa mort> est l’an |(5) 807 (?).

Drewes thinks that the whole expression ʾǝnen ṣarane ʾǝl(l)a śahl has no mean-
ing, and that it is simply a way to express a number, in consideration of the fact
that every letter would have a numerical value, as is also customary in Hebrew,
Syriac, Arabic, and even in Greek, with the so-called isopsephic system. Thus,
assuming that ʾ = 1, n = 50, ṣ = 90, r = 200, l = 30, ś = 300, and h = 5, one would
get the sum of 807.20 We can note, however, that 27 Taḥsās 807 (= 23 December
814 CE) would be a Saturday, while 27 Taḥsās 807 of the Era of the Diocletian
(= 23 December 1083 of the Era of the Incarnation and Ethiopian Calendar, and
1090 CE) would be a Friday. Aside from this, the main problem with Drewes’s
hypothesis is the lack of parallels for this way of expressing numerals, and the
apparent internal inconsistency: the inscription has other numerals (the ‘27’ of
the month of Taḥsās) that are not expressed according to the system he suggests
was adopted for the year.21 Drewes himself actually advanced this hypothesis as
one among others, since he also proposed an alternative explanation according

||
20 See RIÉ IIIB, 329, ‘Il est donc vraisemblable que les mots énigmatiques ʾǝnen ṣarane ʾǝla
śahǝl précisent l’année de la mort de Giḥo, comme C. Conti Rossini l’a vu, et que les lettres qui
les composent ont une valeur numérique, d’autant plus que ces mots ne forment pas de phrase
compréhensible. Malheureusement nous ignorons quelle était la valeur numérique des lettres
éthiopiennes, mais si elle était identique à celle des alphabets hébreu, syriaque et arabe, ce qui
est probable, l’inscription date de l’an 807. Dans ces alphabets la valeur numérique de l’aleph
est 1, du n 50, du ṣ 90, du r 200, du l 30, du ś 300 et du h 5’. In fact, Drewes has completely
misunderstood Conti Rossini, who argues the other way around precisely against Brunetti’s
hypothesis, praised by Drewes, that the letters represent numerals (see Conti Rossini 1939, 12,
whereas Conti Rossini 1944–1945 has nothing on this).
21 On the possible use of a comparable, cryptographic way to express numerals in short in-
scriptions from the Coptic necropolis of Karanis, see the interesting considerations by Buzi
2004, 101.
14 | Alessandro Bausi

to which, in keeping with Conti Rossini’s suggestion, ʾǝnen ṣarane were person-
al or ethnic names.22

5 A fresh look at the numerical signs

Let’s now turn to the major point in Kropp’s hypothesis. Without listing all the
possible minor observations, the crucially unsolved problem is the ratio under-
lying such unusual graphic and palaeographic correspondences, so that the
first two of the three signs in ʾǝnen (እኔ) should represent ፭፻, that is 5 (×) 100 +
90 (ን) in order to get 590 (፭፻፺፡). Again, Kropp is obviously aware of the issue
and hence he puts forth some explanations to justify the strange and acrobatic
distortions suffered by the numerals that would be required for a passage from
፭ to እ, and even from ፻ to ኔ.23 But, going by this argument, it is hard to see why
the third numeral was also not distorted, at least to some extent; or why the
other numerals (the ‘27’ of Taḥsās) were not twisted as well. There is clearly a
problem here. If the change ፭ > እ is particularly astonishing, the representa-
tion of the ‘hundred’ (፻ > ኔ) is no less problematic and cannot be easily ex-
plained by suggesting that the shape of the sign was simply turned. This latter
sign, in fact, also has some wavering along its vertical axis, as well as on the
head, besides an otherwise arbitrary vertical rotation; the sign seems to have a
sinusoidal shape.

||
22 See RIÉ IIIB, 333, ‘Le mot ṣarane, lecture bien préférable à ṣarani, est probablement à iden-
tifier avec le nom d’un peuple, mentionné dans l’inscription 188, ligne 6. L’identification du
premier mot est problématique, mais étant donné que les autres mots dans ce passage parais-
sent être des noms propres, de personne ou de peuple, on peut se demander si ʾǝnen n’en est
pas un autre, hypothèse que C. Conti Rossini avait déjà avancée sous toutes réserves’. For the
passage of RIÉ no. 188, l. 6, see RIÉ IIIB, 229–231. I wonder whether Drewes’s two hypotheses in
RIÉ IIIB are the reflex of a redactional stage of his work where this point was still undecided.
The translation, however, presupposes undoubtedly the first hypothesis.
23 See Kropp 1999, 169 (‘ኔ ist als gedrehtes ፻ “100” zu deuten’), 169–170 (‘Das erste Zeichen እ
ist somit als eine auch bei den anderen Zahlzeichen des Textes zu beobachtende Umdeutung
der Standardform durch Achsendrehung in den formnächsten Buchstaben zu sehen (እ→ ፭).’):
but in fact, the rotation is along the vertical and horizontal axes in ‘5’ (እ → ፭), while it is along
the horizontal axis in ‘100’ (ኔ → ፻); and in ‘27’ (፳፯) one wonders whether there is any rotation
at all.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 15

Kropp himself, after wondering whether one shouldn’t consider Nubian

numerals, rules out such a hypothesis.24 But what about Greek numerals? Well,
if one takes into account how it might be possible to explain the enigmatic ʾǝnen
(እኔን፡) in terms of Greek numerals, by considering the forms attested at this
point in time, one finds a very simple and apparent correspondence between:
ǝnen (እኔን፡) and Ϡ Ξ Ζ (non-capital ϡ ξ ζ), that is ϡ (900) + ξ (60) + ζ (7), which
gives 27 Taḥsās 967 Era of the Incarnation (= 23 December 974 CE), which is a
Wednesday. For the shapes of the sampi (parakýïsma, as it should be called), Ϡ
(non-capital ϡ) representing ‘900’, there are palaeographic parallels likely to
have inspired a rendering by an archaic እ (ʾǝ) of the particular archaic shape as
attested in the inscription, with a prolonged horizontal stroke over the head.25
Note in fact that in Nubian Greek inscriptions the sampi has a pointed top (↑),
with a slightly more extended left arm and a tighter and shorter right arm, that
could definitely resemble the peculiar archaic form of alef in the sixth order in
the inscription (see ll. 5 (Fig. 3), 6, 7, 14).26 The imitation of a cursive form, as

||
24 See Kropp 1999, 170, n. 20, ‘Eine erste Vermutung, es könne sich um nubische Zahlzeichen
handeln, zunächst geboren aus einer falschen Identifizierung des Datums mit dem Jahr 690,
scheidet nun aus’.
25 See the contribution by Soldati 2006, which focuses on papyrological evidence, but pro-
vides exhaustive references to date, and the further integrations in Soldati 2009 and Dobias-
Lalou 2017, 187–190, exclusively on the attestation from the Hellenistic period on sampi used to
express the thousands; note that p. 111 of manuscript St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 459,
ninth/tenth centuries, that is one of the several Latin manuscripts with a complete set of Greek
numerals, is now accessible at <https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/csg/0459/111/0/Sequence-562>
(accessed on 12 Febr. 2021). For general contributions, that provide useful insights and corre-
sponding palaeographic examples, see Wattenbach 1895, 92–93 (on Ζ), 97 (on Ξ), and 103 (on
Ϡ); Foat 1905, 1906; see also Gardthausen 1913, 358–363 (on letters as numerals), and 368–370
(on ϡ), for further details; and the examples in Canart 1980, 89; for epigraphic evidence in
general, see Larfeld 1914, 225–226. The Wikipedia entry on sampi also provides rich and reliable
information <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampi> (accessed on 12 Febr. 2021). Essential
evidence on sampi was collected in the dissertation by Woisin 1886, 38–40.
26 See Łajtar 2003, 9 (inscription no. 1, Khartoum, Sudan National Museum, inv. 23377, Epi-
taph of Kollouthos, Bishop of Faras, l. 6; see already Kubińska 1974, 32–34, no. 5, pl. 6 on
p. 33), who notes that ‘the form of the sign for 900 (↑) in the number of the year according to
the era from the birth of Christ which, as far as Nubia is concerned, occurs only in the epitaphs
of Faras bishops Kollouthos and Stephanos’. The same form is in fact attested in the inscription
no. 107, Warsaw, National Museum, inv. 234646, Epitaph of Stephanos, Bishop of Faras, l. 7,
see Łajtar and Twardecki 2003, 290–293, where the presence of the sampi for a typographical
slip is not in the edition (p. 291), but its presence and its shape were kindly confirmed to me by
Adam Łajtar (see already Kubińska 1974, 34–36, no. 6, pl. 7 on p. 35, where the sampi is par-
ticularly marked by a longer and more extended left arm and a tighter and shorter right arm).
16 | Alessandro Bausi

from later attestations (from the ninth century), characterized by two straight
parallel lines ( ), would be even more likely, but is not necessary. Even though
the hypothesis of a cursive model is not corroborated by any attestation in
Nubia, where all Greek texts transmitted to us appear to be in uncial script, we
cannot exclude, as we will see, that the minute from which the inscription of
Ham was engraved also contained at least Greek cursive numerals.27 This hy-
pothesis has two advantages. First, it gives a coherent explanation for the enig-
matic ʾǝnen እኔን፡ = Ϡ Ξ Ζ. Second, it also explains why in ‘27’ (l. 2) the numeral
is also so distorted, and why the two sevens ‘7’ (in ‘27’ and ‘967’) are different
from one another: the two forms could reflect two equally possible cursive
forms, imitated by someone who did not have a clear idea of the letters to be
represented.28 The correspondence እ = Ϡ (but the same can be said for ኔ = Ξ and
ን = Ζ, and in ‘27’ for 20 = Κ as well) is a perfect manifestation of the phenome-
non so well described by Brunetti: when the stonecutter was unable to catch the
precise shape of the numeral, he represented it with the most resembling letter,
without having to resort to any sort of upside rotation, since the adjustments
and the rotation are minimal. Yet, the shapes of the Greek numerals are recog-
nisable.29

6 Implications of a different interpretation of the

numerical signs
The hypothesis I have presented is based on a series of presuppositions that
make it clear that the inscription of Ham presents us with an extremely complex

||
27 Numerical notes from Greek and Coptic documents from Egypt and more to the South along
the Nile valley, generally always retain their uncial shape, and this is valid also for sampi
(personal communication by Agostino Soldati). For new evidence, however, see below.
28 The alternative reading of the first ‘7’ as a cursive ‘8’ (η), interpreting ‘on the 28, at dawn,
on the eve of Christmas night’, is palaeographically unlikely.
29 The Gǝʿǝz numerals are obviously also derived from Greek numerals, see Hallo 1926, 61–63;
the article ‘Script, Ethiopic’, EAe, IV (2010), 580b–585a (Serguei Frantsouzoff), does not deal
with numerals, which are also disregarded in the quite disappointing entry ‘Numbers, numer-
als, numeric systems’, EAe, III (2007), 1201b–1204a (Thomas Zitelmann), that, for what con-
cerns this discussion, only has a cross-reference to Dillmann 1907, 33; Uhlig 1988 has several
paragraphs on numerals in the different periods, but no special section, which would have
been quite useful for a narrowly-meant palaeographic study, and no entry on numerals in the
index.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 17

body of evidence. These presuppositions are the following: the existence of an

early dating system based on the Alexandrian Era of the Incarnation (corre-
sponding to the Ethiopian Calendar) in the tenth century; the palaeographical
plausibility of the misread Greek numerals; the knowledge and circulation of
Greek numerals alongside or even within written documents in Gǝʿǝz at the
time; the possible significance of a trace of Greek influence for the relationship
between medieval Ethiopia and Nubia.
With regard to the Alexandrian Era of the Incarnation, which corresponds
to the Ethiopian calendar still currently used, the perspective is exactly the
same as required by the hypothesis that the inscription of Ham attests the
earliest Ethiopian evidence for the Era of Diocletian, and the earliest dated
document with a day, a month, and a year. The evidence offered by Nubian
epigraphy is an important parallel. As noted by Adam Łajtar and Grzegorz
Ochała,

Apart from Egypt, the country of their origin, both the Alexandrian eras and the 532-year
cycle were adopted in Ethiopia for computistic purposes. In such circumstances, it should
not be surprising that they also found their way to Christian Nubia, which was, at least
theoretically, part of the same Church. Unusual in the Nubian use of such dates is their
funerary context, which is otherwise unattested in the eastern Christian world […] It is in-
teresting to observe that the Christian eras occur in Nubia only in Greek sources.30

It is difficult to say precisely which is the earliest attestation in Ethiopia of the

Era of the Incarnation, since the references and research has been vague so far,

||
30 See Ochała 2011, 185–186, 190, with lists of chronological and topographical distribution of
designations (p. 191, table 29b), and attestations of the Era of the Incarnation (p. 203, table
30b). See also the useful observations by Łajtar 2003, xxv, and 8, ‘It is difficult to say why in
8th-10th century Nubia the redactors of epitaphs made use of such a complicated system of
indicating the year. Possibly they followed the orders of church or state authorities, otherwise
unknown to us. One cannot exclude, however, that it is a show of pure erudition’. The Era of
the Incarnation does not appear to have been used in Saidic manuscripts, whereas Bohairic
manuscripts provide a few attestations: I thank Agostino Soldati for having provided the fol-
lowing evidence from manuscript Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Copt. 58,
fol. 23v, with dating to 1025 Era of the Incarnation, ‘Year of the World 6517, (of the) Crucified
1017, of the Martyrs 741, the 135th year of the 24th period (περίοδος)’; and manuscript Copt. 66,
fol. 313v, with dating from the same year 1025, ‘year of the Martyrs 741, (of) the Christ one thou-
sand (and) 17, 134 of the 13th period (περιόδιον), the (year) of the Creation 6017th and 500th’.
The only reference provided by Chaîne 1925, 13, n. 2, refers to a miracle from the Life of St
Macarius, in manuscript Copt. 59, fol. 124v, ‘And it was the day 25 of Pharmouthi that day, of
the 82nd year of Diocletian, and it is 362 years from the Incarnation (οἰκονομία) of Christ, ac-
cording to (κατά) the way the learned (σπουδαῖος) servants of God teach us’.
18 | Alessandro Bausi

but it appears that this is definitely much later than the earliest attestation of
the Era of Diocletian.31 As far as Nubia is concerned, the earliest attestation
comes from a Greek inscription of 29 April 799, while the latest attestation dates
from the second half of the twelfth century, in a non-epigraphic context.32
It is however this Nubian connection, and, in particular, its use of Greek ex-
pressions, that we have to consider. A possible derivation from Nubian models
in the inscription of Ham was first noted by Monneret de Villard, who compared
the shape of the inscription with Meroitic inscribed offering tables.33 A recently
published thirteenth–fourteenth-century graffito from the Nubian church of
Sonqi Tino seems to mention an archbishop of Aksum and thus adds an im-
portant element to the little-known medieval relationships between Nubia and
Ethiopia, as well as provides evidence of the role held by the Greek language as
a communicative medium in this relationship.34 In this regard, the presence, on

||
31 See ‘Chronography’, EAe, I (2003), 733a–737a (Siegbert Uhlig), without any precise ref-
erences to the evidence, whereas ‘Calendar: Christian Calendar’, EAe, I (2003), 668a–672b
(Emmanuel Fritsch and Ugo Zanetti), for the historical evidence exclusively relies on Cody
1991; Chaîne 1925, Mauro da Leonessa 1943, and even Neugebauer 1979, are also of little help in
this regard. The earliest evidence in colophons based on the data in the Beta maṣāḥǝft corpus
(<https://betamasaheft.eu/>) gives a date of the Era of the Incarnation for relatively late attes-
tations, from the sixteenth century on. While this era is not used in the documents in the Gold-
en Gospel of Dabra Libānos, an end-leaf in an archaic homiliary from Dabra Ḥayq ʾƎsṭifānos
(Collegeville, MN, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Manu-
script Microfilm Library no. 1763, on which see Getatchew Haile and Macomber 1981, 218–231;
Bausi 2019b, 74–75), fol. 280ra, has a document from the month of Gǝnbot of 1436 CE: ‘In 6928
from the creation of the World, in 1428 from the birth of our Saviour, in 1152 Year of the Martyrs,
in 12 Year of Grace’, see text and translation in Taddesse Tamrat 1970, 106.
32 See Ochała 2011, 191, 203, tables 29b and 30b, with nine attestations from 29 April 799 to
17 September 1186, including the Epitaph of Kollouthos, Bishop of Faras, cf. Łajtar 2003, 9
(inscription no. 1), dated to 13 August 923.
33 See Monneret de Villard 1940; Conti Rossini 1944–1945, 29–30, who praises the proposal,
albeit being in favour of a South-Arabian connection. But see Łajtar 2003, xv–xvii (inscription
no. 1, pl. I) for comparable ruling in Greek Nubian inscription, and pp. 84–85 (inscription
no. 18, Epitaph of Mariankouda, Tetrarch of Makouria, pl. XVII) for the reuse of offering trays in
funerary inscriptions in Nubia (also previosuly noted by Kropp 1999, 166, ‘Ebenso auffällig ist
die Gestaltung der Zeilen mit oberer und unterer Begrenzungslinie und die Worttrenner, die
alle direkt aus nubischem Vorbild übernommen scheinen’), and even before by Monneret de
Villard 1940, 65–66. In fact, even in the inscription of Ham the ‘Worttrenner’ do not exactly
consist of vertical lines, but of two vertically opposed wedge-like incised segments which touch
one another in the middle of the line (see Figs 2 and 3).
34 See Łajtar and Ochała 2017, 259 (graffito DON51), ‘[---] ἀρχ(ι)επίσκ(οπος) Ἀ̣ξούμ̣(εος) [---]
archbishop of Axum’, or: ‘[---] ἀρχ(ι)επίσκ(οπος) Ἀ̣ ξουμ̣(ειτῶν) [---] archbishop of the
Axumites’). It is interesting to note that the letter ξ has two loops, as it is typical in Nubian
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 19

the façade of the church of Ham of a Greek inscription with what appears to be a
peculiar arrangement of the two Greek letters Ω and Α in the form of mono-
grams, on the two sides of a cross, has to be put in connection with the inscrip-
tion of Ham, with which, we could hypothesize, it shared at least the same con-
text at some earlier point in time (Fig. 4).35 We can take for granted that the
inscription has the Α and Ω which recur in epitaphs.36 However, instead of read-
ing the sign to the right as a placed over an , I wonder whether the inscrip-
tion might have been placed upside down in the façade of the old church of
Ham where it was documented. It seems likely that originally the was placed
under the , since the longer arm of the cross is usually the bottom one, while
in our inscription, as it was placed, the longer arm is the top arm.37 The colloca-
tion of the Ω to the left would be peculiar, but with parallels in one of the most
praised Latin examples of the early Middle Ages, the early seventh-century
Codex Valerianus.38

||
inscriptions, cf. p. 260, ‘There is, however, little doubt as to the ksi, read as a sigma by Laisney:
it assumes a typical Nubian shape with the line forming a loop at the top and descending in
two curves, first to the left and then to the right’; and for the Greek context, cf. p. 263, ‘In this
context it is important to observe that the text was apparently edited in Greek and was exe-
cuted by someone using Nubian-type majuscules, a type of script characteristic of Christian
Nubian literacy of the time. This suggests that the abun (or a member of his entourage) was
only a commissioner of the inscription, the writer of which was a local, probably a cleric’, the
term abun here being used to indicate the archbishop.
35 See a picture of this Greek inscription in Conti Rossini 1939, 8 (‘L’iscrizione è al fianco
sinistro della porta della chiesa, entro il primo recinto. All’altro lato della porta è stata murata
un’altra pietra quadrata che porta scolpita in rilievo una croce, fra le cui braccia superiori sono
due monogrammi. Quello di destra porta un sovrapposto a un ; non dubito siano le
lettere greche Α e Ω, ben noti simboli su iscrizioni sepolcrali: la loro apparizione, per quanto
sformata, in un monumento etiopico ci è indizio dell’antichità di questo’), with fig. 9. See also
Bausi and Lusini 1992, pl. 6, fig. 11. This point was well present to Kropp 1999, 166, n. 12, who
also stresses the similarity with Nubian parallels. For updates on Nubian funerary inscriptions,
see Stroppa 2019.
36 See the commentary by Łajtar 2003, 5, on the epitaph of Kollouthos, Bishop of Faras quoted
above. For Coptic examples, see the report on the necropolis of Karanis, by Buzi 2006, 121,
which confirms the frequent use, even if of modest realization, of the ‘ankh con funzione di
croce, dai cui bracci penzolano l’ⲁ e l’ⲱ’, with references to well-known more monumental
examples.
37 One could read the two signs as the two consecutive numerals ‘800’ (ω) and ‘900’, the
latter sign being an epigraphic variant of a sampi (↑ or ϡ). And one wonders whether the
was simply added to the ω, that paired the Α, but I have no explanation why this should have
been done.
38 See Garipzanov 2018, with rich documentation on the subject, and pp. 232–233 on the early
seventh-century Latin Codex Valerianus, or Four gospels of St Corbinian (Munich, Bayerische
20 | Alessandro Bausi

The unusual numerical notation of the inscription of Ham – for which I ad-
mit that there are points for which I still cannot provide satisfactory explana-
tions – could only be explained by suggesting an attempt to imitate Greek
script, which, in turn, requires us to postulate that Greek numerical signs circu-
lated in medieval Ethiopia, possibly also in their different graphic variants,
including cursive forms. This would have been pure speculation without any
ground before the discovery of manuscripts which offer certain evidence of a
knowledge of the Greek script at a time that is not too distant from that of the
inscription of Ham, and that is, at the latest, ante thirteenth century and in all
likelihood earlier. An archaic manuscript containing a Gǝʿǝz treatise on chro-
nology and computus, recently brought to scholarly attention by a contribution
of Denis Nosnitsin, definitely has, in the arch of the incipit folium, a series of
signs that must be interpreted as a list of Greek numerical signs from 1 to 1000,
with a few omissions and possibly one repetition (Fig. 5): units – Α (1, ?), Β (2),
Γ (3), Δ (4), Ε (5), Ϛ (6), Ζ (7), | Η (8), Θ (9) – tens – Ι (10), Κ (20), Λ (30), Μ (40),
Ν (50), Ξ (60), | Ξ (60, i.e. one number is repeated), Ο (70), Π (80), Ϙ (90) –
hundreds – Ρ (100), Σ (200), Τ (300), Υ (400), Φ (500), <Χ (600), Ψ (700), Ω (800)
missing, > Ϡ (900) – and 1000 – ͵Α (1000, ?).39 Note that the form of the sampi
corresponds to the cursive forms ( , , more than to the so-called as de pique
form, ) and provides an important evidence for the circulation of this variant
and in general of Greek minuscule forms of numerical signs.

7 Ṣarane and ʾǝlla śāhl

Even more than ʾǝlla śāhl, the real crux in the following passage of the inscrip-
tion of Ham is the word: ṣarane. Once established that the reading is certain,

||
Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 6224), fol. 202v, with a ‘jewelled cross with a suspended alpha and omega at
the end of the Gospels’; a picture of the leaf is accessible at <https://app.digitale-sammlungen.de/
bookshelf/bsb00006573>: in fact, the Ω is placed on the right and the Α on the link. I owe this
reference to Jacopo Gnisci. On the Coptic crosses in general, see Spalding-Stracey 2020, to
which more could be added. For the evidence of Egyptian funerary stelae from the Byzantine
and Arab period, see Tudor 2011, 90 and 96. It is really surprising that, while other inscribed
crosses from the site of Ham are usually considered in the literature (see for example Hahn
1999, 451, fig. 19), there is no mention of this cross with Greek letters in the reference works on
Ethiopian crosses, see Chojnacki and Gossage 2006 and Di Salvo 2006.
39 See Nosnitsin 2021. The fragmentary manuscript is only known through the uncatalogued
pictures preserved in Addis Ababa, Casa Provinciale dei Padri Comboniani, Emilio Ceccarini
collection, for which see Raineri 1993, who does not mention this specific item.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 21

our first task is to see if there is a possible explanation for the reading as it is,
without supposing any textual error or orthographic solecism by the stonecut-
ter.40 The first consideration is that ṣarane appears exactly in this form in an
Aksumite inscription attributed to the fourth-century King ʿEzānā (RIÉ no. 188
= DAE no. 10, ll. 6–7): (6)… ḍabʾu ṣarane mangǝśtomu ʾa|(7)[fā]n, translated by
Drewes as: ‘(6)… a fait la guerre aux Ṣarane, – leur royaume étant ʾA|(7)[fā]n’.41
The translation, however, is not certain, and other scholars have made Ṣarane
the subject of the verb (‘(6)… they waged war, the Ṣarāne, whose kingdom is
ʾA-|(7)[fā]n’).42
The two interpretations have a minor bearing for the interpretation of
Ṣarane. There has been a consensus among all scholars in interpreting Ṣarane
in the ʿEzānā inscription (RIÉ no. 188) as an ethnonym, which remains, howev-
er, an enigmatic name and without any parallel: no convincing identification
has been suggested so far.43 The syntagm ṣarane mangǝśtomu ʾa[fā]n in the
inscription is not less challenging:44 the distinction of an ethnonym (Ṣarane),
which in itself should be related to a minor polity, with a kingdom (ʾAfān) is
something that only in the realm of Ethiopian epigraphy does not raise any

||
40 Both these conditions – textual error (-ne instead of -na) and non-etymological orthography
(ṣar- instead of ḍar-) – are presupposed in the hypothesis advanced by Kropp 1999.
41 See text in RIÉ I, 260; translation in RIÉ IIIB, 230, with a commentary on pp. 230–231.
42 See the different interpretation and translation by Marrassini 2014, 229, ‘(6)… Mossero guerra
gli Ṣarāne, il cui regno è ʾA-|(7)[fā]n’, who follows Enno Littmann, in DAE, 29, ‘(6) … Es zogen zu
Felde die Ṣaranē, deren Reich ʾA-|(7) fān ist’. Drewes justifies his interpretation of ṣarane as
object, and not subject of the sentence, in consideration of the parallelism with other inscrip-
tions (‘E. Littmann tenait le mot ṣarane pour le sujet grammatical de la forme verbale précé-
dente, ḍabʾu; à notre avis, c’est une erreur. Comme dans les autres grandes inscriptions royales
axoumites, c’est le roi mentionné au début de l’inscription qui est le sujet de la première phrase
principale du texte’, RIÉ IIIB, 230–231). The verb ḍabʾa is constructed in most cases with the
object or subject immediately after the verb (see RIÉ IIIB, 610–611), but not always; see for
example RIÉ no. 191, l. 15 (wʾnh ḍbʾk msl s[r]ẘt hgry wmsl ┌d┐kn), where a complementary ex-
pression immediately follows (RIÉ IIIB, 249, ‘Et moi, j’ai fait la guerre avec les régiments de
mon pays et avec le régiment Dāken’).
43 See Marrassini 2014, 229, n. 2, who proposes, in the commentary, to identify this site with a
river Ṣarāna, ‘a circa 25 km a nord di ʾƎntič̣ č̣ o, sulla via da Aksum ad Adulis’, as previously
suggested by Huntingford 1989, 55. A place named Ṣaronā, ‘a village in Akkele Guzay’, is listed
in Kane 2000, 2565a.
44 As honestly recognised by Littmann, in DAE, 30, ‘Freilich ist die Konstruktion auf jeden Fall
etwas prägnant und hätte klarer sein können’.
22 | Alessandro Bausi

concern. ʾAfān, at least, reappears in the same inscription, but there is no fur-
ther mention of Ṣarane.45
On the other hand, mangǝśtomu is a common noun (‘kingdom, royalty,
government’). If we look at the morphological pattern of the word ṣarane, the
only possible parallel is to think of an -e form of a noun of pattern 1a2a3-, to be
compared, for example, with maṭan- (‘measure’), which is used as preposition
and conjunction in the grammaticalised status constructus maṭana, widely
attested also in the archaic -e-form maṭane.46 This hypothesis requires a root
*ṣrn from which the noun ṣarane is derived. Obviously, this root is not attested
so far in Gǝʿǝz: which does not mean that this hypothesis must be immediately
discarded. It is common knowledge that one of the most challenging aspects of
Aksumite and generally Gǝʿǝz epigraphy is the obscurity of its lexicon.47 The full
exploration of this possibility requires more research.48

||
45 See RIÉ IIIB, 229 (transl. of RIÉ no. 188, ll. 17–18), ‘(17) … <Le nombre des> tués des hommes
de ʾA[fā]n était |(18) 503, des femmes 202; c’était <au total> 705’. No light on this point comes
from the modest contribution by Hoffmann 2014, 230–231 and 241, who does not note the in-
consistency and makes the Ṣarane the main subject of the inscription, and even lists them
under ‘Hauptfeinde’ (p. 230).
46 See Tropper 2002, 51–69, for an overview of nominal patterns in Gǝʿǝz. For maṭan, see
Leslau 1987, 372b–373a, s.v. ‘maṭana (construct state and the accusative used adverbially)
“during, according to, about, at a distance (of), as long as, as large as, as often as, for the space
of (a certain time), of the size of, as much as, as great as, so great, to such a degree”’. For the -e
forms as an archaic feature of Gǝʿǝz, see Bausi 2005a, 2005b, and 2016, 76–77, n. 92; Bulakh
2009, 402, n. 19; summary in Villa 2019, 204–206; for the epigraphic evidence, see Bulakh 2013,
211. The form maṭane, which is not attested in Aksumite inscriptions, is widely attested in
ancient manuscripts, as already observed by Dillmann 1865, 223, ‘Denique nota, hoc መጠን፡ in
st. c. positum […] in libris antiquioribus crebro መጠኔ፡ sonare’. Abundant evidence is also
provided now by the manuscript of the Aksumite Collection (ʿUrā Masqal, C3-IV-71/C3-IV-73
= Ethio-SPaRe UM-039), for which see Bausi, Brita, et al. 2020. Note that at least archaic -e-
forms are attested in the inscription of Ham (ll. 2 and 3, ʾame), although standard forms are
also present.
47 This goes well alongside the hypothesis suggested by Kapeliuk 1997, 494, that ‘A possible
explanation would be that the kind of Gǝʿǝz known to us from the Axumite inscriptions and
from the early translations from Greek was only one, namely the written and standardized
variant of the language, beside which there existed another variant or other variants from
which the modern languages evolved’. Yet, for what we know at present, we can certainly say
that at least some of the early translations from Greek were quite at variance with the standard-
ized variant of the language. These assumptions, to which I have contributed in the past (see
Bausi 2005b and 2016), seem to have become a recognized acquisition (see for example Butts
2019, 118: ‘Research on the most ancient Ethiopic manuscripts, especially those that contain
Axumite period texts, has shown that these preserve certain archaic linguistic features, some of
which are also attested in Epigraphic Gǝʕǝz […] These archaic features probably represent the
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 23

Quite different is the case for ʾǝlla śahl: if we set aside the complex and ex-
tremely problematic reconstructions offered by Kropp and Fiaccadori, this is a
well attested ruler name, present in the Ethiopian king lists as well as in literary
sources, namely ʾƎlla Śāhl.49 Without any absurd pretention at identifying the
ruler, what matters here is that this is a plausible name built with an ʾǝlla ele-
ment (probably the plural relative pronoun) that can perform quite well in a
phrase introduced by ṣarane the same grammatical role as the noun mangǝśtomu
in the aforementioned Aksumite inscription: in the latter inscription (RIÉ no. 188,
l. 6) ṣarane mangǝśtomu could mean ‘by/in the sovereignty of their/his reign’,50
while in the inscription of Ham (RIÉ no. 232, ll. 4–5) ṣarane ʾǝlla śahl would
mean ‘under the sovereignty of ʾƎlla Śahl’, and would then offer a further
chronological indication. I am well aware that we do not have any positive evi-
dence for interpreting ṣarane as ‘sovereignty’ in this way – with ‘sovereignty’ I
just gave an example of a possible meaning to highlight its possible grammatical
function and to clearly indicate what the context needs, but even ‘period, time,

||
proverbial tip of the iceberg of an earlier variety (better: varieties) of Gǝʕǝz that has been most-
ly standardized in the Solomonic period’). For another example of interaction between epigra-
phy and philological manuscripts studies, see Bausi, Harrower, et al. 2020, 42–44, on the term
gǝbgab/gǝbgāb, ‘corvée’.
48 Within Ethiopian Semitic, the Gurage ṭäränä, ‘strong, powerful, vigorous, hard (object)’,
and the related ṭäräñä, and the derived verb ṭiräññe, are obviously no possible comparison,
since Leslau 1979, III, 631–632, reconstructs a root *ṭr and the nasal consonant is part of the
adjectival suffix (but the correspondence of Gurage ṭ for Gǝʿǝz ṣ is regular). Possible traces of
nouns derived from a *ṣrn root in other Ethiopian Semitic languages do not convey any plausi-
ble meaning.
49 As we have seen and as clearly summarised in the informative entry ‘Ǝllä Śahǝl’, EAe, II
(2005), 263b (Stuart Munro-Hay), Kropp suggests to consider the words ʾǝlla śahǝl as a part of
another – otherwise unknown – designation for the Era of Diocletian, while Fiaccadori consid-
ers them a genitive of abstraction (‘those of mercy/compassion’). The development sahl > śāhl
is the result of phonetic and orthographic developments: the names ʾƎlla Śahl, ʾƎlla Śāhl, or
even ʾƎlla Śāhǝl, are the same. For the king lists, see ‘King lists’, EAe, V (2014), 376b–379a
(Alessandro Bausi), with consideration of ʾƎlla Śāhl on p. 378b; see also Derat 2019. A remarka-
ble confirmation of the importance of the king lists as repositories of ancient, authentic materi-
als have provided the recently discovered inscriptions of King Ḥafilā (ḤFL, previously known
only in the Greek form ΑΦΙΛΑϹ from numismatic evidence), whose ʾǝlla-name ʾL ʿYG (probably
ʾƎlla ʿAygā) perfectly matches names attested in the king lists, see Bausi 2018, 289.
50 The expression could work in both syntactical interpretations of the sentence, either ‘he
waged war to the Ṣarāne’, or ‘they waged war, the Ṣarāne’, and mangǝśtomu could refer either
to King ʿEzānā (with the plural suffix –omu with the value of third person respect form, see the
detailed commentary by Marrassini 2014, 207–208, to the inscription RIÉ no. 186) or to the
Ṣarane (with the same –omu with the value of real plural).
24 | Alessandro Bausi

jurisdiction’, could work quite well – yet singling out desiderata on the basis of
hypothesis is a legitimate and productive conjectural exercise: something like
this is what would be required.

8 Conclusion
Despite its modest appearance, the Gǝʿǝz inscription of Ham is an extremely
complex object. It was a stone shaped like a Meroitic offering table, reused to
write a Gǝʿǝz funerary inscription which was probably copied from minutes
containing Greek numerals expressing a date according to the Incarnation era.
It was first placed at an undetermined location and only eventually incorpo-
rated in the façade of a church where it was first documented. It was subse-
quently moved to the inside of a new church, where it is still today. It is no
wonder, then, that this object calls for complex explanations and that there are
still loci and aspects of it that resist our interpretation. Material, palaeographic,
and linguistic evidence, as well as the hypotheses advanced by our predeces-
sors, to whose efforts we owe so much and to whose conclusions any alternative
proposals are deeply indebted, need a profound re-examination.
Despite the many and obvious limits of this small and inadequate exercise
in Gǝʿǝz epigraphy, I offer this contribution to Michael Friedrich as an attempt
at having the same fresh mind and applying the same fundamental radicalism
in research he always gave me an admirable and inspiring example of, in over a
decade of fruitful cooperative work in the rewarding realm of Manuscript Cul-
tures at Universität Hamburg.

Acknowledgements
The research for this note was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, EXC
2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission
in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796, and by The Union of the Ger-
man Academies of Sciences and Humanities through a project of the Academy
of Hamburg, ‘Beta maṣāḥǝft: Die Schriftkultur des christlichen Äthiopiens und
Eritreas: eine multimediale Forschungsumgebung’. The research was conducted
within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at
Universität Hamburg, and the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean
Studies. My thanks go to Gianfranco Agosti, Antonella Brita, Paola Buzi, Jacopo
Gnisci, and Agostino Soldati, for having discussed some points of this article
with me, and to Adam Łajtar and Manfred Kropp for having helped me in other
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 25

ways. My thanks also go to Marco Guardo and Paola Cagiano de Azevedo, direc-
tors of the library and archive of the Accademia nazionale dei Lincei (Biblioteca
della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana), who generously granted a
free reproduction of the pictures in Figs 1–3, and to Susanna Panetta, Pasquale
Mastronardi, and the whole staff of the Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, for
having kindly facilitated the access to the Carlo Conti Rossini fund. Last but not
least, I want to thank Denis Nosnitsin for allowing me to access one of his con-
tributions (Nosnitsin 2021), when it was still unpublished, which has provided
some elements for this note. As always, the responsibility for any error and
hypothesis remains exclusively with the author.

Abbreviations
DAE Enno Littmann, Deutsche Aksum-Expedition, IV: Sabäische, Griechische und
Altabessinische Inschriften, Berlin: Reimer, 1913.
EAe Siegbert Uhlig and Alessandro Bausi (eds), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, I: A–C;
II: D–Ha; III: He–N; IV: O–X; V: Y–Z: Supplementa, Addenda et Corrigenda,
Maps, Index, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003–2014.
RIÉ Étienne Bernand, Abraham Johannes Drewes, and Roger Schneider, Recueil
des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie des périodes pré-axoumite et axoumite, I: Les
documents, Introduction par Francis Anfray; II: Les Planches, Paris: de
Boccard, 1991; Étienne Bernand, III: Traductions et commentaires, A: Les
inscriptions grecques, Paris: de Boccard, 2000; Abraham Johannes Drewes, III:
Traductions et commentaires, B: Les inscriptions sémitiques, Introduction par
Roger Schneider, ed. Manfred Kropp and Harry Stroomer (Aethiopistische
Forschungen, 85 / De Goeje Fund, 34), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019.

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28 | Alessandro Bausi

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30 | Alessandro Bausi

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ternational.
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 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 31

Manuscripts
– Addis Ababa, Casa Provinciale dei Padri Comboniani, Emilio Ceccarini
collection, Gǝʿǝz treatise on chronology and computus (no inventory)
– Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Copt. 58
– Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Copt. 59
– Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Copt. 66
– Dabra Ḥayq ʾƎsṭifānos, Homiliary (Collegeville, MN, Hill Museum and
Manuscript Library, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm
Library no. 1763)
– Ham, Dabra Libānos, Golden Gospel (no inventory)
– Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 6224 (Codex Valerianus, or Four
gospels of St Corbinian)
– Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Éthiopien, d’Abbadie 110
– St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 459
– ʿUrā Masqal, C3-IV-71/C3-IV-73 = Ethio-SPaRe UM-039 (Aksumite Collection)

List of inscriptions
– Aksum (Ethiopia), Māryām Ṣǝyon, RIÉ no. 188 = DAE no. 10
– Aksum (Ethiopia), Māryām Ṣǝyon, RIÉ no. 191
– Aksum (Ethiopia), Museum of Aksum, RIÉ no. 186 = DAE no. 8
– Ham (Eritrea), Beta Māryām, RIÉ no. 232
– Khartoum (Sudan), Sudan National Museum, Greek inscription no. 1 (inv.
23377, Epitaph of Kollouthos, Bishop of Faras)
– Khartoum (Sudan), Sudan National Museum, Greek inscription no. 18 (inv.
unknown, Epitaph of Mariankouda, Tetrarch of Makouria)
– Sonqi Tino (Sudan), Greek graffito DON51
– Warsaw (Poland), National Museum, Greek inscription no. 107 (inv. 234646,
Epitaph of Stephanos, Bishop of Faras)
32 | Alessandro Bausi

Fig. 1: The inscription of Ham (RIÉ no. 232). © Roma, Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, archivio
Carlo Conti Rossini, busta 11, fasc. 93, ‘Marazzani’. Already published in Conti Rossini 1939, 9
(fig. 10).

Fig. 2: Inscription of Ham: left, l. 2 Fig. 3: Inscription of Ham: right, l. 4

(፳፯ / Κ Ζ). (እኔን / ፭፻፺ / Ϡ Ξ Ζ).
Figs 2 and 3 © Roma, Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, archivio Carlo Conti Rossini, busta 11,
fasc. 93, ‘Marazzani’.
 ‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’ | 33

Fig. 4: Inscription placed on the façade of the church of Ham, turned upside down from its pre-
sumable original orientation. The picture here printed is turned 180° in order to show the
inscription as it presumably originally was. © Roma, Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, archivio
Carlo Conti Rossini, busta 11, fasc. 93, ‘Marazzani’. Already published in Conti Rossini 1939, 8
(fig. 9); cf. a colour picture in Bausi and Lusini 1992, pl. 6, fig. 11.

Fig. 5: Addis Ababa, Casa Provinciale dei Padri Comboniani, Emilio Ceccarini collection, Gǝʿǝz
treatise on chronology and computus, fol. 4r (title page). From Nosnitsin 2021.
Kaja Harter-Uibopuu
Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-
Roman World
Abstract: The concept of multiple-text manuscripts will be tested for its applica-
bility to the epigraphic evidence. On the basis of four specific examples from
different cities of the Greco-Roman world, the advantages of this approach will
be made clear, as will its limitations.

1 Introduction
Over the last years, the scholarly interest of manuscriptologists, not only in
Hamburg, has been directed far beyond the analysis and commentary of indi-
vidual handwritings or the study of specific manuscript cultures. A profound
comparison of the use of manuscripts in different cultural environments and
historical periods was always at the core of the work at the Centre for the Study
of Manuscript Cultures. Consequently, the next stage was to move beyond the
traditional material of manuscripts (bamboo, palm leaf, parchment, papyrus,
etc.), which had been the original focus, and to include the epigraphic evi-
dence: The foundation for joint research between manuscriptologists and epig-
raphists had been laid. It seemed quite natural to transfer the concepts from the
field of manuscript studies to epigraphy. In this way, the two hitherto largely
separate fields of research can be brought together and mutually benefit from
each other. Manuscripts on the one hand and inscriptions on the other, the
exact separation of which can only be defined with great difficulty anyway, thus
become ‘written artefacts’, allowing a new perspective and starting point.
In this contribution, the focus will be on ‘written artefacts’ that combine
more than one text on a single medium. M. Friedrich placed such manuscripts
at the centre of an international conference in 2010, the papers of which were
united in the edited volume One-volume libraries: Composite and Multiple Text
Manuscripts published in 2016. In the introduction, after a thorough examina-
tion of various scholarly traditions, M. Friedrich and C. Schwarke offered the fol-
lowing definition: ‘multiple-text manuscripts’ are codicological units worked in a
single operation, whereas composite manuscripts contain formerly independent

Open Access. © 2021 Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-003
36 | Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

units.1 Can epigraphic evidence also be provided for this result? In the
following, the practice of placing more than one text on an epigraphic medium
will be presented on the basis of a few selected examples. It is rather difficult to
find parallels to the composite manuscripts, since in many cases the material
properties of the inscribed medium seem to prohibit the combination of various
individual ‘inscribed written artefacts’ as initially separate ‘codicological units’
to form a new entity. However, if one considers – as in the case of the multiple
text manuscripts – an inscribed object as a codicological unit that could unite
different independent texts, the number of examples increases considerably.
Adapting the concept slightly, we should thus consider cases in which the
different texts were united at the same time and possibly even by one hand, as
well as cases in which the medium was used over a longer period of time and
the multiple text inscription developed piece by piece.
In order to select comparable pieces from the large number of inscriptions
from the Greek poleis, epigraphic testimonies are to be examined that contain
legal regulations in the broadest sense and were displayed in the public sphere.2
Since the population of the city and the visitors to sanctuaries can be under-
stood as the intended audience, the physical characteristics as well as the com-
position of these written artefacts can be studied and contrasted. The city-state
(Greek: πόλις polis) as an urban social and political centre from the fifth centu-
ry BCE to the third century ce was subject to constant changes in its constitution,
its social composition and stratification and its political situation. Nevertheless,
the relatively small dimension, the concentration on its own citizens and among
them the landowners and rich craftsmen and traders, as well as the involvement
of the rest of the people in the daily processes, form a stable framework. Inscrip-
tions on stone served as a medium for the permanent transmission of infor-
mation, and even more so for self-representation to the municipal administra-
tion, its individual committees and subdivisions, but also to supra-regional
rulers such as the Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors. This raises the ques-
tion not only of the content of the preserved texts, but also of the context of their
placement and display. Were the texts inscribed on specially created writing
supports (mostly stelae), were they part of elaborate monuments or were the

||
1 Friedrich and Schwarke 2016, 15–16.
2 During the summer term 2016 M. Friedrich invited me to present new ideas on epigraphic
sources from ancient Greece to the Graduate School at the SFB 950 and I chose the topic of this
paper. This first attempt to reconsider well-known inscribed written artefacts has been fol-
lowed by many more and has introduced me to a new way of approaching Greek and Latin
inscriptions.
 Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 37

walls of public buildings or temples used for their publication? Who was
responsible for the selection and composition of the texts as well as for their
presentation and placement? Were the individual texts part of a larger collec-
tion of regulations or did they stand alone? Finally, from a legal historical per-
spective, it is important to clarify whether the publication on stone was in any
way a prerequisite for the legal validity of the provisions.

2 The polygonal wall of the temple of Apollon in

Delphi (Phocis): Records of manumitted slaves
The sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi was one of the greatest attractions for the
inhabitants of the Greek poleis, not only on the mainland, but also on the is-
lands, in Asia Minor and in Magna Graecia, i.e., Southern Italy. Consequently, it
was a preferred site for buildings and monuments that were intended to portray
the history of these states in as favourable a light as possible. In many cases,
‘written artefacts’ were created through the complex combination of architec-
tural, statuary and textual elements, which were intended to leave a lasting
impression on visitors. A special feature is a large group of smaller texts that
were attached to the retaining wall of the temple terrace, the so-called polygo-
nal wall, facing to the south (Fig. 1). More than a thousand inscriptions attest to
the manumission of slaves by Delphians, but also by citizens of other poleis,
from the beginning of the second century BCE until the beginning of the first
century BCE. From this time onwards, other walls as well as individual writing
supports were used for the same genre of texts, which continue into the first
century CE.3 The texts are records of the deed of manumission, which was per-
formed as a sale involving the manumittor as vendor on the one side and the
god Apollo as purchaser on the other, albeit on the condition of freeing the
slave. They are dated by naming the priest of the sanctuary thus using the typi-
cal formula for Delphic inscriptions. Moreover, they bear the names of witnesses
and often even refer to a subscription and therefore convey at least parts of the
original contract which seems to have been mixed with formulae of entering it
into the acts of the sanctuary’s administration.4 Since the new status of the

||
3 An introduction to the system of manumission is to be found in Mulliez 1992, meanwhile the
first part of his corpus of the inscriptions has appeared (CID V).
4 Harter-Uibopuu 2013, 281–294 on this compilation of two legally independent texts, which
was then engraved on the polygonal wall.
38 | Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

former slave is mentioned as well as his duties towards the manumittor and the
possible protection from re-enslavement, the texts have often been interpreted
as safeguards against any offence. Still, the self-presentation of the manumittors
within their own community and in the eyes of the visitors cannot be underes-
timated.5
Although there are clearly many texts in one ‘codicological unit’, i.e. the
wall, the question remains whether this can be called a ‘multiple-text inscrip-
tion’ or a ‘composite inscription’ in the sense of the definition used by Friedrich
and Schwarke. Only a more precise description of the epigraphic qualities al-
lows an answer here. The wall itself stems from the last quarter of the sixth cen-
tury BCE and is thus more than 300 years older than the inscriptions. Its main
purpose was not to be a medium for public inscriptions, but this possible quali-
ty due to its central place in the sanctuary seems to have been acknowledged
and exploited later on. For this purpose, individual areas were smoothed time
and again, which were then inscribed (Fig. 2). The texts appear quite uniform at
first glance, since the letter-sizes are about the same. Nevertheless, they were
not only created in different years, but above all they were also applied by dif-
ferent masons. The content of the inscriptions makes it very clear that the publi-
cation on stone was not necessary for the legal validity of the manumission act.6
Even if in a certain way synchronous ‘clusters’ were created, there is yet no
strict order in which the space had to be used. Repeatedly, inscriptions are add-
ed that do not contain manumissions but other public decrees concerning the
city and the sanctuary. I would not apply the term ‘multiple-text inscription’
here, since the polygonal wall contains a collection of texts formed over c. 100
years. On the other hand, ‘composite inscription’ would not be appropriate
either, because there are no formerly independent units bearing writing. Still, it
is definitely one written artefact, a codicological unit binding the different acts
together. What was its purpose? The wall was accessible to everybody and may
have been a point of reference for the content. The former slaves and their fami-
lies will have cherished the memory of their change of status, the manumittors
were praised for their benevolence and could show this to their peers. Anybody
wishing to rely on the help of the sanctuary in freeing their slaves could use the

||
5 Lepke 2019 analyses the effect of the manumission inscriptions in the sanctuary of Apollo on
the basis of the strangers who are recorded there as former owners of the slaves.
6 Harter-Uibopuu 2013, 293–294.
 Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 39

templates of the records. In this way the wall can be seen as an archive, public
not in the sense of an institution, but of its display and accessibility.7

3 The ‘archive wall’ of Aphrodisias (Caria): self-

presentation of a proud city
The identification of a group of texts at the theatre of Aphrodisias as an ‘archive
wall’ by J. Reynolds in 1982 was rightly criticised subsequently, but the dossier
is of great interest for the considerations at stake.8 Dominated by the typical
invocation ΑΓΑΘΗ ΤΥΧΗ (‘To good luck’) it comprises 21 documents from the
period between the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla and the Roman em-
peror Gordian III (243 CE), in which various privileges of the Carian city as a
civitas libera within the Empire had been granted and confirmed by the Roman
authorities. The wall on which they were publicly recorded dates from the late
first century BCE and forms the northern end of the stage building. It was 11 me-
tres long and between 2.5 and 5.5 metres high (Fig. 3).9 In contrast to the inscrip-
tions on the polygonal wall from Delphi, however, those from Aphrodisias show
great uniformity in their lettering and in their placement. Reynolds already
pointed out that the letter forms correspond to a good standard for public, but
also fine private inscriptions of the second half of the second century CE and the
third century CE. The use of ‘guiding lines’ as well as the careful structuring of
the inscription by vertical balks, subtitles, segmentation marks and other visible
elements testifies to purposeful planning of the ‘visual organization’. Moreover,
the texts, mostly letters of Roman emperors, were in some instances shortened

||
7 A similar phenomenon can be seen in Bouthrotos, an ancient city in Epiros (today Butrint/
Albania), where the manumission records from c. 160–100 BCE are found on the parodos wall of
the theatre as well as on architectural blocks later used to build a fortification, cf. I. Bouthrotos.
8 Chaniotis 2003, 251–-252 points to the fact that the documents have been carefully selected
for presentation on the wall, and that probably many more public documents, which did not fit
the story to be told, were deliberately left out. Although the term ‘inscription dossier’ is fre-
quently used, it is slightly misleading. One might rather speak about an inscribed dossier,
since the written artefact is a collection of texts rather than a collection of inscriptions. I will
therefore use the simple term dossier.
9 Reynolds 1982, 33–37; Kokkinia 2015–2016, 12–14. The wall was not found intact but had to
be reconstructed, using inscribed blocks found in the vicinity. The letters of the invocation are
almost three times the size of the ones used for the texts (0.08 m. as compared to 0.015–
0.025 m.), furthermore it is positioned right at the centre of the dossier.
40 | Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

deliberately by omitting certain standard formulas and concentrating on the

central messages. In a careful study of the monument, C. Kokkinia explains the
design and the genesis of the written artefact convincingly. She is able to differ-
entiate between two phases of inscribing by criteria of palaeography and other
external characteristics. Around the year 224 CE, during the reign of Septimius
Severus, the first seventeen documents were assembled and incised above the
orthostates’ course. In 243 or a little later, another four documents were added
below this first composition, this time using the orthostates.10 While Reynolds
sees the chronological order of the documents as a decisive criterion for their
place on the ‘carrier’, and thus has interested visitors start at the top left in col. I
and end at the right in col. VI, Kokkinia interprets the arrangement in a different
way. The layout seems to be based on the centre of the texts, as the large head-
ing on col. IV suggests. The most important texts were placed there, and indi-
vidual passages were highlighted by being centred in a separate line. In the two
columns on the left and right (III and V) on the other hand, the individual texts
were marked by initial letters and more densely inscribed, which automatically
drew attention to col. IV. In this way, the praise of Augustus, the first Roman
emperor, who had elevated Aphrodisias as his city ‘out of all Asia’, was given a
special position both in terms of content and visual appearance, followed by
similar messages. ‘Even a quick and half-distracted reader would get the mes-
sage’, Kokkinia asserts.11
To my view, this extensive dossier clearly constitutes a ‘multiple-text in-
scription’ according to the definition noted at the beginning. In a single opera-
tion (enlarged only twenty years later by another one) several texts are carefully
chosen, put together and presented as a new unit, with special attention to its
visual organization. The publication was authorized by the city herself, who
thus chose a way of favourable self-presentation through a sophisticated mon-
ument. The wall of the stage building as a written artefact, however, is to be
seen in the larger context of the entrance to the theatre. Tributes to outstanding
citizens of the city virtually frame the documents inscribed on it. Thus, every
visitor to the theatre would not only notice the inscriptions on his left, but also
the heroon for Aristokles Molossos, a benefactor from the second century CE,
and the statues of Artemidoros, son of Apollonios, and of C. Iulius Zoilos, both
first century BCE. Their prominent families also stand out clearly in the documents

||
10 Kokkinia 2015–2016, 15–20.
11 IAph2007, 8.32, ll. 3–4: μίαν πόλιν ταύτην | ἐξ ὅλης τῆς Ἀσίας ἐμαυτῷ εἴληπφα (‘This one
city I have taken for mine out of all Asia’). Kokkinia 2015–2016, 44–47. On the political back-
ground and the historical realities see Chaniotis 2003.
 Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 41

of the dossier.12 Therefore, if one wants to compare the wall with a precisely
planned and beautifully manufactured multiple-text manuscript, the archaeo-
logical and epigraphic context in the theatre entrance is the ‘showroom’ in
which the magnificent gem was displayed.

4 A petition to Gordianus III from Skaptopara

(Thrace): Villagers complaining to their emperor
Gordian III (225–244 CE), whose letter to the city of Aphrodisias forms the clos-
ing of the documents just presented, was also asked by the Thracian community
of Skaptopara for help against the attacks of Roman soldiers. His reply to this
petition was subsequently published as a bilingual inscription on a stele which
was found in 1868 but then lost again only a few years later (Fig. 4). Even a
squeeze that had gone to the Archaeological Institute in Athens can no longer
be consulted. K. Hallof succeeded in finding a squeeze, sketches and letters in
the archives of the Inscriptiones Graecae at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of
Sciences as well as in Theodor Mommsen’s documents left to the Berlin State
Library after his death, which allow a critical reading of the lower half of the
text and can thus correct and supplement Mommsen’s edition in CIL III
Suppl. 12336.13 Still, for a visualization of the layout of the text on the stele
measuring 1 metre in height and 0.7 metre in width one has to rely on
Mommsen’s description:

Die Disposition der Inschrift ist auffallend und auch für die sachliche Behandlung zu be-
rücksichtigen. Sie begann mit der lateinischen Vormerkung, deren Zeilen offenbar über
die ganze Breite der Tafel liefen; dieser Theil ist verloren und die Zeilenabtheilung unbe-
kannt. Darauf folgen die griechischen Texte, in drei schmalen Columnen geschrieben,
welchen jetzt allen die Köpfe fehlen; die Columnen setzen einander fort und weder sonst
noch am Schluss der dritten begegnen leer gelassene Räume. Unterhalb dieser drei den
Mittelraum füllenden Columnen folgt in vier wieder über die ganze Fläche laufenden Zei-
len das kaiserliche Rescript; die letzte ist nicht voll und hat den Anschein einer Endzeile.14

||
12 Kokkinia 2015–2016, 14–15 and Reynolds 1982, 149–150 and 156–164.
13 Hallof 1994, 405–413, presenting the intriguing history of the inscription and its transcrip-
tion, which can itself be gathered from various archived written artefacts in detail.
14 ‘The disposition of the inscription is striking and should also be taken into account for the
purposes of its interpretation. It started with the Latin prescript, the lines of which apparently
ran across the entire width of the panel; this part is lost, and the division of the lines is
42 | Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

There are several distinct elements brought together in the inscription pertain-
ing to different stages of the complaint of the villagers and its treatment by the
Roman authorities. As the dossier in Aphrodisias the document in Skaptopara
starts with an invocation, this time it is the latinized version bona fortuna of the
Greek ἀγαθὴ τύχη.15 This heading is immediately succeeded by another part of
the text, still in Latin, in one single column and probably set in larger letters
than the petition itself: the authentication of the copy of the imperial rescript,
which was presumably handed to the petitioner Aurelius Pyrrus (ll. 2–5).16 The
note of receipt from the imperial chancellery (ll. 6–7) serves on the one hand as
a means of identifying the petition in response to which the rescript was made,
but on the other hand also as an introduction to the Greek text that follows. The
two next parts are in Greek and distributed quite evenly over three columns.
Column I and two thirds of column II hold the libellus (the petition) of the inhab-
itants of Skaptopara (ll. 9–107). They complain to the emperor that soldiers
would regularly forcefully exact quarter and lodging from them without ade-
quate payment, even though the village was not actually obliged to provide it.
Various orders and edicts from the governor in the past had not helped. They
announce that – if there was no improvement – they would have to leave their
properties and that this would, of course, be to the detriment of the imperial
treasury.17 In the lower third of column II and in column III follows the speech of
Aurelius Pyrrus (ll. 108–164), who once again vividly describes the facts of the

||
unknown. This is followed by the Greek texts, written in three narrow columns, all of which are
now missing their headings; the columns continue each other, and no empty spaces are found
either elsewhere or at the end of the third. Below these three columns filling the middle space,
the imperial rescript follows in four lines again running across the entire surface; the last one is
not full and has the appearance of an end line’ (Mommsen 1892, 245, my translation). The
description is the basis of the schematical layout in Hauken 1998, 84, Fig. 5, and his recon-
struction of the written artefact, on p. 81.
15 Mommsen 1892, 249; Hauken 1998, 82. This Latin form is mainly used in the Greek provinc-
es of the Roman empire, where the Greek invocation was a common sight to every reader. Since
the illustration in this article is a drawing of the surviving squeeze, the first part is missing. It
shows the lower half of the monument.
16 This introduction not only provides an exact date for the imperial rescript (16 Dec. 238 CE),
but also hints to the practice of the imperial chancellery in Rome to put rescripta on display in
the portico of the baths of Trajan (ll. 4–5). The procedure of the authentication of the copy is
described by Hauken 1998, 98–105 with a detailed commentary and several comparable epi-
graphic and papyrological sources.
17 On the historical circumstances and the problems of civilians in the Eastern provinces of
the Roman Empire throughout second and third century CE cf. Herrmann 1990, 37–48; Hauken
1998, 106–120.
 Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 43

case in the proceedings before the governor of Thrace and explains why the
villagers had turned to the emperor. This part is not only set apart from the for-
mer text by a vacat of about three lines, but also introduced by the Latin
adlegent, starting a little out of the left margin of the column. Thus, the visual
organization underlines the structure of the composed document. The text con-
cludes with the emperor's rescriptio (ll. 165–168) – again in Latin and using the
full width of the stele and thus clearly set off in the layout – who, however, does
not decide the case but instructs the governor to find out the truth. The last line
shows also the words rescripsi, reocognovi, signa VI. The first word refers to
Gordian III, the emperor, who ascertains that it was he himself who answered to
the petition. The second word shows the acknowledgement of the office a
libellis, in charge of the correspondence of the emperor. Signa refers to the
witnesses attesting that the copy of the rescriptum was correct and hints to the
fact that the original papyrus was actually bearing six seals.
Although the inscription would like to convey this impression, the legal
record is far from complete nor chronologically narrated. I do not believe that
the written artefact in the village reproduces the document on papyrus that was
given to the petitioner in Rome, nor is it a faithful copy of the proceedings be-
fore the governor. Although the authenticating endorsement and the petition
may well have formed the beginning, the imperial rescriptio would have had to
have stood between the two Greek texts. It was issued after the petition and – as
its content shows – precedes the proceedings before the governor, to whom the
whole matter had been referred. On the other hand, its use at the end of the
inscription forms the ideal frame for the Greek texts: Beginning with the author-
ization that what follows is in fact the voice of the emperor and ending with his
assertion rescripsi, the written artefact gains importance and authority. An ex-
tract from the protocol from the governor’s court is quoted verbatim (adlegent
forms a typical note in the minutes), but this is only a small part of the proceed-
ings.18 It is particularly noticeable that the decision of the governor is missing. A
positive outcome for the inhabitants of the village can only be inferred from the
fact that the selection of texts was set and published as an inscription in the
present form. Of course, this was not necessary for the legal validity of the gov-
ernor’s decision or indeed of the imperial rescriptum.
In this way, several different, deliberately chosen texts are well combined
and inscribed in one instance on a carrier which probably has been manufac-
tured especially for this occasion. This is a multiple-text inscription in the best
sense. It remains to be asked who was in charge of its creation and who may

||
18 Hauken 1998, 120.
44 | Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

have authorized it. One possible originator may have been the village of
Skaptopara who had been maltreated and had – successfully – complained to
the emperor. After a series of written announcements by the governor, which
had not kept the soldiers away, the villagers may have hoped that the imperial
authority would now frighten the military enough to leave them in peace. On
the other hand, the role of Aurelius Pyrrus is stressed by the layout of the text.
He is mentioned with a full description at the top as handing in the petition, and
his name appears prominently at the centre at the beginning of the minutes.
Thus, he seems to be honoured specifically and may well have been behind the
setting up of the written artefact.19

5 The Potamoneion from Mytilene (Lesbos):

honouring a rhetor and patriot
In the troubled times of the first century BCE with regard to the Greek East, the
originally friendly relationship between Mytilene on Lesbos and Rome had dete-
riorated considerably after the Mytilenaeans had sided with Mithradates against
Rome in the war (88–85 BCE). It was largely thanks to the personal and close
relationship of Theophanes of Mytilene with Cn. Pompeius Magnus that the
situation for Mytilene improved again from 62 BCE. The city regained its libertas
and was granted further privileges successively. An inscription honours not
only Pompeius and Theophanes, the latter as Zeus Eleutherios, but also the
third benefactor of the city: Potamon, son of Lesbonax.20 It is to his credit that
the city was able to maintain its special status even after the discord between
Pompey and Caesar. Potamon was a regular participant in diplomatic missions,
at first to Caesar, then later to his successor Augustus. He, too, succeeded in
gaining privileges such as exemption from taxes and in establishing a cult for

||
19 Hauken 1998, 82, even presumes that the governor’s verdict might not have been as posi-
tive as the villagers had hoped and that Aurelius Pyrrus took the initiative personally to have
the inscription published even despite of this fact. Although his role may have been decisive, I
do not believe that he would have put his failure (he was the representative) in such a way on
display in a small community where everybody knew the context.
20 Pawlak 2020, 173–180 on the political circumstances and the vita of Theophanes (IG XII 2,
163) on the display of the texts on the monument.
 Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 45

Augustus in addition to the cult of Roma in his homeland.21 For the present arti-
cle, however, it is not so much these diplomatic successes that are of im-
portance, but rather the special honours bestowed on Potamon. In addition to
the usual honorary inscriptions, praising him as benefactor, saviour and found-
er (εὐεργέτης, σωτήρ, κτίστης) including one on a throne in the theatre of Myti-
lene, a large monument bearing the name Potamoneion was situated on the
Acropolis.22 The editor of the Lesbian inscriptions, William Paton, attempts to
reconstruct the monument, which had been destroyed during an earthquake
and whose stones had subsequently been reused in the walls of the fort on the
Acropolis. He assumes a base consisting of at least three layers of blocks on
which the texts were carefully inscribed in several columns with large and ele-
gant letters. More than 60 fragments of inscriptions can be attributed to it on
account of the very distinctive and elegant writing and the characteristics of the
stone. They were all engraved at the same time and probably by the same ma-
son, arranged in at least five columns. The ensemble is structured by headlines
(in col. b l. 6; col. b l. 13; col. b l. 36) as well as by the phenomenon of hanging
lines in column c.23
The monument probably bore all the decrees of the city, letters from Rome
and other official documents that mentioned Potamon’s name, provided infor-
mation about his activities and attested to the corresponding honours by the
city. The documents cover a period from the Battle of Pharsalos (48 BCE) to the
reign of Augustus (27 BCE – 14 CE), when the honoured was the first imperial
priest in Mytilene. The dossier of inscriptions also contains various senatus
consulta: the first is referred to in a letter by Caesar, dating from 46–45 BCE. In it,
the dictator reports to the Mytilenaeans on the success of their legation, which
was able to obtain a senate resolution on the renewal of the status amicus et
socius, but also transmitting his own edictum on taxation matters. The two

||
21 Pawlak 2020, 180–187; Parker 1991 provides a concise portrait of Potamon and analyses the
epigraphic evidence for his family and descendants. Several literary sources mention Potamon,
collected in BNJ 147 (<dx.doi.org/10.1163/1873-5363_bnj_a147>, accessed on 27 Jan. 2021).
22 Parker 1991, 121 refers to the honours: IG XII 2, 272 (throne); 159–163 (honorary inscrip-
tions). The name ‘Potamoneion’ is mentioned in IG XII 2, 51, l. 5, one of the fragments belong-
ing to the structure.
23 IG XII 2, 23–57; IG XII suppl. 6–12 and 112; Cf. Mommsen 1895, 890–891; Parker 1991, 115
n. 2; and Dimopoulou-Piliouni 2010, 35 on the history of the epigraphical research. Hodot 1982,
187 describes the following characteristics: ‘lettres élégantes avec apices de 15 à 20 mm de
hauteur […] interlignes spacieux […] forme particulière de l’éta, avec barre médiane incurvée,
[…] succession des documents sur la même pierre avec des intertitres détachés au milieu d’une
ligne’.
46 | Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

senatus consulta, which are reproduced probably verbatim immediately below

date to the year 25 BCE.
Even though the memorial and the texts it contained represent an important
documentary source for the history of the island, the administration of the
Roman Empire in the early Principate and, not least, for the transmission and
publication of state acts from the capital to the provinces, this is not its original
intention. Rather, the installation of such a monument of honour must be con-
sidered as the result of a form of negotiation between the two parties involved,
the honoured person and his family on the one hand and the polis on the other.
Potamon was arguably one of the most important citizens of the city and had
dedicated his life and probably large parts of his assets to its service. He de-
served the same honours as other benefactors in similar situations, not only in
Lesbos but all around the Greek cities of the Roman Empire. Since the exact date
of the placement of the monument is not known, it cannot be said with certainty
whether he himself was still able to influence the design, or whether his de-
scendants did so. In any case, the practice of arranging and setting up honorary
monuments and inscriptions since Hellenistic times suggests communication.
Still, not only the honorands, but also the city was presented in the most posi-
tive light possible. In the same way as in the case of the theatre wall in Aphro-
disias, the elevated status of the Mytilene among the subjects of the new Roman
Emperor Augustus was presented to the public, as the deliberate headlines
clearly point out. Any visitor would perceive not only the fame of Potamon, son
of Lesbonax, but also the glory of the polis.24 The Potamoneion is an impressive
multiple-text inscription, a written artefact combining different texts from dif-
ferent periods in one codicological unit. Its placement on the acropolis of Myti-
lene suggests the appropriate setting amongst shrines and other monuments.

6 Conclusion
Not every written artefact containing more than one inscription can be classified
as a multiple-text inscription, thus corresponding to the concept of multiple-
text manuscript. Still, once one starts to look at the characteristics that have
been developed through manuscript research, new possibilities for analysing

||
24 Eck 2014 compares the dossier to those of Iason of Kyaneiai in Lycia or T. Sennius Sollemnis
in Aragenua in Gallia Lugdunensis and stresses that these inscriptions are not publications in
any legal sense but presentations.
 Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 47

the so-called inscription dossiers and understanding them as elaborate crea-

tions open up. While the polygonal wall in the sanctuary of Delphi lacks the
necessary unity of production, the theatre wall in Aphrodisias, the stele from
Skaptopara in Thrace and the Potamoneion from Mytilene are close parallels to
the concept presented by M. Friedrich and C. Schwarke in 2016. The search for a
‘composite inscription’ has up to now been unsuccessful and remains a re-
search question to be solved.

Abbreviations
BNJ Ian Worthington (gen. ed.), Brill’s New Jacoby, Leiden: Brill, 2017
<referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/brill-s-new-jacoby>.
CID V Dominique Mulliez (ed.), Corpus des Inscriptions de Delphes, V: Les actes
d’affranchissement, 1, Athens: École française d’Athènes, 2019.
IAph2007 Joyce Reynolds, Charlotte Roueché and Gabriel Bodard, Inscriptions of
Aphrodisias, online-edition <http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/index.html>
(accessed on 19 April 2021).
I. Bouthrotos Pierre Cabanes and Faik Drini (eds), Corpus des Inscriptions grecques d’Illyrie
méridionale et d’Épire, II/2: Inscriptions de Bouthrôtos, Athens: École française
d’Athènes, 2007.
IG XII 2 William R. Paton (ed.), Inscriptiones Graecae, XII: Inscriptiones insularum
maris Aegaei praeter Delum, 2: Inscriptiones Lesbi, Nesi, Tenedi, Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1899.
IGBulg IV Georgi Mihailov (ed.), Inscriptiones graecae in Bulgaria repertae, IV:
Inscriptiones in territorio Serdicensi et in vallibus Strymonis Nestique
repertae, Sofia: Academia Litterarum Bulgarica, 1966.

References
Chaniotis, Angelos (2003), ‘The Perception of Imperial Power in Aphrodisias: The Epigraphic
Evidence’, in Lukas de Blois et al. (eds), The Representation and Perception of Roman Im-
perial Power. Proceedings of the Third Workshop of the International Network Impact of
Empire (Roman Empire, c. 200 B.C. – A.D. 476), Rome, March 20-23, 2002 (Impact of Em-
pire, 3), Leiden: Brill, 250–260.
Dimopoulou-Piliouni, Athina (2010), ‘Communiquer avec le pouvoir romain: les lettres de Jules
César publiées par la cité de Mytilène’, Revue internationale des droits de l'Antiquité, 57:
33–49.
48 | Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

Eck, Werner (2014), Judäa – Syria Palästina. Die Auseinandersetzung einer Provinz mit römi-
scher Politik und Kultur (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 157), Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck.
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ties’, in Michael Friedrich and Cosima Schwarke (eds), One-Volume Libraries: Composite
and Multiple-Text Manuscripts (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 9), Berlin: De Gruyter, 1–26.
Hallof, Klaus (1994), ‘Die Inschrift von Skaptopara. Neue Dokumente und neue Lesungen’,
Chiron, 24: 405–441.
Harter-Uibopuu, Kaja (2013), ‘Epigraphische Quellen zum Archivwesen in den griechischen
Poleis des ausgehenden Hellenismus und der Kaiserzeit’, in Michele Faraguna (ed.), Ar-
chives and Archival Documents in Ancient Societies (Legal Documents in Ancient Socie-
ties, 4), Trieste: EUT, 273–305.
Hauken, Tor (1998), Petition and Response. An Epigraphic Study of Petitions to Roman Emper-
ors 181–249 (Monographs from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 2), Bergen: The Norwe-
gian Institute at Athens.
Herrmann, Peter (1990), Hilferufe aus römischen Provinzen. Ein Aspekt der Krise des römischen
Reiches im 3. Jhdt. n. Chr. (Berichte aus den Sitzungen der Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft
der Wissenschaften e.V., Hamburg, 8/4), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Hodot, René (1982), ‘Deux notes sur des inscriptions de Mytilène’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie
und Epigraphik, 49: 187–189.
Kokkinia, Christina (2015–2016),‘The design of the “archive wall” in Aphrodisias’, Tekmeria,
13: 9–55.
Lepke, Andrew (2019), ‘Vor fremden Göttern? Religiöse Handlungs- und Repräsentationsorte im
Spiegel der Freilassungsinschriften des 2. Jh.s v. Chr.’, in Klaus Freitag and Matthias
Haake (eds), Griechische Heiligtümer als Handlungsorte, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 279–301.
Mommsen, Theodor (1892), ‘Gordians Decret von Skaptoparene,’ Zeitschrift der Savigny-
Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Romanistische Abteilung, 12: 244–267.
Mommsen, Theodor (1895), ‘Das Potamon-Denkmal auf Mytilene’, Sitzungsberichte der könig-
lich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1895: 887–901.
Mulliez, Dominique (1992), ‘Les actes d’affranchissement delphiques’, Cahiers du Centre
Gustave Glotz, 3: 31–44.
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Epigraphik, 85: 115–129.
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188 <dx.doi.org/10.4467/20800909EL.20.009.12799>.
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 Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 49

Fig. 1: Delphi, polygonal wall and the temple of Apollo; <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Supporting_polygonal_masonry_of_Temple_of_Apollo,_Delphi,_Dlfi301.jpg> (accessed on
19 April 2021). CC-BY-SA-4.0.
50 | Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

Fig. 2: Delphi, manumission inscriptions on the polygonal wall. © Julian G. Schneider.

 Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco-Roman World | 51

Fig. 3: Aphrodisias, theatre-wall, IAph2007 8.32. © Charlotte Roueche.

Fig. 4: The sketch of the inscription from Skaptopara. © Klaus Hallof.

Lothar Ledderose
Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care
Abstract: The Diamond Sūtra of the second half of the sixth century on Mount
Tai ranks among the most powerful monuments of China. On an area of some
2,000 square meters are engraved more than 2,500 characters of the sacred text;
and on the boulders and rock escarpment bordering the sūtra, more than 60
colophons were added over the centuries, allowing us to trace the history of the
site in great detail. Two of these colophons by the same calligrapher – a poem
and an epigraph dated 1603 – are the subject of this paper.

1 Introduction
The Diamond Sūtra on Mount Tai (Fig. 1) is one of the great monuments of Chi-
na, and, indeed, the world. On an area of some two thousand square meters,
2,747 characters were engraved, of which 1,468 are still extant. Many of them
are more than 50 cm high. In 45 columns they come cascading down over the
rocky expanse. More than 60 colophons surround the sūtra. These individual
manuscripts, engraved over the centuries, allow us to trace how the sūtra was
judged and appreciated throughout history. Many of these colophons are intri-
cate, full of biographical and historical detail. Their texts and their calligraphy
are often quite beautiful, but not always easy to decipher. Two of them, an epi-
graph dated 1603 and the other a poem, overwritten by a third inscription, are
the subject of this paper.

2 The epigraph
The epigraph is engraved on the flat top of a boulder that is hidden among the
trees in the upper left (i.e., the north-western) corner of the sūtra field (Fig. 2).
The inscription, in fine lines, is written in regular script that tends towards run-
ning script (xingkai shu 行楷書). The four main characters read:

銘心淘慮

Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care

Open Access. © 2021 Lothar Ledderose, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-004
54 | Lothar Ledderose

There is no locus classicus for this phrase, but it is replete with both, Buddhist
and Neo-Confucian notions.
About a century before the epigraph was written in Sūtra Stone Valley, the
concept ‘heart’ or ‘mind’ (xin 心) had figured prominently in the thinking of the
Ming Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529). He held that
‘heart’ and ‘reason’ (li 理) are not separate, and that the world is grounded in
the heart. Here he concurred with long-held Buddhist convictions. The sixth
patriarch of the Chan School, Huineng 慧能 (638–713), was enlightened when
listening to a lecture on the Diamond Sūtra, whereupon he coined a saying that
was transmitted through his disciple, Nanyue Huairang 南嶽懷讓 (677–744):
‘All dharmas rise from the heart’ 一切法皆從心生.1
The author of the epigraph may also have thought more generally of the
‘sincere heart’ (zhen xin 真心), which is the necessary requirement for sentient
beings to attain Buddhahood; or he may have been thinking of the ‘mind/heart
of mental appropriation of cognitive objects’ (yuanlü xin 緣慮心).
The two-character phrase ming xin 銘心 (‘engrave on the heart’) was also
used by Buddhists and Confucian thinkers alike. When the renowned Tang
dynasty exegete Chengguan 澄觀 (738–839) explained the term in his Auto-
commentary to the Exegesis of the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra (Dafangguang Fo
Huayanjing suishu yanyi chao 大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔), he emphasized the
permanence of an engraving:

言銘心者，猶如刻銘，長記不滅. 2

‘Words engraved on the heart’ are like a carved engraving that will be on record for a long
time and will not vanish.

The eminent Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) gave the word

ming 銘 (‘engrave’) a moral dimension in his commentary to the Confucian clas-
sical text The Great Learning (Daxue 大學), which comprises a quote of an in-
scription on a bronze basin of antiquity inscribed by the alleged first Shang
ruler Tang 湯:

湯之《盤銘》: ‘苟日新，日日新，又日新’. 3

The engraving in Tang’s basin reads: ‘Sincerely renew yourself daily, ever newer from day
to day, and new again with each passing day.’

||
1 CBETA, X25, no. 471, p. 14, b16–19 // Z 1:39, p. 14, b13–16 // R39, p. 27, b13–16.
2 Takakusu and Watanabe (eds) (1922–1932), no. 1736, vol. 36: 256a21.
3 Ruan Yuan 2003, 1673b. Translation of the inscription in Plaks 2003, 7 (modified).
 Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care | 55

We know today that there never was a bronze basin inscribed by a ruler Tang;
but what interests us here is Zhu Xi’s explanation of the sentence:

銘，銘其器以自戒之辭也。苟，誠也。湯以為人之洗滌其心以去惡，如沐浴其身以去垢，
故銘其盤. 4

On the word ‘engraving’: He engraved his vessel with words of self-admonition. Gou 苟 is
to be read as cheng 誠, sincerely. Tang believed that a person could rid himself of evil by
purifying his mind, just as he could bathe his body to rid himself of a stain. Therefor he
engraved his basin.

Just as ruler Tang of yore kept himself vigilant by looking daily at an uplifting
inscription in his basin, the writer of the epigraph in Sūtra Stone Valley may
have felt a purifying force exuding from the Diamond Sūtra, the most conspicu-
ous engraving in sight.
The phrase ‘engrave on the heart’ in the epigraph of 1603 is thus a fine ex-
ample of the doctrinal interaction between Confucianism and Buddhism in the
late Ming period.5
For the second half of the epigraph, ‘wash away care’ (tao lü 淘慮), no clas-
sical source can be found. But there are similar phrases. Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101)
once wrote:

天下皆洗心滌濾，以聽朝廷之所為. 6

All the people in the realm should wash their hearts and cleanse them, in order to submit
to the actions of the court.

A century later, Ye Shi 葉適 (1150–1223) said:

方齋心滌慮，以俟陛下反復詰難，庶幾竭盡愚衷. 7

Today I purified my heart and cleansed myself of care, to prepare for repeated interroga-
tion from Your Majesty, hoping my abject self can show that my dedication is limitless.

Both writers describe the mind and attitude of the dedicated and attentive official.

||
4 Okada 1977, I: 218a.
5 For this issue see e.g. Fang Litian 2000, 6.
6 Wu Yongzhe and Qiao Wanmin 2006, 143.
7 Zhuang Zhongfang 1998, 304.
56 | Lothar Ledderose

Obviously, ridding oneself of care was a continual concern for officials. In

the biography of Nalan Mingzhu 納蘭明珠 (1635–1708), whom the Kangxi Em-
peror esteemed highly, one reads:

原期得人，亦欲令被舉者警心滌慮. 8

Originally in recruiting men, the expectation was that those who were recommended
would keep their minds alerted and cleanse themselves of care.

These passages show that the epigraph in its entirety, ‘engrave on the heart and
wash away care’, could refer specifically to those who wanted to embark on a
career in the civil service.
For a long time it was not known who the writer of this epigraph was. The
date in front of the four large characters was easy to read: ‘On an auspicious day
of the first month of winter [i.e., the tenth month] of the guimao year [1603]’ 癸
卯孟冬之吉. But the signature posed a problem (Fig. 3). Epigraphers had read it
as 佛子無含/舍守訓 (‘Disciple of the Buddha, Wuhan/Wushe Shouxun’). Yet no
disciple of the Buddha with the names Wuhan or Wushe could be found.

3 The poem
The solution came in 2015, the year our research group embarked on a thorough
study of all the colophons engraved in Sūtra Stone Valley. Eight were written,
between 1572 and 1930, on the horizontal rock band north of the sūtra field
(Fig. 4). In the middle is a colophon dated 1625 and signed by a metropolitan
graduate of 1616 named Shuai Zhong 帥眾. It is principally composed of four
large characters that read:

枕流漱石 9

Pillowing on the Stream and Rinsing with Rocks

Shuai Zhong overwrote and largely destroyed an inscription in small characters

that were part of an earlier engraving. A rubbing of the rock surface (Fig. 5)

||
8 Zhao Erxun et al. 1976, 269: 9994.
9 Celia Carrington Riely has pointed out that Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636) once used the
proper form of this deliberately unsettling expression as a frontispiece for a painting by one of
his friends. See Ledderose (ed.), forthcoming.
 Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care | 57

revealed some of the damaged characters in this palimpsest (Fig. 6). The earlier
engraving turned out to be a poem of regulated verse (lüshi 律詩) of eight lines
with seven characters each. The following can be read (numbers indicate the
columns on the rock):

/1/囗囗囗囗囗囗 /2/ 囗，行囗囗囗能 /3/ □□。

□□流水 /4/ □纓□，□□乎 /5/ 開法藏臺。
貝葉□風 /6/ 時呈逸，□□□雨□□ /7/ 哀。
西逰□□□□□， /8/ 箕踞䧺□□□□。
/9/ 鳳池野史程守訓。

/1/…
/2/ … this excursion … able … /3/ …
… flowing water /4/ … tassel . . .,
… alas! /5/ Platform for preaching the canon of the Law.
Palm leaves … wind /6/ appears untrammeled.
… rain … /7/ mourning.
Journeying to the West …
/8/ sitting at ease, 10 a hero …
/9/ Unappointed Scribe of the Phoenix Pond, Cheng Shouxun.

From the vantage point of the colophon northwest of the sūtra field, the entire
Diamond Sūtra can be seen at a glance, and this is what the author obviously
had in mind. ‘Platform for the canon of the Law’ (fazang tai 法藏臺) is Sūtra
Stone Valley; ‘palm leaves’ (beiye 貝葉) refers to the sūtra text; and ‘opening the
canon of the Law’ (kai fazang 開法藏) means the propagation of Buddhist teach-
ing. In addition, the character pair xiyou 西遊 may refer to the story of how
Monk Xuanzang 玄奘 (c. 602–664) dried his soaked sūtras on the flat surface of
a cliff, as recounted in the famous novel Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西遊記).
Another epigraph, Sūtra-Sunning Rock (pujing shi 暴經石) of 1572, alludes to this
story and likens Sūtra Stone Valley to Xuanzang’s cliff. The earliest printed
version of the Journey to the West dates from 1592, only a few years before the
poem was engraved.11
The signature of the poem reads: ‘Unappointed Scribe of the Phoenix Pond,
Cheng Shouxun’ 鳳池野史程守訓. The last character is not clear. Yet we know
there existed a personage with the family name Cheng 程 whose personal name
begins with the character shou 守. It was the eunuch Cheng Shouxun 程守訓

||
10 The term jiju 箕踞 (‘sitting on the floor with legs outstretched’) refers to a hermit’s unre-
strained way of life.
11 Zhou Ying 2010, 332–344.
58 | Lothar Ledderose

(died 1606), and, indeed, looking at the signature with this in mind, it appears
that the last character is almost certainly xun 訓 (Fig. 6).

4 The writer
Cheng Shouxun was married to the niece 姪婿 of the notorious eunuch Chen
Zeng 陳增 (died 1604), who procured for him a sinecure as ‘Specially Appointed
Drafter of the Central Drafting Office, assigned to the Hall of Military Glory’ 特授
中書舍人，直武英殿. The Hall of Military Glory in the Forbidden City, where the
Central Drafting Office was located, had a garden with a pond named the Phoe-
nix Pond. When using Phoenix Pond in his signature to his poem, Cheng
Shouxun was thus poetically referring to the prestigious Central Drafting Office,
with which he was connected. Because he was not a regular scribe, he calls
himself ‘unappointed scribe’.
A similar signature is seen on the Tomb Stele for the Master of Alchemy Zan
Yunshan (Zan Yunshan lianshi beiji 昝雲山煉師碑記) of 1602 in the Daoist tem-
ple Sanyang Guan 三陽觀 on Mount Tai: ‘Composed by the Drafter of the Central
Drafting Office in the Hall of Military Glory, Disciple of the Buddha, Wunian
Shouxun’ 武英殿中書舍人佛弟子無念程守訓撰. Figure 7 shows the second half
of the signature, where the name ‘Cheng Shouxun’ is clearly readable. He calls
himself Disciple of the Buddha 佛弟子, and uses the sobriquet Wunian 無念
(‘Without Thought’), a term with Buddhist overtones. The writer of the epigraph
in Sūtra Stone Valley also calls himself ‘Disciple of the Buddha’ 佛子, and his
sobriquet begins with the character wu 無. If both were signatures of the same
man, as we believe they are, then the character following wu 無 in the signature
of the epigraph should not be read han 含 nor she 舍, but nian 念, albeit in an
unusual orthography (Fig. 3).
The conclusion that both inscriptions were written by the same hand is
supported by the stylistic similarity in the thin lines of the calligraphy. Cheng
Shouxun was respected as a calligrapher. In 1603 he wrote the main text on a
stele in Huizhou 徽州 (now preserved in Lianyungang City 連雲港市) which
praises Chen Zeng for having constructed a Buddhist monastery.12

||
12 Wang Meiding and Tang Zhongmian 1811, 494a.
 Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care | 59

5 Politics
Cheng Shouxun’s two inscriptions in Sūtra Stone Valley also invite a glimpse
into the convoluted and acrimonious politics of the time. Chen Zeng was one of
a large number of tax eunuchs 稅璫 whom the Wanli Emperor dispatched in
1596 to levy mining taxes. Chen was sent to Shandong, where he nominated
Cheng Shouxun as his local delegate and made him Superintendent of Mining
Tax 總理山東礦稅.13
Although Cheng Shouxun calls himself a disciple of the Buddha, and al-
though – almost ironically – his name Shouxun 守訓 means ‘abiding by the
rules’, the History of the Ming Dynasty (Mingshi 明史) portrays him as brutal and
utterly arrogant. When extorting money, ‘he encouraged people to give secret
information against others, and had even women and children flogged and
tortured’ 許人告密, 刑拷及婦孺,14 and ‘nobody dared to ask how many people
he killed’ 殺人莫敢問.15 Several powerful officials, including the Grand Secre-
tary Shen Yiguan 沈一貫 (1531–1617), memorialised the emperor accusing
Cheng Shouxun, but each time Cheng evaded punishment because Chen Zeng
protected him.
The official who most vehemently opposed the eunuchs, and Chen Zeng in
particular, was Li Sancai 李三才 (1554–1623). He presented a number of memo-
rials to the throne that received no response, but nevertheless managed to have
several members of Chen’s clique executed.16 Chen Zeng, seeing the danger,
betrayed Cheng Shouxun, revealing the wealth which Cheng had amassed.
Thereupon the Emperor ordered Li Sancai to arrest Cheng and bring him to
Beijing. In 1606 Cheng was tried and executed,17 causing ‘great happiness far
and wide’ 遠近大快.18 Chen Zeng had already met a bitter end two years earlier:
when he heard that soldiers had been sent to arrest him, he hanged himself.19

||
13 Zhao Lianwen 1991; Tsai 1996, 180; Fang Xing 2013, 128–130.
14 Zhang Tingyu 1974, 223: 6064.
15 Zhang Tingyu 1974, 305: 7806.
16 Zhang Tingyu 1974, 223: 6062; Goodrich and Fang 1976, 848; Fang Xing 2013, 130. In 1588 Li
Sancai engraved a stele with a poem in Sūtra Stone Valley.
17 Zhao Jishi and Ding Tingjian 1975, 1:34b.
18 Zhang Tingyu 1974, 223: 6064.
19 Shen Defu 1997, 6:176. Zhang Tingyu 1974, 305: 7806 gives 1605 as the year of his death.
But according to the Ming Shenzong shilu (Huang Zhangjian 1984, 403: 12089a) and Goodrich
and Fang 1976, 848, he died in 1604.
60 | Lothar Ledderose

Shuai Zhong, who two decades later overwrote Cheng Shouxun’s poem, is
portrayed in the sources as another upright official. He was a censor and a
sworn enemy of all eunuchs, and is said to have been

清惠自持，以治行擢. … 屢屢上疏諫言，針砭時弊，彈劾宦臣汙吏. 20

incorrupt and benevolent, as well as self-restrained, and, being good at governing, was
promoted […]. Time and again he memorialized the emperor remonstrating about the ills
of the day, impeaching eunuchs at court and corrupt officials.

According to the History of the Ming Dynasty,

禦史帥眾指斥宮禁，閹人請帝出之外. 以向高救免. 21

the censor Shuai Zhong denounced the [situation in the] palace, whereupon the eunuchs
begged the emperor to oust him. But being protected by [the Grand Secretary Ye] Xianggao
葉向高 [1559–1627], he was saved from dismissal.

When censor Shuai Zhong destroyed Cheng Shouxun’s poem in Sūtra Stone
Valley, he meted out punishment with his own hand.

Acknowledgements
The findings presented here are a tidbit in a long-term research project at the
Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, whose support is gratefully
acknowledged. A special thanks goes to Xia Momei 夏墨湄, who wrote a first
substantial draft of this paper, and to Celia Carrington Riely 李慧聞, who un-
earthed Chinese sources and untiringly advised us on our English. At a critical
juncture Michael Friedrich, to whom this volume is dedicated, kindly and suc-
cessfully put in a good word for our project.

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||
20 Lü Maoxian 2006, 8: 23a–b.
21 Zhang Tingyu 1974, 240: 6237.
 Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care | 61

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Wengong wenji 晦庵先生朱文公文集, 2 vols, reprint of the 1562 edn, Kyoto: Chūbun
shuppansha.
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On the Practice of the Mean), London: Penguin Books.
Ruan Yuan 阮元 (ed.) (2003), Shisan jing zhushu: fu jiaokan ji 十三經註疏: 附校勘記, 2 vols,
Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.
Shen Defu 沈德符 (1997), Wanli yehuo bian 萬曆野獲編 (Lidai shiliao biji congkan: Yuan Ming
shiliao biji), 3 vols, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠 順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭 (eds) (1922–1934), Taishō
shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, 85 vols, Tokyo: Taishō issaikyō kankōkai.
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〔嘉慶〕海州直隸州誌, in Huang Chengzhu 黃成助 (ed.), Zhonggou fangzhi congshu 中國
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62 | Lothar Ledderose

Fig. 1: The Diamond Sūtra, Sūtra Stone Valley on Mount Tai, Shandong, China, second half of
the sixth century. © Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Fig. 2: ‘Engrave on the Heart and Wash away Care’, Epigraph, Sūtra Stone Valley on Mount Tai,
1603. © Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.
 Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care | 63

Fig. 3: Signature of Cheng Shouxun (detail of Fig. 2), Sūtra Stone Valley on Mount Tai.
© Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Fig. 4: Engraved epigraphs on the rock band north of the sūtra field, Sūtra Stone Valley on
Mount Tai. © Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.
64 | Lothar Ledderose

Fig. 5: Making a rubbing of the damaged poem by Cheng Shouxun in Sūtra Stone Valley on
Mount Tai, 2015. © Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.
 Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care | 65

Fig. 6: Rubbing of the damaged poem by Cheng Shouxun, taken in 2015. © Heidelberger
Akademie der Wissenschaften.
66 | Lothar Ledderose

Fig. 7: Signature of Cheng Shouxun on a stele in the Daoist temple Sanyang Guan on Mount
Tai, 1602. © Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Piotr Michalowski
They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone: Some
Thoughts on Early Mesopotamian Writing
Abstract: The ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform writing system was used for
almost three and a half millennia until other scriptural traditions eclipsed it at
some time in the first or second century CE. The ubiquitous use of clay as a me-
dium of writing has defined Mesopotamian manuscript cultures, but here we
focus selectively on other media, including various kinds of stone and perisha-
ble wax covered wooden boards, as well as other fragile media. Stone, however,
was often reused or relocated by natives and by plundering armies and while
clay is quite durable, because of vagaries of ancient archive preservation and
modern looting we must work with documentation that is fragmentary and
incomplete in its own idiosyncratic manner.

1 Introduction
The virtuoso musician Eric Dolphy famously mused ‘when you hear music, after
it’s over, it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again’. For tens of thou-
sands of years, perhaps as long as a million or more, this has been true of those
most human of all abilities, language as well as making music. The first known
attempts at capturing in some form the kind of communication associated with
natural language were relatively recent, going back approximately 5,500 years
ago. A more precise dating is not possible: humans expressed themselves sym-
bolically for millennia, but at what point such articulations intersected with
language and to what extent, it is impossible to say.
True writing, defined as a formalized autonomous sign system that seeks to
represent natural language, was independently invented only four times, in
Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica. Most such systems that have
spread and developed throughout the globe had their roots in Egypt (the roots
of most alphabetic systems) or China. Before the Chinese invention of paper
some time before 179 BCE and its spread west, most writing was done on other
plant-based materials such as papyrus, birch bark, silk, or palm leaves, on
waxed surfaces, on pottery shards, stone, or on processed animal bones and
skins (parchment). Many of these were awkward, heavy, or expensive to make,
limiting their use. To make matters worse, nature, blind to history, is an efficient

Open Access. © 2021 Piotr Michalowski, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-005
68 | Piotr Michalowski

recycler so that organic materials have little chance of long-term survival under
normal circumstances. As a result, manuscripts often persist by accident in dry
caves or graves, in oxygen-deprived bogs or waterlogged deposits, and under
other unusual circumstances.
Eschewing clumsy organic resources, the residents of southern Mesopota-
mia chose clay as their vehicle for material communication and here, as in other
cases, we must be grateful for mud.1 Building on various forms of pre-writing,
by the last quarter of the fourth millennium BCE, they had developed a complex
writing system exploiting two ubiquitous elements of their environment: clay
for the writing surface and reeds as the inscribing tool: a stylus cut at an angle
to create a point that was used to impress sequences of wedges,2 as described in
detail by Cécile Michel in her contribution to this volume. From today’s vantage
point, the choice of clay was felicitous, indeed: objects made from dried or fired
clay can survive over the millennia in the earth and sands of Western Asia. The
cuneiform writing system, first applied to write the isolate Sumerian and then
the Semitic Akkadian (Babylonian and Assyrian) in Mesopotamia, was then
adapted by neighbouring cultures to write other languages such as the Indo-
European Hittite in Anatolia, the isolate Elamite in Iran, and the related but
otherwise unconnected with any other known language Hurrian and Urartaen
tongues. The beginnings of cuneiform can be dated to the middle if the fourth
millennium and it is last documented in small numbers of tablets that may be as
late as the second century CE.
In terms of sheer numbers of documents and a time span of roughly three
and a half millennia, the durable clay medium has proven to be more lasting
than anyone could have imagined; the only other ancient manuscript culture
that one can compare with greater Mesopotamia in terms of longevity and vol-
ume of writings is early China. But numbers by themselves do not tell the whole
story. As is the case in all manuscript cultures, the cuneiform record is uneven
vertically and horizontally, both in time and in space.
For example, the century or so when the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2110–2003
BCE) ruled southern and central Babylonia is extremely well documented, with
almost 100,000 published records documenting accounts from a select small
number of archives, most dated by day, month, and year, covering six decades
or so of economic activity. During its last years, while the Ur III polity was slowly

||
1 See Balke et al. 2015. Simon Franklin, writing on the preservation of letters on birch bark
found in north-western Russian city of (Great) Novgorod, declared explicitly that ‘we should be
thankful for mud’ (Franklin 2019, 1).
2 Cammarosano 2014.
 They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone | 69

collapsing, a new dynasty emerged further north in the city of Isin and eventu-
ally took over some degree of hegemony over central and southern Babylonia,
but its beginnings are sparsely represented in the currently available documen-
tation. Aside from a few literary compositions attested in later copies, the reign
of its first king, Išbi-Erra (c. 2019–1987 BCE), and the first three, perhaps four
years of his son’s time on the throne are only known from remains of a craft
archive, mainly involving leatherworking, currently consisting of nearly a thou-
sand documents, illegally excavated, possibly in the city of Isin, and scattered
over several modern collections, not all of yet published. After that, the docu-
mentation is even sparser, eventually picking up in the later years of the dynas-
ty, but never remotely approaching the abundance of the Ur III accounts.
Similar patterns are encountered throughout the three and a half millennia of
cuneiform documentation: some periods of time are well-documented, others
less so or not at all; some are known from large numbers of tablets from a few
archives, others from fewer tablets from a broader spread of places of origin.
Moreover, while clay tablets can persist for millennia, many examples in mod-
ern collections are broken and incomplete, having suffered in antiquity but also
more often than is supposed at the hands of modern looters, excavators and
transporters.
The availability of new cuneiform texts is very much dictated by the vagaries
of contemporary geopolitics. Thus, the recent history of Iraq has resulted not
only in the surfacing of large new archives from looting, but also in limited re-
sumption of archaeological activity that has provided some epigraphic surprises.
It is impossible to estimate the full extent of what was written in different
times and places in cuneiform to any degree of accuracy. What we do have is
very much dependent on the manner in which archives were treated in antiquity
and in the circumstances of their modern recovery. The vast majority of cunei-
form tablets are accounts of various sorts and as such were not intended to be
kept indefinitely but were periodically sorted and discarded. As such, they are
often found in secondary contexts, in trash deposits, used as fill in walls, floors,
and even in clay benches and other domestic furniture. Often, they have been
discovered in destruction layers of houses, palaces, or temple complexes, scat-
tered by the victors or systematically sorted and selectively removed.

2 Other writing media

The ubiquitous use of clay as a medium of writing has defined Mesopotamian
manuscript cultures for us moderns, and in such contexts, it is customary to
70 | Piotr Michalowski

exemplify this by citing the first half of the title of one of the best semi-popular
books on the subject written by a scholar, Edward Chiera’s They Wrote on Clay.3
But as abundant as they were, we well know that clay tablets were not the sole
medium for Mesopotamian writings. Materials such as papyrus, parchment, or
potsherds (ostraca) were used for writing Aramaic and possibly other languages
in the first millennium, but these are different habits that will not be of concern
to us here. Rather, our focus will be on cuneiform writing media made of other
materials, often limited to specific inscriptional types. Thus, for example, tab-
lets made of precious materials such as various stones such as alabaster and
lapis lazuli, copper, lead, silver, and gold were used in various periods in foun-
dation deposits, mostly inscribed with short royal dedicatory inscriptions, alt-
hough anepigraphic ones were utilized on occasion.4 During the first
millennium amulets with short incantations or excerpts from a poem about the
god of plague were fashioned from stone or clay,5 perforated to be worn around
the neck or suspended at a gate to ward off evil, although there were occasional
examples that are earlier.6 Some amulets with incantations, however, were
made of clay because this made it easier to make holes and slits in the sides to
accommodate medicinal herbs.7 Stone was also used for other amulets such as
those that carried with incantations to ward of Lamaštu, a disease-causing de-
mon, while inscribed clay cylinders were hung around children’s necks to ward
off fevers.8

2.1 Stelae, statues, and monuments in stone

Such special usage aside, the two main writing media used in the cuneiform
tradition aside from clay were stone and wooden or ivory boards covered with
wax mixed with yellow ochre (or possibly written in ink).9 The fragmentary
nature of the record that has come down to us is particularly acute in the matter
of large, inscribed stone monuments. As noted by Moorey, southern Mesopotamia

||
3 Chiera 1956. On the problematical issue of defining Mesopotamia as a manuscript culture,
see Cécile Michel’s contribution to this volume.
4 Pearce 2010.
5 Reiner 1960.
6 Wasserman 1994, 55.
7 Panayotov 2018.
8 Finkel 2018; for more various types of amulets see Heeßel 2012.
9 On Akkadian kalû as yellow ochre see most recently Thavapalan 2019, 187 n. 43, with earlier
literature.
 They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone | 71

was devoid of stone, save gypsum, limestone, and sandstone, although the
annual flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers bore with them boulders of
other stones as well, while the north had ready access to limestone, sandstone,
basalt, and marble.10 The surrounding regions, however, provided an abun-
dance of more durable and attractive materials and these were acquired through
barter, trade, and plunder. Some materials were obtained through indirect con-
tact from as far away as Afghanistan, as was the case with lapis lazuli, which
could be transported in manageable portions, by land, although traffic by sea
cannot be ruled out. The procurement of larger stone pieces that could be used
for life-sized statuary and other big monuments was a more complicated matter.
The hard lustrous black olivine gabbro stone, much prized for such purposes,
could be found in south-western Iran and in Oman, and the transport of large
blocks was a logistically complex issue. As such, it was best suited for royal
concern, best exemplified by the example of the late third millennium king
Maništusu (c. 2334–2154 BCE), who led an expedition to Oman where he pro-
cured large amounts of olivine gabbro, and ordered the fashioning of numerous
statues of himself in standing and seated position as well as possibly other
types of monuments that were set up in temples throughout his realm as well as
elsewhere, thus playing out, to human as well as divine audiences, the herald-
ing of his imperial reach.11
Other kings erected inscribed and illustrated stelae, statues of goddesses
and gods as well as of their own likenesses, and yet few such large monuments
survive from the earlier period of Mesopotamia history, because the scarcity of
the required materials made them much sought after for reworking by later
generations, although clay tablets with copies of such inscriptions provide am-
ple evidence of their existence. The ones that were not smashed by conquerors,
broken down for reuse in later times, or stolen by latter-day robbers, survived
either by chance, in places that were abandoned and not built upon in antiqui-
ty, or in the collections of ancient plunders. Here, I refer only to three emblem-
atic examples.
Gudea, a twenty second BCE king of the southern Babylonian Lagaš polity in
southern Babylonia, undertook many building and rebuilding activities during
his reign, most prominently the complete renewal of the temple complex of
Ningirsu, the titulary deity of Gudea’s capitol city of Girsu.12 In the process, he
also installed his own stone life-size representations, standing and seated, in

||
10 Moorey 1994, 21–22.
11 Eppihimer 2010.
12 Winter 1992.
72 | Piotr Michalowski

the major shrines of the city. Soon after his death, the city lost its independence
and was incorporated into the larger territory ruled by the kings of the Third
Dynasty of Ur; its further fates are largely unknown at present, but eventually
during the eighteenth century BCE, at the latest, it was abandoned until the third
century BCE when a Seleucid governor by the name of Adad-nadin-ahhe built a
palace on the site, had his people dig up ancient Sumerian antiquities and came
across Gudea’s statues. These were brought out of their original locations and
set up together with glazed bricks of the new master of the site, who had them
inscribed in Greek and Aramaic, albeit in a manner imitating Gudea’s original
captions.13 We know nothing of Adad-nadin-ahhe and even less of his motiva-
tions: was his native language Aramaic or Greek; was he well enough educated
to read cuneiform and to be able to appreciate the two-thousand-year-old Sume-
rian texts or was his interest purely antiquarian and/or aesthetic? Sébastien Rey
(2020), has argued, on the basis of new information gleaned from recent excava-
tions at Girsu that this was an element of an ancestral cult honoring ancient
Sumerian rulers. Whatever impulses led him to seek out, preserve but also ap-
propriate these ancient statues, he gave them new life in an arrangement that
can be seen reproduced in the Louvre Museum today. Here the combination of
lack of rebuilding on the site that may have led to the destruction, removal, or
simple reuse of the statuary, combined with some form of much later antiquari-
anism and appropriation resulted in the survival of a unique set of Mesopotami-
an statuary.
The second case briefly invoked here concerns a hoard of Mesopotamia
stone monuments discovered during the French excavations in the city of Susa,
the seat of power of a series of Iranian polities that had a complex, often conten-
tious relationship with Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria.14 The collection included
royal and elite monuments, but no divine statues. It has often been anachronis-
tically described as a museum, but that misses the mark, as Potts has ob-
served.15 Several major pieces in the display had new Elamite labels inscribed,
making them as plunder from Babylonia, asserting Elamite royal power and
dedicating the objects to the main god of the city. Such markers of hegemony
and might can be superficially viewed as a semantic link with the European
colonial concept of the museum, but that is not enough to define it in such an
anachronistic manner. There is no ancient narrative describing the motivation
or the process of acquisition of these artefacts. Moreover, the manner in which

||
13 Parrot 1948, 152–156.
14 Harper, Aruz and Tallon 1993.
15 Potts 2018, 620.
 They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone | 73

they were excavated and documented would never meet current standards and
therefore one cannot establish with any precision how they were arranged, if
indeed they were all accumulated under orders of the same monarch, and if
they were in fact all on exhibit in the same place.
The Susa collection was created at the command of the Elamite monarch
Šutruk-Nahhunte (1184–1155 BCE)16 although some of his successors may have
added artifacts as well, and in addition to objects of Mesopotamian origin it
numbered Elamite monuments among the holdings.17 We know that this ruler
invaded Mesopotamia and put his own son briefly on the throne of Babylon,
and that it was this military expedition that resulted in the plunder of Babyloni-
an monuments from several cities and their removal to Susa.18 Although Elam-
ites had invaded Mesopotamia before, the preceding decades show no hostility
between the two polities, as noted by Potts;19 indeed, the royal houses of both
were linked by a steady pattern of intermarriage over more than a century, cul-
minating with the marriage of the oldest daughter of the Babylonian monarch
Melišihu (1186–1172 BCE)20 to Šutruk-Nahhunte sometime around 1190 BCE.21 The
details of this series of royal marriages became apparent to historians with the
publication in 1986 of a much later copy of a letter, found in Babylon and writ-
ten in Babylonian, in which a king of Elam describes the history of these mar-
riages and his claim to the throne of Babylon.22 The name of the sender is not
preserved, but it is now generally accepted that it was none other than Šutruk-
Nahhunte.23 The authenticity of the letter is open to doubt, but that is of no con-
cern to us here, as the general pattern of the relationships between the two royal
houses only serve as the background to the events that led to the Elamite inva-
sion. Apparently, the royal line in Babylon that was allied with the kings of Susa
was interrupted by the one-year reign of one Zababa-šuma-iddina (c. 1158 BCE),
who was not of the same lineage. As stated succinctly by Potts, ‘Shutruk-
Nahhunte’s resentment at not sitting on the Babylonian throne himself […],
coupled with Zababa-shuma-iddina’s arrival on the scene and his own (i.e.,
Shutruk-Nahhunte’s) father-in-law’s overthrow (by whatever means) would

||
16 Henkelman 2012.
17 See the list in Potts 1999, 235.
18 Potts 1999, 233–236; Devecchi and Lippolis 2020.
19 Potts 2006, 117–118.
20 Harper, Aruz and Tallon 1993, 178–179.
21 A black limestone monument inscribed with a land grant to Melišihu’s son was also includ-
ed in the Susa plunder; Harper, Aruz and Tallon 179–180.
22 Van Dijk 1986.
23 Henkelman 2012, 370, with references to earlier discussions.
74 | Piotr Michalowski

certainly have given the Elamite king ample justification for launching an as-
sault on Babylonia’.24
Judging by the inscriptions on the pillaged objects found in Susa, the Elam-
ite army came into Mesopotamian down the Diyala valley and then down to the
Tigris River, plundering the cities of Ešnunna, nearby Agade, then moving on
south-west to Sippar and Babylon and possibly other towns as well. It is impos-
sible to know if these targets were opportunistic, located on the march towards
Babylon, or if Šutruk-Nahhunte and his officers had specific objectives in mind.
Certainly, Agade and Ešnunna were of no strategic or military value. The former
had been the capitol of a large territorial state a millennium earlier, one that
had acquired legendary status by this time, but had since been of little im-
portance and its precise location remains unknown to us today.25 Ešnunna,
modern Tell al-Asmar,26 had a long history going back at least as far as the latter
part of the fourth millennium BCE, both as an independent polity and as part of
larger territorial states, but was conquered by the Babylonian king Hammurabi
in 1763 BCE, after two and a half centuries of independence, never to rise again.
Thus, in approaching Ešnunna, either on the way to Babylon or on the return
journey, Šutruk-Nahhunte’s agents encountered a long-abandoned city; the fact
that they remained there rummaging in the ruins suggests a premeditation and
agency behind the search for precious artefacts destined for removal to Susa.
The major source for much of this plunder may have been the Ebabbar temple in
the city of Sippar.27
Among the hundred or so objects exhibited in the temple complex of
Inšushinak in Susa, three stand out for sheer size, authority, and unique status
in modern views of ancient art and philology. The earliest is a grand four-sided
block of black olivine gabro with a long inscription that details the acquisition
of c. 3400 ha of lands by the Old Akkadian Crown – in this case in the name of
the already mentioned king Maništusu – from elites that had come under the
control of the central government in Agade.28 While formulated as a purchase,
the sellers likely had no say in this, and it provides vivid evidence of the consol-
idation of power by the Akkadian polity and the side-lining of old elites in fa-
vour of followers of the royal family during the time of Maništusu. There are

||
24 Potts 2006, 118.
25 Ziegler and Cancik-Kirchenbaum 2017, 147–228, including Paulus 2017 for the period under
discussion here.
26 Reichel 2013.
27 Gelb, Steinkeller and Whiting 1991, 22.
28 Gelb, Steinkeller and Whiting 1991, 116–140.
 They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone | 75

other scraps of evidence for this policy, but nothing compares with the detailed
information contained in this ‘obelisk’. Other such monuments undoubtedly
existed and provided vivid public demonstration of the scope and range of this
centralization of power, but none of them have survived and we can only specu-
late about the full range of this policy and its long-term consequences.
Another monument that was part of this collection was a stone relief with a
martial representation of the next king of Agade, Naram-Sin (c. 2253–2198 BCE),29
wearing a horned crown that signalled his elevation to divine status, charging
up a mountain leading his troops against his enemies, who are seen falling
down from the slopes in battle. The Elamite king was justly proud of his acquisi-
tion and had his own inscription added, flowing sideways on the mountain,
similar to what he had written on other procurements from his raid on Babylonia:

I am Šutruk-Nahhunte, son of Hallutush-Inšushinak, beloved servant of the god

Inšushinak, king of Anshan and Susa, who has enlarged the kingdom, who takes care of
the lands of Elam, the lord of the land of Elam. When the god Inšushinak gave me the or-
der, I defeated [the city of] Sippar. I took the stele of Naram-Sin and carried it off, bringing
it to the land of Elam. For Inšushinak, my god, I set it as an offering. 30

The compositional acuity and the vivid plasticity of the carving, especially of
the dominating idealized figure of the young king, is generally considered as
one of the great masterpieces of Mesopotamian art and has justly been the sub-
ject of numerous studies.31 It is hard to question such appreciation, as anyone
who has stood before the actual monument now standing against the wall in the
Louvre can well attest. In the present context, however, there are certain ques-
tions that one cannot avoid raising: was the Naram-Sin stela unique, or was it
just one of many, was it truly a chef d’oeuvre of Akkadian art as it seems to us
today because of its uniqueness, or was it just ordinary by the standards of its
time? These are necessary, if somewhat futile interrogations, for they will never
be answered, unless some fortunate archaeologists stumble upon the hitherto
unidentified city of Agade, capitol of the Akkadian polity, and unearth a pletho-
ra of preserved stone monuments that may provide a useful overview of the
artistic production of the time of Naram-Sin.
The Akkadian monuments found in Susa are not the only ones that have
acquired special status because of their uniqueness. Undoubtedly, the most
famous among them is the stela with the so-called Laws of Hammurabi, a tall

||
29 Harper, Aruz and Tallon 1993, 166–168.
30 König 1977, 76; Van De Mieroop 2007, 188.
31 See for example Feldman 2009; Winter 1996 and 2002.
76 | Piotr Michalowski

black olivine gabro stele with a long inscription in monumental script topped by
a representation of the king standing before the seated sun god Šamaš, master
of justice, that is one of the most famous of all Mesopotamian objects, celebrat-
ed, quite incorrectly, in popular and political lore as the oldest law code on the
planet. This particular exemplar most likely stood in the temple of the Šamaš in
the city of Sippar, and by default it is often treated as unique, but there are rea-
sons to believe that Hammurabi’s administration had similar stele erected in the
major cities of his realm. While tablet versions of the text that was engraved on
the stele circulated in Mesopotamia down to the latter part of the first millenni-
um, used for schooling but also deposited in library collections,32 no such other
monument has been ever found in Mesopotamia.33 And yet the excavators of
Susa did recover stone fragments that must have belonged to two or perhaps
more stone objects that were undoubtedly similar to the one reportedly plun-
dered from Sippar,34 suggesting that they had been taken from other cities as
well. It is difficult to know exactly what they might have looked like because
there is reason to believe that the one complete exemplar known to us, the fa-
mous stele standing today in the Louvre, had been partially altered by Elamite
stoneworkers.35
One early ancient collection that is entirely missing was distributed around
the courtyard of the Ekur, great temple complex of the god Enlil in the city of
Nippur. There are good reasons to believe that over centuries Mesopotamian
rulers with larger economic, territorial, and political ambitions would commis-
sion the erection of elaborate stone monuments in this abode of the god who
controlled politics and hegemony in the universe, but they also left inscribed
stone objects in other temples throughout their realm. These are known to us
today because of eighteenth century BCE copies, mostly from the city of Nippur,
although there are also similar copies made from objects dedicated in the central
temple complex in Ur and elsewhere.36 The inscriptions from some of these
monuments were copied by a few literati and their students, but the circum-
stances of these labours are unrecoverable at the present time, although it is
possible that they were created when Nippur and Ur took part in a rebellion
against the Babylonian Crown. Perhaps this was part of a preservation project as

||
32 Maul 2012, Greco 2019.
33 A fragmentary document from the Nineveh libraries may record the acquisition on a version
inscribed on a wooden writing board, although this is far from certain, see Lambert 1989, 96.
34 Nougayrol 1958, 150.
35 Ornan 2019.
36 Michalowski 2020, 694–696.
 They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone | 77

citizens in both cities awaited the armies of King Samsu-iluna (1749–1712 BCE),
which did indeed retake both, exacting vengeance, as documented in the
archaeological record.37
Just about the only clue as to the precise original location of such inscribed
objects in Nippur is found on a fragmentary copy of an inscription in the name
the Akkadian ruler Rimuš (c. 2276+ BCE) that ends with the annotation ‘from the
courtyard of Ekur’, similar to another such tablet that ends with ‘in Ekur, as
many as there are’,38 although some may have stood in nearby areas of the com-
plex. None of the originals have survived, undoubtedly cleared out in later
times, some of them recycled in the service of other monarchs, because no such
monuments were found during modern excavations of that Enlil’s temple. Other
than this and other Nippur copies of third millennium inscriptions that were
likely of similar origin, the Ekur accumulation, which must have constituted a
veritable chronicle of the power aspirations and self-representative strategies of
late third and early second millennium polity leaders, is simply unrecoverable,
erased from memory by latter-day Mesopotamians.39

2.2 Wooden writing boards

The other writing vehicle used in Mesopotamia, besides the ubiquitous clay,
was the wooden board covered with wax that was mixed with yellow ochre, in
the first millennium at least. While there is sporadic evidence that may possibly
suggest their occasional use of such as early as 2200 BCE, the systematic exploi-
tation of this medium is only documented during the middle of the second mil-
lennium.40 The signs of early utilization are somewhat elusive. The Sumerian
word most often used to designate such boards, le-um (most likely a copy from
Akkadian lē’ûm) is rare before the middle of the second millennium. As far as
one can determine, there is no direct evidence currently available about the
topic before Ur III times at the very end of the third millennium. A poem that
celebrated the rebuilding by King Gudea of the grand temple complex of
Ningirsu, the main god of his capitol city Girsu, mentions the appearance of
Nisaba, the goddess of writing, accounting, surveying, and agricultural plenty
holding such a le-um that is qualified as za-gin3, the Sumerian word for lapis-

||
37 Michalowski 2020, 695–696.
38 Michalowski 1980, 239.
39 On these monuments and for an attempt at a reconstruction of one of these, see Buccellati
1993.
40 Cammarosano et al. 2019, 129–131.
78 | Piotr Michalowski

lazuli, but which could also be used in metaphorical adjectival use as ‘shining,
sparkling’. This is unique: in other contexts, she held a lapis starry tablet that
figuratively designated the night-time sky with stars as cuneiform signs. Refer-
ences in the abundant Ur III administrative record are conspicuously meagre, as
noted by Volk and Steinkeller, who provides a full documentation, while also
calling attention that there is hardly any evidence for the use of wax during this
period in Southern Babylonia,41 and we learn from Volk’s detailed study of
beekeeping in Mesopotamia that it is unlikely that bees were kept in the south
in early times;42 further references from newer publications are provided by
Derksen.43
An early specific literary reference comes to us from the Sumerian poem The
Curse of Agade (Saŋki Gida Enlilake), in which it is reported that the goddess
Inana strove to raise the city to hegemonic status so that ‘(even the Iranian land
of) Marhaši be re-entered on the (tribute) rolls (le-um-ma)’,44 a line plagiarized
in a later forgery of an inscription of an imaginary earlier ruler named
Lugalanemundu.45 The Curse was composed during the Ur III period or just
before it, and this would suggest that at the time foreign tribute was registered
on such materials, whatever they have been at the time. The matter is compli-
cated by the fact that the Sumerian word le-um was also used in a technical
sense for a part of a plow,46 and it is not always easy to discern which meaning
is in play in an account text.47 In a somewhat later royal poem composed for
didactic use, written in the name of King Lipit-Ištar (c. 1936–1926 BCE) the
aforementioned goddess of writing and accounting Nisaba, confers upon him
the cubit measure and writing board that ‘provide discernment’.48 This suggests
that in these times writing boards were specifically used in the field as a porta-
ble writing device and this also explains the Gudea passage cited above, in
which the goddess appears in a dream with a metaphorical surveying note tak-
ing board as she instructs the king to build a temple. The small number of refer-
ences in such early texts in Babylonia throughout the first half of the second

||
41 Volk 1999, 284–285; Steinkeller 2004, 75–76.
42 Volk 1999.
43 Derksen 2017, 109–112.
44 Cooper 1983, 50–51, l. 20.
45 Güterbock 1934, 40, l. 5.
46 Civil 1994, 81.
47 A similar term ĝešda, which in later times was used as a Sumerogram for Akkadian lē’ûm in
Ur III times designated boards of various kinds, but was never, as far as I am able to discern,
used with the meaning ‘writing board’.
48 Vanstiphout 1978, 36 –37, l. 24, 24a.
 They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone | 79

millennium may be indicative of rare usage or it may simply indicate that they
were most often utilized outside of the standard archival contexts. But there are
some indications that they might have been more common further north in what
would later become Assyria and the further easy in Anatolia.
Excavations at the ancient Kaneš in Anatolia, where merchants from the
city of Assur lived and traded among the local population, have unearthed more
than 22,700 tablets,49 many of them letters that provide abundant testimony
concerning their affairs and their dealings with family members back home who
were associates in business during the late twentieth and nineteenth centu-
ries BCE.50 Two tablets found there mention an object designated in Akkadian as
a ṭuppum ša iskurim, ‘a wax tablet’.51 These have now been discussed anew by
Veenhof: one is in a letter written in Assur, while the second is an entry in an
inventory of what appears to have been a private chapel, listed together with
various cultic objects, including tools, so he suggests that these tablets ‘were
symbols of the god who would see to it that in his presence accounts were set-
tled in a honest and fair way’.52 The locals, however, were native speakers of the
closely related Indo-European Luwian and Hittite languages, even if they occa-
sionally used Akkadian inscribed on clay with cuneiform characters for written
communication.
Some of their accounts were in the form of texts referred to in Akkadian as
iṣurtum, literally ‘drawing’ that were apparently documents provided by the
local palace or by local businessmen to Assyrian merchants, but as far as one
can ascertain, not a single text of this type has been found. Waal has proposed
that they were in fact wooden boards or tablets that were painted or inscribed
with an early form of an indigenous writing system that is known today as the
Anatolian hieroglyphic script, later used only for the Luwian language.53 The
earliest recovered examples of this writing system date from the thirteenth,
possibly fourteenth century BCE (some would say earlier), but Waal has persua-
sively argued that its roots go back to the end of the third or beginning of the
second millennium BCE.54 Veenhof, while sympathetic to Waal’s thesis, has
raised some important questions that still need to be answered if we are to fully
accept it.55 Wooden boards, some covered with wax, were used in later times in

||
49 22,627 as of 2015, including those from early illicit digs, see Michel 2015, 525.
50 Larsen 2015; Michel 2020, 1–38.
51 Veenhof 2010, 100–101; Barjamovic and Larsen 2008, 153, 1. 2; Derksen 2017.
52 Veenhof 2020, 242–243; see also Derksen 2017 for two references from Kaneš to wax itself.
53 Waal 2012, 292–296.
54 Waal 2011 and 2012.
55 Veenhof 2020, 243.
80 | Piotr Michalowski

the administration of the Hittite polity and in throughout the Levant, but this
must remain of no concern to us here.56
The scarcity of references to wax in third and early second millennium
Mesopotamia is puzzling, since we know that it was used in various forms of
manufacturing, most prominently in casting metal objects with the lost wax
technique and, of course, the scattered mentions of wax tablets suggest regular
use. It is possible that this is a reflection of utilization outside of the purview of
the accounting systems. Many questions about bees and their products remain
unanswered: indeed, the Sumerian and Akkadian names for these wonderful
insects remain unknown,57 there is not a shred of evidence for beekeeping in
southern Babylonia (although the matter is different further north), the ancient
words for ‘honey’ are contested, with good reasons to question its use in early
times,58 and there are lexicographical uncertainties about words for ‘wax’.59
These are complex matters that require complex technical study that belongs
elsewhere.
The earliest evidence for more systemic use of wooden boards comes from
the middle of the second millennium from further north in Assyria where the
climate was more conducive for beekeeping. As noted by Postgate in an essay
on bureaucratic documentation, in reference to Middle Assyrian management,

unfortunately one significant part of the record is missing, and that is what was written on
wooden writing boards. We know, from references in the clay tablets, that these were used
within the administration, probably only as unilateral documents, listing both people and
commodities. It always raises the question in my mind, to what extent the clay tablets of
the Mediterranean constitute the complete written record. 60

This, and other circumstantial matters prompted another scholar to suggest that
gaps in the written record somewhat earlier, in mid-second millennium Babylo-
nia, may be explained by a switch from clay to perishable materials such as
wooden boards or palm frond ribs, but such an explanation must remain hypo-
thetical at best.61

||
56 Symington 1991.
57 Volk 1999, 280.
58 Powell 1996, 107; see now in general Maiocchi 2012.
59 The Sumerian term lal3-hur, used after Ur III only in literary texts, otherwise replaced by
tuh-lal3, was discussed by Civil 1964, 74–75, with some clarifications by Sallaberger 2012, 301;
see also Maiocchi 2012, 12, n. 7.
60 Postgate 2001, 193.
61 Dalley 2020, 18–19.
 They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone | 81

Writing boards became more much more common in the first millennium,
when they were apparently made of sissoo, walnut, tamarisk, or cypress, but
also of ivory.62 All but a few, mostly fragments, have perished in the Mesopota-
mian earth, but the occasional illustration of scribes at work and a few surviving
pieces of walnut and luxury ivory boards from Assyrian palaces in Nimrud and
Assur can be reconstructed to provide a general idea as to how these looked and
functioned: usually, they seem to have had two, three, or four leaves, connected
with hinges.63 Textual references likewise document their extensive use in first
millennium Babylonia and Assyria.
A full study of the use of writing boards is yet to be written, but there is
much scattered information on their use in various libraries and archives; a few
examples will suffice here. The libraries of Assurbanipal in Nineveh, already
referenced above, offer the best example of the extensive use of such boards for
writing scholarly and literary texts.64 Moreover, it is evident that they were used
widely beyond the library settings, as observed a quarter of a century ago by
Parpola

it is necessary to keep in mind that under the Sargonid kings a large part of all official
documents and records were drawn up on materials other than clay: wax-covered writing
boards, papyrus and leather. There is every probability that exactly the kind of documents
that were liable to be stored in state archives (international treaties and correspondence,
war diaries and sketches made during military campaigns, architectural and engineering
plans and other documents relating to military, administrative and economic planning
etc.) were largely written on such materials, which of course means that much if not most
of the contents of these archives is now irretrievably lost. 65

Writing boards continued to be used in the subsequent Neo-Babylonian period

(626–539 BCE), perhaps best exemplified by Michael Jursa’s detailed discussion
of their use in accounting in the administrative records of the complex holdings
of the Ebabbar temple estate in the city of Sippar.66 Wooden boards, as well as
parchment and papyrus that may have been painted or incised with Aramaic
alphabetic script, were used for various types of accounts and were apparently
kept for some time, so that not all of them contained ephemeral data that was
eventually copied onto clay tablets or discarded, with the boards erased and

||
62 Frame and George 2005, 82, n. 5.
63 Jendritzki, Streckfuß and Cammarosano 2019.
64 Parpola 1983.
65 Parpola 1986, 225–226.
66 Jursa 2004, 170–178.
82 | Piotr Michalowski

reused another day. Some daily ledgers and transactions were apparently only
registered in this manner and will therefore never be recovered.
The almost exclusive use of boards for specific types of information extends
beyond accounting. Illustrative is the example of a Late Babylonian clay tablet
with mathematical problem texts from Uruk that was copied, according to its
colophon, from a wooden writing board. As observed by its editors Friberg,
Hunger and al-Rawi,

since no mathematical texts inscribed on wax tablets have been preserved, it is welcome
to have here firm evidence that mathematical texts were not exclusively confined to the
medium of (cuneiform script on) clay tablets. The deplorable fact that relatively few math-
ematical cuneiform texts from the first millennium BC are preserved can perhaps be ex-
plained in this way. Cf. the mentioned observation that the organization of metrological
tables suggests that scribes during the NB/LB period were used to write Aramaic, for which
the medium was not clay tablets but wax-covered tablets, leather scrolls and papyri.67

Because Aramaic was invoked here, a brief follow-up may prove to be illustra-
tive as well. From the eighteenth century BCE onwards, alphabetic writing in
Aramaic become used more and more in Assyria and then in Babylonia along-
side cuneiform writing in the Akkadian language. Eventually, Aramaic would be
written on clay tablets, incised with a metal stylus, but much of it was brushed
with paint on papyrus, leather scrolls, and on wooden tablets, none of which
survive in the Assyrian ground, but also occasionally on pottery sherds, other-
wise known as ostraca. The sole Neo-Assyrian letter in Aramaic was found in the
city of Assur and is likely to be dated to the time of Assurbanipal in the seventh
century. It was painted in red ink on an ostracon; Fales68, who has presented the
most complete interpretation to date, suggested that the letter was in fact a draft
of a message that was intended to be copied out on a scroll, presumably made of
leather or papyrus, that would have then been sent to the addressee, and this
explains its unique status. To once again exemplify how lack of data leaves
matters open to various interpretations, it is instructive that Radner69 viewed
these matters differently, suggesting that Neo-Assyrian Aramaic letters on os-
traca might have easily been missed during archaeological excavations or
erased by mistake during their cleaning in the field.

||
67 Friberg, Hunger and al-Rawi 1990, 546.
68 Fales 2010, 198.
69 Radner 2014, 85–86.
 They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone | 83

3 Final thoughts
All these selective cases were chosen to illustrate the use of materials other than
clay for written communication in ancient Mesopotamia, with a focus on the
concomitant loss of information that limits our reconstructions of the past as an
important corollary to the ever-increasing masses of clay tablets available for
study. This abundance is nevertheless fragmentary, but not unlike the poet and
classicist Anne Carson we confront and embrace the fragment and adjust our
narratives accordingly.
But not all written traces of the past are as fragmentary as others. Just re-
cently Robson and Stevens have made a case that first millennium Babylonian
scholarship was characterized by what they term the ‘distributed library’ that
encompassed tablets and writing boards kept in various contemporary loci,
often moving between them as needed.70 In other words, seemingly incomplete
tablet collections must be considered in aggregate, rather than as fragmentary
assemblages, and as a result we have a much more complete picture of the
scholarship and literature of the time than assumed until now.
In this sense, the Assurbanipal library was unique in that it was intended to
be complete in itself, a summary of existing written knowledge. Ever prescient,
Irving Finkel, writing in the same essay volume as Robson and Stevens, gave
this an additional twist in concluding his essay on Assurbanipal’s library with
words that inspire the imagination. Commenting on the precision and all-
encompassing labors of the king’s scribes and scholars, he drew attention to the
conservative, backward-looking nature of the results:

[…] it is possible that there was a general reluctance to use cuneiform on clay for innova-
tion or speculation or non-conformist writing. Perhaps, if such writings ever saw the light
of day at Nineveh, it was in ink on parchment, or scratched in the wax among the un-
counted thousands of wooden tablets that have perished forever. This we will probably
never know.71

Eric Dolphy would have liked that.

||
70 Robson and Stevens 2019, 339, building on Maul 2010.
71 Finkel 2019, 386–387.
84 | Piotr Michalowski

Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to be able to contribute this small offering in recognition of
Michael Friedrich’s wide-ranging erudition, in gratitude for his generous hospi-
tality, friendship, and in recognition of his innovative and liberal leadership of
the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures. The quote from Eric Dolphy
invokes our shared musical interests. I need to thank Cécile Michel for her care-
ful reading of a draft version of this essay and for her generous comments and
advice, as a well as to Klaas Veenhof for his last-minute observations, but in the
end all responsibility for the opinions expressed here are mine alone.

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Cécile Michel
What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of
the Cuneiform Clay Tablets
Abstract: Cuneiform writing has been used for more than three millennia in a
vast area from the Mediterranean Sea to Iran, and from the Black Sea to Egypt
(El Amarna). There, different cuneiform writing systems have been used by
various populations speaking different languages. Cuneiform signs were im-
printed on clay, on wood or ivory tablets covered with wax, or engraved on
stone and metal. But the great majority of the recovered texts were written on
unfired clay tablets. Up to now, ancient Near Eastern archaeologists have un-
earthed more than a million of original cuneiform texts which are deciphered
and studied since the middle of the nineteenth century by Assyriologists. Tradi-
tionally, these scholars use to call themselves epigraphists, but when mention-
ing their source material, they usually speak about manuscripts. In order to
understand this paradox, this contribution analyses the various characteristics
of clay as a writing medium.

1 Introduction
The distinction between manuscripts and epigraphy traditionally comes from
historians of the classical world who study writing on soft, perishable media,
which have often been lost, except when repeatedly copied or when copied onto
hard and durable media that could survive the vagaries of time. Thus, according
to Louis Robert, the Greek word epigraphy (ἐπιγραφή) means literally ‘on-
writing, inscription’ and refers to the study of ancient epigraphs or inscriptions,
usually short, and engraved, incised, or painted on durable media: stone, metal,
wood, clay, etc.1 The person who studies inscriptions is called an ‘epigrapher’.
The website of the CNRS National Centre of Textual and Lexical Resources2
provides the following definition of the word ‘epigraphy’, which applies to the
Greek and Latin worlds, and thus to classical Antiquity: ‘An auxiliary historical

||
1 Robert 1961.
2 ‘The purpose of the lexical portal is to federate, enhance and share, as a priority with the scien-
tific community, a set of data resulting from research work on lexicons’ <https://www.cnrtl.fr/>
(accessed on 12 Sept. 2020).

Open Access. © 2021 Cécile Michel, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-006
90 | Cécile Michel

science that studies inscriptions (including epigraphs), which are usually an-
cient and engraved or sometimes painted on durable media’.3 On the same web-
site, the word ‘manuscript’, which comes from the Latin manu scriptus and
literally means ‘written by hand’, is defined as follows: ‘A work written or cop-
ied by hand […] The original version of a work written by hand […] A manuscript
on paper, papyrus, parchment, vellum; a manuscript with illuminations, with
miniatures.’4 A manuscript, then, can exist in various formats (e.g. scrolls,
codex), and can be illustrated with pictures or marginal decorations (illuminat-
ed manuscripts). Because it is produced by hand, a manuscript is a unique ob-
ject. Even if two manuscripts contain a similar text, they will never be identical:
there might be differences in their format, ink colour, media, number of lines
per page, annotations, or style of writing. The person who studies the text and
writing of manuscripts is called a ‘palaeographer’; the person who studies the
book manuscript as a material object works in the field of codicology.
How can one apply such definitions to cuneiform artefacts?5 Cuneiform
writing was used in the Near East and the Middle East for more than three mil-
lennia (3400 BCE – 75 CE); there were three different systems, which used classi-
fiers and logograms, syllabograms, or letters, to express a dozen different
languages. Cuneiform signs, made of wedges, were shaped in the negative, in
three dimensions, with a stylus impressed into fresh clay, or onto wooden tablets
covered with wax, or they were engraved on stone or metal. Of the more than

||
3 <https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/%C3%A9pigraphie> (accessed on 12 Sept. 2020): ‘Science
auxiliaire de l’histoire ayant pour objet l’étude des inscriptions (parmi lesquelles les épi-
graphes), généralement anciennes, gravées ou parfois peintes sur des supports durables’.
4 <https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/manuscrit> (accessed on 12 Sept. 2020): ‘Ouvrage écrit ou
copié à la main […] Version originale d’une œuvre, écrite à la main […] Manuscrit sur papier,
sur papyrus, sur parchemin, sur vélin; manuscrit à enluminures, à miniatures.’
5 This contribution originated as a keynote introductory paper delivered at the conference
‘Manuscripts and Epigraphy’, organized by the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
(CSMC) in November 2013. The idea of the conference was to consider whether there is a signif-
icant differentiation between manuscripts and epigraphy and to determine what exactly these
differences are. Michael Friedrich, director of the Centre, therefore invited me to explain how
the material I was studying – clay tablets covered with cuneiform signs – combined elements
from both categories. This exciting conference was the beginning of my Hamburg adventure. I
fell, quite willingly, into the ‘trap’ set by Michael, which sealed our unfailing friendship. I am
particularly happy to dedicate this article as a token of friendship to Michael Friedrich, a great
and wonderful scholar who has built a community of researchers united around written arte-
facts of the world, past and present. He had been asking for this contribution for several years
because the inclusion of 3D cuneiform clay tablets in the manuscript category led the research-
ers of the CSMC to propose a new definition for the word ‘manuscript’ (Lorusso et al. 2015). I
hope that this modest contribution will meet his expectations.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 91

one million cuneiform texts discovered to date, the great majority were written
on unbaked clay tablets.
Because of this medium, the cuneiform tablets are difficult to fit into the
traditional categories of written artefacts. The tablets have been, and still are,
regularly classified as epigraphic study material, but they exhibit many of the
characteristics of manuscripts, and palaeographic studies have increased in
recent years. The present contribution discusses the nature of cuneiform arte-
facts, and more specifically clay tablets, with a view to ascertaining whether
they fit into this traditional classification. First we shall consider the character-
istics of clay as a medium for writing, then the interaction between the medium
and its content, i.e. text and eventually images, and finally the organisation of
cuneiform clay tablets in archives and libraries.

2 The use of clay as a material support for writing

cuneiform
Clay, abundant in Mesopotamia, was used for multiple purposes, such as bricks
for various constructions, pottery for daily life, and as a material support for
writing cuneiform. The use of clay for writing purposes has many advantages,
including its durability, the potential for recycling tablets for subsequent use,
ease of transport, and the possibility of reproducing short text on bricks and
other objects by stamping.

2.1 Writing cuneiform on clay tablets

If we consider the mass of cuneiform artefacts unearthed to date, perhaps be-
tween 80 and 90 per cent of them consist of unbaked clay artefacts, predomi-
nantly tablets. It is impossible to evaluate the quantity of texts written on
perishable media. The shape of the cuneiform clay tablet depends on the text it
carries; it may be lenticular, square, or rectangular. Tablets have various sizes,
from very small texts with very few lines to large ones with several columns and
many lines or boxes containing words or sentences (Fig. 1).6 The choice of the
format depended on the nature of the text, the period, and the language used.7

||
6 Lion and Michel 2016, 30–31; Frahm and Wagensonner 2019.
7 André-Leicknam and Ziegler 1982, 73–116, 171–262; Walker 1987; Finkel and Taylor 2015.
92 | Cécile Michel

Fig. 1: Two tablets from Ur III (twenty-first century BCE). Musée du Louvre, AO 2681, Girsu, and
the small AO 19735, Umma. Photo: Cécile Michel.

First the scribe had to prepare the tablet, shaping its size according to the text
that would be written upon it. The clay may or may not have been specially
prepared. Levigation produces a fine, pure clay; the scribe prepared a core of
clay and covered it with a thin layer of this pure clay. The presence of shell
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 93

fragments or plant remains in some tablets shows that tablets could also be
made from unprocessed clay.8 In some instances, tablets are shaped in one
block, without any additional layer.9 The text was written in lines from left to
right, often parallel to the smallest side, and in one column (Fig. 2). Ruling may
separate the lines of text, and the signs would be written as if hanging from
these lines. The scribe wrote with a reed cut at an angle, having a square cross-
section, and used one angle to imprint fresh clay; the result was a wedge-
shaped impression that appeared in the negative. Depending on the pressure he
gave to the stylus, the impression was more or less long and deep.

Fig. 2: The author writing cuneiform on fresh clay. Photo: Vanessa Tubiana-Brun.

Appearing on various materials, cuneiform was almost always written in three

dimensions. There are few exceptions with two dimensional cuneiform signs,
such as short texts found on painted and glazed wall plaques that decorated the
temple of the goddess Ištar at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu).10 Since the decipherment
of cuneiform writing in the nineteenth century, modern-day Assyriologists draw
cuneiform signs on a soft medium – paper – and in two dimensions, trying to

||
8 Cartright and Taylor 2011.
9 This is, for example, the case with Old Assyrian tablets, which do not reveal a core when
broken.
10 Albenda 1991, 46.
94 | Cécile Michel

reproduce the ancient texts.11 The cuneiform script, however, does not adapt
well to two dimensions: it takes much more time to draw a cuneiform sign on
paper than to imprint it on fresh clay with a reed stylus. A single stroke is suffi-
cient to form a wedge in clay; drawing a wedge with ink on paper takes three
strokes, the three sides of the triangular head of the wedge.
Tablets were written in a specific order: obverse, lower edge, reverse, upper
edge, and even sometimes left edge, thus rotating along a horizontal axis, con-
trary to our piece of paper, which we flip along the vertical axis. The right edge
of a tablet is occupied by the last signs of long lines, continued onto the edge.
The scribe had to write the text in one go because clay dries out. It is possible,
however, to keep a tablet fresh for some hours by wrapping it in a wet tissue.12

2.2 Durability of the medium

Clay was used daily to shape tablets for the administration of large institutions
or for private purposes. In a diplomatic letter found at Mari (Middle Euphrates,
eighteenth century BCE), the king of the city of Ašnakkum wrote to the king of
Mari: ‘I have exhausted all the clay of Ašnakkum for the letters that I repeatedly
send!’13 The same figurative image can be found in a letter sent by a private
merchant of Kaneš (Central Anatolia, nineteenth century BCE) to a colleague:
‘How is it (…) that I have exhausted all the clay of this town by repeatedly send-
ing you letters, and that you, you do not send me silver, and that I never hear
anything from you?’14
Clay exhibits plasticity when mixed with water; when dry, it becomes firm,
and when fired in a kiln, permanent physical and chemical changes convert it
into a ceramic material.15 The durability of clay is then real. Most of the time,
however, cuneiform clay tablets in antiquity were not fired but only dried in the

||
11 See, for example, the series published by the Louvre, Textes Cunéiformes Musée du Louvre,
or by the British Museum, Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum.
12 For the inauguration of the Maison d’Initiation et Sensibilisation aux Sciences (Paris-
Saclay) in 2017, I wrote on a large (20 cm in length) foundation tablet which I had prepared
early in the morning. I kept it in a wet tissue for four hours so that the officials could add a sign
to complete their name, which they did on the still-fresh clay. For a photo of the tablet:
<http://hebergement.u-psud.fr/miss/miss_dir/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/P_20180712_112825
bis.jpg> (accessed on 10 Sept. 2020).
13 Kupper 1998, no. 105:10.
14 Kt 89/k 232, Michel 2018, 52, n. 8.
15 Faivre 1995.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 95

sun.16 This means that tablets vanished from places that were flooded. Julian
Reade also notes the damages inflicted by salt:

An unfired tablet usually becomes damp in the soil; it may be permeated by soluble salts
from the groundwater, and salts may crystallise on its surface as a more or less solid layer.
After excavation a tablet again dries and the clay hardens. If the tablet is made of high-
quality clay and is not badly affected by salt or a damp atmosphere, it may remain solid;
otherwise residual salts in the clay may migrate to the surface and cause fresh damage. 17

In general, unbaked clay tablets have survived until today, as opposed to other
writing media made of organic materials. The fire that destroyed many sites
baked some of the tablets, thus aiding their preservation. This is the case, for
example, with Aššurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh, which included his huge li-
braries; when fire devastated the royal palace in 612 BCE, many clay tablets were
completely or partially baked.18 But wooden tablets covered with wax,19 papyri,
and texts on leather all disappeared.
The durability of clay is therefore also relative; unfired clay is durable com-
pared to soft writing materials, but less durable than fired clay. The ancient
Mesopotamians were aware of these characteristics and intentionally baked
tablets that they intended to preserve. Among these baked tablets are some
literary and mythological pieces kept in first-millennium palace and temple
libraries, or important royal inscriptions. For example, the Tiglath-pileser III
(745–727) foundation tablet or the report of the eighth campaign of the Assyrian
king Sargon II (721–705) were both fired in a kiln after being dried.20 This was
also the case with some title-deeds recording purchases and found in a private
Neo-Babylonian archive at Uruk. Such documents were used as proof of owner-
ship and were thus transmitted from buyers to buyers over several generations.21

||
16 This was already noted by Chiera 1938, 17.
17 Reade 2017, 73–74.
18 Cartright and Taylor 2011, 68.
19 Wooden tablets are attested at least from the third millennium on. We know that following
the request of Assurbanipal to gather all important texts for his palace library, people from
Borsippa sent many writing boards inscribed with literary texts; see Fincke 2004, 126–129,
among others.
20 Tiglath-pileser III foundation tablet K 3751 (Tadmor and Yamada 2011, 117); Sargon II 8th
campaign (Thureau-Dangin 1912). Both tablets exhibit ‘drying/firing holes’ which could have
been made to facilitate the evaporation of the water from the core of the tablet. However, be-
cause they appear on the edges of the first tablet and are distributed regularly on the obverse
and reverse of the second tablet, the holes might not have the same use; see Reade 2017, 178–
179. There is a debate concerning the purpose of these small holes.
21 Hunger 1970, 197.
96 | Cécile Michel

2.3 A material easy to recycle

Cuneiform clay tablets could be recycled in different ways or erased.22 School
exercises produced by apprentice scribes, for instance, were not intended for
archiving. At the beginning of the curriculum, the student learned how to write
signs and copied lists of words, as well as metrological and numerical tables;
then he or she wrote small texts in Sumerian and solved computing exercises.
These exercises were written on quadrangular or lenticular tablets. Once an
exercise was finished, and corrected by the master, the clay of the tablet could
be moistened and shaped again into a new tablet.23 It is not impossible that
some administrative drafts underwent the same treatment. In the Mari palace,
one or two administrative tablets were found destroyed, squeezed in someone’s
hand, presumably shortly after being written.24 The text of a letter found at Tell
Bi’a, ancient Tuttul, was erased by applying an additional layer of clay.25
Tablets were not always recycled as media for new texts: some groups of
school texts were reused as fill in buildings and inserted into mud brick walls.
Nippur, a cultural centre of Lower Mesopotamia, has provided one of the best
examples of this phenomenon: more than 1400 school texts were found in
‘House F’, recycled as building material in the floor of some rooms as well as in
a large clay chest built in the courtyard.26

2.4 A transportable medium

When not recycled, clay tablets were small enough to be easily moved and
transported; this is especially true for the texts that had an immediate utilitarian
purpose, those traditionally referred to by Assyriologists as ‘practical texts’ or
‘texts of practice’.27 This modern category includes among others, legal texts
and letters.

||
22 See below, Section 3.4, and Faivre 1995.
23 Taylor and Cartwright 2011, 318, suggest that the extent of recycling has been over-
estimated by Assyriologists, given that raw clay was abundant in Mesopotamia and usable as a
writing medium even without preparation.
24 Villard 1984, 585, no. 627 has been smashed, and only a personal name is still visible;
Charpin 2008, 102, Fig. 17, shows a photo of such an administrative tablet, which could have
been in the process of being recycled.
25 Krebernik 2001, no. 378, photo pl. 63.
26 Robson 2001, 40–45.
27 See below, Section 3.1.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 97

Such letters are varied in nature; they can be private, administrative, or dip-
lomatic, and they facilitate communication between people that cannot
communicate orally. Depending on place and time, some sites of the ancient
Near East have yielded many letters written on clay.28 In the archives of Assyrian
merchants that were discovered in Central Anatolia and date to the nineteenth
century BCE, letters form the most representative genre of texts. Such an im-
portant number of letters may be explained by the geographical dispersion of
the merchant family members: men left their wives and young children in Aššur
(on the Tigris, modern Iraq) to trade a thousand kilometres away from home
and settled there in different towns. These Assyrians and their relatives ex-
changed hundreds of letters each year, many of which have been and continue
to be found in the houses of their recipients in Anatolia.29 As they are written to
be sent, clay letters are usually rather small, not exceeding the size of the palm,
which makes them easily transportable. Indeed, large tablets are more fragile
and may break during transport.
The size of the tablet varies a great deal, depending of the length of the
message that the writer wanted to send to the addressee. Some tablets are very
small, containing only four lines, while others may bear up to sixty, or even a
hundred lines. Although their size is usually adapted to the length of the text,
that is not always the case. Thus some letters from the chancellery of King Rîm-
Sîn of Larsa (1822–1763) are oversized, perhaps because they were dictated to a
scribe who did not know in advance the length of the text.30 Neo-Assyrian letters
often present a fixed size.31 By contrast, some Old Assyrian letters (nineteenth
century BCE) were not big enough, so a small, flat second ‘page’ was added to
the first tablet. The Assyrian merchants referred to this post scriptum as a ṣibat
ṭuppim (‘additional tablet’); it was banded together with the main tablet inside
the envelope (Fig. 3).
Letters, as well as contracts, were enclosed inside clay envelopes (Fig. 3).32
The oldest envelopes discovered are contract envelopes; envelopes for letters
appear only at the end of the third millennium and were sometimes used for
letter-orders. Once the tablet was dried in the sun, it was covered by a thin layer
of clay, which formed the envelope. This envelope protected the confidential
character of the letter, but also protected its integrity during transport. The

||
28 Michalowski 2011.
29 Michel 2001, 2008.
30 Charpin 2002, 489.
31 Radner 1995, 72.
32 Bérenger 2018; Michel 2020a.
98 | Cécile Michel

sender rolled a personal cylinder seal on the envelope of the letter and wrote his
or her own name and the name of the recipient. Letters in their envelopes were
then carefully wrapped in textiles, reeds, or leather and carried by special
messengers, or they were loaded on pack donkeys with other goods. When the
letter reached its destination, the recipient broke the envelope to read the letter.

Fig. 3: A letter written on a tablet, with a small ‘second page’ covered by its partly broken
envelope (Kt 93/k 211). Kültepe, nineteenth century BCE. Photo: Cécile Michel. © Kültepe
Archaeological Mission.

Envelopes of contracts bear an abstract or the complete text of the contract as

well as the seal imprints of the parties involved, including the witnesses; this
gave legal value to the contract. When the sealed envelope was broken, the
document was no longer valid.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 99

2.5 Hand copied tablets and stamped bricks

Copying texts was a very common practice in Ancient Mesopotamia.33 During
the first years of the curriculum in the early second millennium, students had to
copy various types of texts and memorize their content: lists of signs, syllabar-
ies, lexical lists, proverbs, contract models, but also metrological lists and ta-
bles, as well as several numerical lists. Further in the curriculum, they copied
long literary texts that might occupy several tablets.34 The palace scribes some-
times made several copies of royal inscriptions: for example, a large number of
clay cones and nails were inscribed under Gudea of Lagaš in celebration of a
religious action of the king; many of these commemorate the construction of a
temple for the god Ningirsu.35 Scribes could also be asked to make several copies
of a royal letter to be sent to provincial governors.
Copies of tablets are also found in private archives, as we learn from clay
labels attached to various tablet containers.36 Legal texts were usually certified
by witnesses; each of the parties and even some of the witnesses could receive a
copy of the contract, which they then kept in their own archives. Some official
letters were sent in multiple copies to the different persons concerned.37 Like-
wise, private letters could be sent simultaneously to several addressees who
would each receive a copy, and some senders could decide to make copies of
some of their own letters for their personal archives.38
All these duplicates were made by hand, but copies of short texts could also
be made by stamping. The king could, for example, order the stamping of a text
on bricks to commemorate the construction of temples, palaces, or city walls.
Inscribed bricks exist throughout the three millennia of cuneiform writing. The
short written text contains the name and titulature of the king along with an
indication of the construction work. The inscribed clay matrix, written in mirror
reverse and in relief, was prepared with a mould. The bricks were thus inscribed
before drying and were incorporated into the building, the inscription being
visible or not.39
Stamp seals and cylinder seals were also imprinted on clay. The cylinder
seals could bear a few lines of cuneiform signs, with, for example, the name of

||
33 Michel 2020b.
34 Veldhuis 1997, Proust 2007, Robson 2009.
35 Edzard 1997, 109–166, lists more than 2,000 such objects.
36 Özgüç and Tunca 2001, 275 (Kt c/k 834), 300 (94/k 878); Michel 2008.
37 Veenhof 2003, 434–435.
38 Michel 2018, 53, n. 10.
39 Sauvage 1998, 38–40.
100 | Cécile Michel

the owner of the seal. Rolling a cylinder seal on clay was the quick, standard
way to ‘sign’ a document.40

3 The text and its medium

There are many aspects of the interaction between text and medium. Here we
will be concerned only with those aspects that may bring some light on the
qualification of clay tablets as either manuscripts or inscriptions, aspects such
as the relationship between text and image, the possibility of deleting or adding
text, and series of tablets considered as ‘books’.
Beside clay, cuneiform signs could also be written on stone, metal, or
wooden tablets covered with wax. The choice of medium depended not only on
the nature, content, and purpose of the text, but also on its author and address-
ee. For example, royal inscriptions and dedicatory texts for the gods were in-
scribed on precious and durable supports such as obsidian, semi-precious
stones, gold, and silver, while administrative and school texts, which were not
intended to be preserved in the long term, were written on unfired clay.41 The
same phenomenon may be observed in ancient Egypt, where fragments of pots,
called ostraca, were used to write letters, daily accounts, or administrative texts
in demotic from the seventh century BCE on, while papyrus was used for reli-
gious or scholarly works.

3.1 What medium for what text?

Assyriologists often classify cuneiform sources according to various categories.
The wiki of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative proposes four main catego-
ries, which are modern and not based on how those who produced the texts
could possibly have viewed them.42 Three of these categories almost exclusively
concern texts written on clay or wooden tablets (or later on flexible media),
while the last category includes texts written on various media.

||
40 Gibson and Biggs 1977.
41 Practical, scholarly, and literary cuneiform texts were also regularly written on wood. See
above, n. 19 and below, Section 3.1.
42 CDLI wiki: <http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=text_typologies> (accessed on 13 Sept.
2020); proposed and used by today’s scholars, this classification of cuneiform texts is modern
and artificial.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 101

The first three categories are practical, scholarly, and literary texts. The
practical texts, the most numerous, were written for immediate, utilitarian pur-
poses and document economic and daily activities (letters, legal texts, receipts,
accounts, etc.). The scholarly sources include materials written in an educa-
tional context: lists of signs, lexical, metrological, or numerical lists, as well as
texts concerning mathematics, medicine, astronomy, divination, etc. The liter-
ary texts include narrative, mythological, and historical compositions, praise
poetry, literary letters, and wisdom literature.
In contrast to the aforementioned written sources, there are also official and
display texts, which include royal inscriptions, law collections and treaties, and
votive texts; such texts were written on a wide variety of surfaces, materials,
and shapes. Produced mainly at the initiative of the ruler and linked to the exer-
cise of royal power, it was important that these texts survive over a long period
of time. Triumphal inscriptions were written on stele, statues, reliefs, or clay
prisms; they were intended to be visible and read by literate people, while
foundation inscriptions, often written on precious materials, stone, or metal,
were hidden in the masonry of temples dedicated to gods and were in theory
readable only by the gods themselves and perhaps by later kings.

3.2 Clay and leather during the first millennium BCE

During the first millennium BCE, Aramaic became the most common language
throughout the ancient Near East, and the use of soft and flexible media in-
creased. Several Neo-Assyrian reliefs and paintings show a pair of scribes, one
writing cuneiform with a stylus on a tablet or a writing board covered with wax,
the second using the Aramaic alphabet to write with ink on a flexible medium,
such as a papyrus or leather scroll.43 These texts have disappeared: their exist-
ence is known from surviving clay sealings that contain a few words describing
their content.
During the Hellenistic period (331–141 BCE) in the temples of Uruk and Baby-
lon, scribes used different types of media for writing: clay tablets for cuneiform,
wooden tablets covered with wax for Sumerian and Akkadian written with cu-
neiform signs, as well as alphabetic Aramaic, and Greek; leather and papyri
were also used for Aramaic and Greek. The bulk of the documentation was writ-
ten in Aramaic or Greek on perishable organic media, wooden tablets, or leath-
er. Cuneiform tablets, however, are the only written artefacts that have survived

||
43 Lion and Michel 2016, 35–36.
102 | Cécile Michel

to this day; they were written by the ṭupšarrū, that is, by scribes belonging to the
old urban notability of Babylonia, called Chaldeans by the Greeks.44 They were
scholars, priests, and temple administrators, all guardians of cuneiform culture
in Hellenistic Uruk.
The cuneiform texts document another type of scribes, the sepīrū, known
from the seventh century onwards, who wrote in Aramaic on leather scrolls.
They wrote some of the legal texts that needed to be understood by the local
authorities, but clay was also still used for legal purposes. In some cuneiform
legal texts, the scribe specified that these were copies made from an original
written on leather.45 Clay tablets suited administrative practices; they were
sealed on the edges, and the text could be very easily checked. And in fact, a
significant portion of temple administration is documented by cuneiform tablets.

3.3 Text and image

The combination of cuneiform text and images primarily occurs in stone media.
During the Neo-Assyrian Empire, large iconographic programmes were executed
on palace walls; over hundreds of meters, these programmes show the great
achievements of the king, with a substantial amount of detail.46 Clay, however,
could also bear drawings.47
Drawings on clay could be produced with the help of a matrix, such as cyl-
inder seals engraved with miniature figurative scenes that were rolled onto the
clay, leaving the imprint of their drawings, which were often accompanied by a
few lines of cuneiform signs.48
Some clay tablets from the fourth millennium on also show plans and maps.
Field surveyors provided schematic representations of rural parcels on clay
tablets.49 The shape of a field may also be found with other geometrical shapes

||
44 Oelsner 2003, Jursa 2005, Clancier 2011.
45 Clancier 2005.
46 This is, for example, the case with the iconographic programmes on the walls of
Aššurnaṣirpal II’s (883–859) palace at Kalhu; see Winter 1983, and on Aššurbanipal’s (668–627)
palace at Nineveh, Barnett 1976.
47 Clay, as medium for cuneiform, could also take a great variety of shapes. It could be fash-
ioned into the form of an object, such as a sheep liver, which was an organ of thought and
feeling, and thus of interest to the diviner. Deformities or anomalies of the liver were repro-
duced on a clay model, on which was also written a corresponding omen. Such liver models
were used as aide-mémoires for priests, or for teaching (Koch-Westenholz 2000).
48 See above, Section 2.6.
49 Liverani 1996.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 103

as part of a mathematical problem.50 Scribes left plans of buildings, some of

them showing tiny details such as the brick pavement of an open court or the
variation of the thickness of some walls.51 There are also maps of cities and geo-
graphical areas drawn on clay for religious or military purposes. One of the
earliest representations comes from the area of Nuzi, east of the Tigris, and is
dated to around 2300 BCE.52 The Mappa mundi or Babylonian map of the world,
presumably made around the ninth century BCE, is known from a copy of the
seventh century. It represents the earth as a disc surrounded by an ocean; Baby-
lon lies in the centre, crossed by the Euphrates. Text on the reverse of the tablet
comments on the map.53
All these examples demonstrate that, even if it is more awkward to draw
curved lines than straight wedges on fresh clay (see Fig. 4), the difficulty did not
prevent scribes from drawing on clay tablets, and the drawing was usually ac-
companied by some cuneiform writing.

3.4 Erasing and annotating texts on clay

When carving an inscription in stone, error is irreparable, unless the carver
starts anew. When writing a text on fresh clay, it is always possible to erase
signs or a line by running a finger across it to smooth out the clay and by writing
there once again.54 But when clay tablets have been dried in the sun, they be-
come as hard as stone. It is still possible, however, to erase signs or a sentence
by watering the clay in order to obtain a flexible surface for rewriting. This pos-
sibility, rarely implemented, is documented by a letter that an Assyrian mer-
chant addressed to his representative, ordering him to erase few lines on a
document preserved in his archives:

There is a tablet mentioning that the anonymous creditor has loaned 21 minas and 10
shekels of silver to Šalim-Aššur, Ikūnum, and Sabazia, and that concerning this silver, we
are jointly responsible. Take out this tablet, read it carefully and where it is written: ‘The

||
50 Friberg 2007, 189–229.
51 Heinrich and Seidl 1967, 41.
52 Meek 1935, no. 1, for a photo <https://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/photo/P213268.jpg> (accessed on
25 Sept. 2020).
53 Horowitz 1988.
54 See, for example, the photo of a partly erased tablet in Robson 2001, 46, Fig. 9.
104 | Cécile Michel

silver has been taken in the name of Iliš-tikal’ moisten it with water (and erase it) and
show to the son of Šalim-Aššur what is important for you. 55

The addition of annotations, glosses, or marginal numbers to cuneiform tablets

is also attested (Fig. 4). Religious, literary, or divinatory texts could be the sub-
ject of commentary by scholars who interpreted them via plays on words, by
noting meanings on different levels, or by multiplying the possible readings of a
text. These commentaries were written on separate tablets referring to the rele-
vant composition. But they could also be inserted as glosses between the lines
on copies of the text; they were then written at the same time that the copy was
made.56 In small characters, between the lines, we find such glosses on astrolog-
ical series used by scholars working for Aššurbanipal, who was an educated
king; these glosses were addressed to the king, who was then able to discuss
these matters with his astrologers.57

Fig. 4: Aramaic text on the left edge of a tablet with a Neo-Babylonian cuneiform text, from Still
and Sonnevelt 2020, 105. Text from the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 521 BCE.

There are other types of annotations, such as he-pi (‘broken’), which occurs on a
scribe’s copy when a portion of the original text was damaged and illegible.
Annotations are quite ancient; they go back to the second half of the third mil-
lennium BCE in the administrative documentation, where we sometimes find

||
55 Michel 1995, 25–26.
56 Frahm 2011, 16–17.
57 Villard 1997. Such annotations concern, for example, the translation into Akkadian of a
Sumerian logogram, or an indication of how to pronounce it.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 105

marginal numbers that were supposed to help the scribes in their computa-
tions.58 All these annotations were written on fresh clay at the same time as the
main text, presumably by the scribe who wrote the tablet. There are also a few
cases where signs have been scratched onto a dry tablet.59

3.5 Series of tablets, precursors of books

Literary, divinatory, or mathematical texts could be quite long and needed to be
written over several tablets. Each of these contained a colophon that indicated its
place in the series.60 This colophon was written in a specific space that was left
blank on purpose at the end of the tablet. The colophon included various items of
information such as the title of the series – corresponding to the incipit of the first
tablet – the number of the tablet within the series, or (for literary tablets) the
first line of the next tablet within the series, sometimes the date when the copy
was made, and rarely the place where it was copied or the origin of the original.
First-millennium scribes could even specify the material on which the original
was written, such as a clay tablet, a wooden tablet, or a flexible medium.
As an example, the series Enūma Anu Enlil (‘When [the gods] Anu and
Enlil’) contained at least seventy tablets gathering seven thousand astrological
omens that referred to the king and the land, and that derived from observation
of the moon, the sun, eclipses, Venus, and atmospheric phenomena.61 The se-
ries was compiled by Esagil-kîn-apla during the eleventh century BCE, and we
have several copies from later periods.
Some long literary texts could also be written over several tablets forming a
series. The most famous example is the Gilgameš Epic.62 Construed from Sume-
rian tales and new compositions, the Akkadian version of the Gilgameš Epic,
already well-known from the beginning of the second millennium BCE, was

||
58 Ouyang and Proust, forthcoming.
59 For the third millennium, see, for example, the text ARET XX, 25, reverse 11, 9, a photo of
which is accessible online <http://ebda.cnr.it/tablet/view/3115> (accessed on 13 Oct. 2020).
Such textual additions may also be found in some first-millennium colophons. Or, occasionally,
signs were added as the tablet was in the process of drying; see, for example, King 1914, 9,
tablet 48 [Ki. 1904-10-9, 11]: ‘After the tablet had partly dried, five lines were added by the scribe
on a blank space on the Reverse above the colophon.’ A photo of this tablet (which joins two other
pieces) is visible at <https://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/photo/P394724.jpg> (accessed on 8 Sept. 2020).
60 Leichty 1964, Hunger 1968.
61 Weidner 1944.
62 George 2003.
106 | Cécile Michel

standardized in later times. The most complete version comes from the library of
Aššurbanipal’s palace (seventh century BCE) and runs over twelve tablets ar-
ranged in a specific order. The colophons of each tablet indicate the number of
the tablet in the series, and thus clay tablets could be arranged in a series like
pages in a book.

4 Clay tablets in archives and libraries

Clay cuneiform tablets were usually kept in archives and libraries that were
located in official buildings and private houses. Official archives were located in
large organizations, palaces, and temples, which could also contain private ar-
chives. Private archives belonged to individuals and have usually been excavated
in their houses; they often concern several generations of a family. Most of these
archives were sorted though and weeded out from time to time in antiquity.63
In these archives, tablets were arranged on shelves or kept in baskets and
coffers made of perishable materials that have not survived, though tablets were
also kept in clay jars (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5: Archive from a family of merchants, kept in a perishable container, Kültepe, nineteenth
century BCE. © Kültepe Archaeological Mission, Archives.

||
63 Veenhof 1986, for example.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 107

Such containers, kept in specific rooms, were identified by a clay label. Archives
could be arranged by owner, in dossiers dealing with the same affairs, or by text
genre such as letters, legal texts, etc.64
Beside archives, other collections of texts have been found; these col-
lections form real libraries that are mainly dedicated to sources produced in
scholarly contexts. The libraries include texts dealing with divination,
medicine, religion, technical matters, ‘science’, literature, and pedagogy, in-
cluding, for example, lexical lists. Such libraries are attested from the second
half of the second millennium, a period when most of the literary texts were
canonized. The libraries have been unearthed in the houses of priests, diviners,
or other scholars, but in later times more often in palaces and temples.65 King
Aššurbanipal (668–627) gathered in his palace at Nineveh one of the most im-
portant collections of cuneiform scholarly texts, more than 20,000 in number,
which are now housed in the British Museum. In temples and palaces, tablets
were stored in niches in the walls of specific rooms, near a courtyard giving
enough light to read, or they were positioned on shelves along the walls. Cunei-
form texts kept in archives and libraries have characteristics that are relevant to
manuscripts.

5 Conclusion
The great majority of the cuneiform texts discovered so far were written on clay;
the number of texts written on stone and metal is quite limited, and the number
of texts written on other media (wood, leather, papyrus) is unknown since such
organic materials have not survived. Clay is traditionally considered one of the
media for epigraphical studies. Yet if we consider cuneiform tablets, they share
many characteristics with manuscripts: they were written by hand and are thus
unique; they were transportable; they could be enclosed in an envelope; they
could bear annotations or drawings and be erased or recycled; they could also
be grouped into books of a sort and arranged in archives and libraries.
In 2015, characteristics such as these led scholars at the Centre for the Study
of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg to propose a new and expanded definition
of the word ‘manuscript’: ‘a manuscript is an artefact planned and realised to
provide surfaces on which visible signs are applied by hand; it is portable, self-

||
64 Archi 2015 or Michel 2018, among many others.
65 Clancier 2009.
108 | Cécile Michel

contained, and unique’.66 In fact, many written artefacts do not fit into the tradi-
tional categories that contrast manuscripts with epigraphy, with the result that
such artefacts occupy a vast grey zone between these two categories.
Within the community of scholars who decipher cuneiform texts written on
clay tablets, some scholars refer to their sources as manuscripts, and studies in
cuneiform palaeography have flourished in recent decades.67 Such scholars,
however, also often call themselves epigraphists. The name of the discipline
itself, Assyriology, is built on ‘Assyria’, suggesting a very limited topic, but it
actually refers to all texts written in cuneiform, embracing a great variety of
languages such as Sumerian, Hurrian, and Hattic (three languages that do not
belong to any known linguistic family), the Semitic language Akkadian and its
dialects, Assyrian and Babylonian, as well as the Indo-European Hittite lan-
guage. The word ‘Assyriology’ corresponds more generally ‘to the study of an-
cient Mesopotamia and neighbouring regions through textual, archaeological
and art historical approaches’.68
A biography of François Thureau-Dangin (1872–1944) presents him as a
‘French archaeologist, Assyriologist and epigrapher. He played a major role in
the deciphering of Sumerian and Akkadian languages’.69 In 2013, the Oriental
Institute at the University of Chicago advertised a professorship in Assyriology
as follows: ‘Applications are welcome from scholars with a research focus in
any period or subfield of Assyriology. The successful candidate should be able
to teach a wide range of courses in Akkadian grammar, texts, and epigraphy
and courses on Mesopotamian civilization and history.’ Such terminology harks
back to the early days of the discipline.70
How can we explain this double paradox, which consists of using the term
‘epigraphist’ for scholars working on cuneiform clay manuscripts, and the word

||
66 Lorusso et al. 2015.
67 Biggs 1973, 40, regrets the absence of studies dealing with cuneiform handwriting: ‘in my
opinion, the greatest problem in cuneiform palaeography is our lack of knowledge about the
particular handwritings of the various scribal centers.’ Among recent studies on this topic, see,
for example, Devecchi et al. (eds) 2015.
68 Definition given by the International Association for Assyriology, <https://iaassyriology.com/
assyriology/> (accessed on 3 June 2020). In 1928, as part of his efforts to distance Turkey from
the Arab world, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk replaced the Arabic-script Turkish alphabet with a
Latin-script alphabet. In the same spirit, Assyriology is referred to as Sümeroloji in Turkey,
because of attempts to claim an affiliation between Turkish and Sumerian.
69 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Thureau-Dangin> (accessed on 4 June 2013).
70 Thureau-Dangin 1896, 360, concerning tablets from Tello, mentions, for example, ‘des
documents épigraphiquement antérieurs’.
 What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets | 109

‘Assyriology’ to depict a discipline partly linked to the decipherment of a great

variety of languages?
The first archaeological explorations in Mesopotamia were carried out in
the middle of the nineteenth century by French and British diplomats on the
ruins of the Assyrian capitals: Nineveh, Khorsabad (ancient Dûr-Šarrukēn), and
Nimrud (ancient Kalhu). These early excavators unearthed the remains of huge
palaces built by the Assyrian kings of the first millennium BCE that were
decorated with large reliefs on stone slabs, sometimes covered with cuneiform
inscriptions.71 The first contact of European scholars with ancient cuneiform
texts thus concerned royal inscriptions written in the Assyrian language and
engraved on stone, hence the double designation of specialists of cuneiform
texts as ‘Assyriologists’ and ‘epigraphists’, despite the fact that they mainly
work on manuscripts as palaeographers do.

Acknowledgements
I would like to address my warmest thanks to Massimo Maiocchi and Piotr
Michalowski who read and commented on this text, and to Richard Bishop who
polished my English.

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Ondřej Škrabal
How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in
Ancient China? New Answers to Old
Questions
Abstract: After many decades of scholarly consensus on how bronze in-
scriptions were cast in Chinese antiquity, over the past twenty years, archaeo-
logical discoveries as well as research on inscriptions’ specific features have
undermined the long-established interpretation. In contrast to the traditional
stance – that inscription moulds were prepared by impressions from a master
pattern – the new interpretation argues that inscriptions were modelled from
additional clay directly on the moulds. This article offers an overview of the
genesis and main advantages of the new interpretation together with a detailed
reconstruction of the technical procedure.

1 Introduction
The last two decades have fundamentally changed our understanding of how
ancient Chinese bronze inscriptions were produced. New material evidence
yielded by archaeological excavations, together with scholarship focusing on
the special features of cast inscriptions, have challenged the long-standing
consensus on the main technique for producing ceramic moulds in which in-
scriptions were cast during the ‘golden age’ of Chinese bronze epigraphy,
i.e. between the eleventh and fifth centuries BCE. This has further prompted
reassessment of the techniques employed in even earlier times. While the tradi-
tional view has been reiterated in all literature on the subject since at least the
1960s, the advantages of the novel interpretation have hitherto not been com-
prehensively presented in a Western language.1
There are manifold reasons why these details should interest a student of
ancient Chinese bronzes and ancient Chinese history in general. The most ap-
parent is the authentication of inscriptions on unprovenanced objects, as it is

||
1 For a fairly comprehensive treatment in Chinese, see Zhang Changping 2010; Guan Shuqiang
2016; Shi Anrui 2020a; for a discussion in English, see Nickel 2006, 36–38; Zhang 2012; Škrabal
2019, 314–331.

Open Access. © 2021 Ondřej Škrabal, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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116 | Ondřej Škrabal

commonplace that inscriptions were forged onto authentic bronzes. It goes

without saying that without a thorough knowledge of ancient inscription tech-
niques, it is almost impossible to assess the genuineness of unprovenanced
inscriptions reliably. Furthermore, such knowledge can aid textual scholarship
by elucidating how certain mistakes came into being during the production
process; this can provide information about the content and form of an inscrip-
tion’s master copy. From a palaeographic perspective, it can indicate how well
and how directly an inscription represents the handwriting of its time, and how
certain misspellings or variants may be products of casting infelicities rather
than of the scribal hand. Furthermore, it can make research on calligraphy more
complex by clarifying the technology by which the artistic features of inscrip-
tions were produced, the extent to which they were determined or limited by
inscription techniques and the relation between an epigraphic style and inscrip-
tion technique. Historians of technology will also be interested in the level of
achievement of early Chinese craftsmen, the variety of techniques they em-
ployed, the dynamics of the emergence of these techniques or their place in the
global context of the ancient world.

2 Preliminaries: Piece-mould technique, simple

inscriptions and the inscription block
Until the fourth century BCE, due to the late advent of iron carving tools, bronze
inscriptions were typically cast.2 Cast inscriptions could be produced in a variety
of ways. In particular, bronzes from the Late Shang period (thirteenth to elev-
enth century BCE), when bronze epigraphy was still in its infancy, indicate that
various simple techniques were used to produce short inscriptions several
graphs in length. As the bronzes were cast from ceramic moulds,3 a negative
version of an inscription had to be prepared in the mould to yield a positive

||
2 While the earliest inscriptions carved in bronze come from the first half of the eleventh
century BCE (Yue Zhanwei, Yue Hongbin and Liu Yu 2012, 66–67; Liu Yu 2019, 106–109; Yang
Huan and Yang Jian 2020), only from the ninth century BCE on was carving occasionally used to
produce longer inscriptions, typically on reused objects. From the fourth century BCE on, with
the emergence of iron tools, carved inscriptions gradually dominated the epigraphic landscape
of ancient China. For carved inscriptions from those times, see Zhang 2012, 267–268; for
chiseled inscriptions, see Li et al. 2011, 494–496. For iron metallurgy in ancient China, see
Wagner 1993.
3 For details, see Bagley 1990.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 117

inscription upon casting. Thus, it is the ceramic stage of inscription-making that

is of main interest here. Between the thirteenth and eighth century BCE, inscrip-
tions were typically cast on the interior walls of objects, except for some liquor
cups (jia 斝, jue 爵) and bells, which commonly featured inscriptions on the
outside walls. This was also the case for weapons, tools, chariot fittings and
decorative pieces.4 The former type of inscription was prepared on the core (in-
ner mould), while the latter was prepared on the outer mould(s). However, the
technique did not differ.
The easiest way to prepare an inscription was to engrave a mirror-reversed
text directly into the leather-hard clay core (or mould). The intaglio lines of such
an engraving became positive relievo graphs on the cast object. Relievo inscrip-
tions are seen only occasionally in Late Shang and Early Western Zhou (late
eleventh to early tenth centuries BCE) bronzes, mainly inside the foot of gu 觚
beakers and inside alcohol containers.5 While relievo inscriptions were easy to
produce, they were also more susceptible to mechanical damage during post-
casting finishing and regular cleaning after the vessels were used in a sacrificial
ritual.
It was also possible to engrave the mirror-reversed outlines of a graph into
the core and to pare down the clay outside of this sketch. The sketched graph
would thus rise above the surface of the core, and a positive intaglio inscription
was produced after casting. To spare the efforts of scraping a layer of clay off the
entire surface of the core, the graph could be sculpted on a separate clay slab (a
so-called ‘inscription block’), which could then be embedded in a niche gouged
out of the core for this purpose. Even with the use of the inscription block, this
technique was too laborious to produce inscriptions with more than just a few
graphs.6
However, the edges of the inscription block are still discernible in many in-
scriptions, and it is generally believed that inscriptions were indeed commonly

||
4 From the eighth century BCE on, inscriptions were placed on the outside walls of the vessels
increasingly often. For more on this shift, see Huang Tingqi 2018, 46–62.
5 Zhang 2012: 268; for examples, see Barnard and Wan 1976, 50–53. By Zhang’s count, of the
792 gu beakers recorded in Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo 2007, 98 have relievo
inscriptions. My own count shows that, of the 825 you containers recorded in Wu Zhenfeng
2012, at least 24 have relievo inscription (some cases are difficult to determine). There are also
cases in which the lid of a you has a relievo inscription and an intaglio inscription is cast in the
bottom of the container (and vice versa).
6 For examples of inscriptions that are believed to have been produced by this technique, see
Barnard and Cheung 1996, 226–239. Note that Guan Shuqiang 2017, 69–71, offered an alterna-
tive explanation of how some of them were produced.
118 | Ondřej Škrabal

prepared on such blocks but using a different technique than described above.
Several scholars have nevertheless justly pointed out that some of the longest
inscriptions cast on the hemispherical interiors of ding 鼎 cauldrons would be
difficult to produce using a flat inscription block.7 There is, however, little rea-
son to believe that a different inscription technique was used in those cases.
Rather, the use of inscription blocks should be understood as a convenient
technique that was applied where possible, such as on straight or slightly
curved walls. When the complexity of the surface did not allow for the use of
inscription blocks, the inscription had to be sculpted directly on the core,8
which was admittedly less convenient for craftsmen.

3 Special features of cast inscriptions in ancient

China
Before looking in detail at the most consequential of inscription techniques, it
might prove useful to summarise the features of a typical bronze inscription cast
in ancient China. To prevent any confusion, I use the term ‘typical’ to refer to an
inscription with more than three graphs in length that was cast during the Mid-
dle and Late Western Zhou periods (mid-tenth to early eighth centuries BCE),
when most of the famous inscriptions were produced. These features include:
1. Intaglio (sunken) lines. For the reasons described above, intaglio inscrip-
tions were largely preferred.9
2. No mechanical reproduction. Mechanical reproduction was only introduced
into inscription-making during the late eighth century BCE. This first in-
volved repeated impressions of the master pattern block with the entire text

||
7 Chang 1974–1975, 472; Hayashi 1979, 12–13; for further problematical surfaces, see Li Feng
2015b: 144–146.
8 Consider, for example, the set of the twelve Qiu ding 逑鼎 cauldrons. Most of their inscrip-
tions were prepared on inscription blocks (as confirmed by discernible boundaries of the
blocks and in one case even by blocks inserted in wrong order). However, as Li Feng 2015b, 149
suggests, for several cauldrons of this set, the inscription was most likely prepared directly on
the core.
9 The décor on the exterior of ritual bronzes was sometimes filled with a black or colourful
substance to enhance the visual effect, see Gettens 1969, 197–204; Su Rongyu 2020. Sunken
inscriptions allowed for the same treatment, but I am aware of only one such case; this is the
Xiaochen Bu ding 小臣逋鼎 in the collection of the Tsinghua University Library 清華大學圖書館,
Beijing.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 119

of an inscription.10 From the seventh century BCE on, stamps with individual
graphs were also used.11
3. Undercut. The sidewalls of the grooves of intaglio graphs are typically in-
clined so that the grooves are somewhat wider at their bottom than at their
opening (Fig. 1:3).12
4. Wavy lines. Under magnification, the lines of individual strokes (i.e. the
edges of the grooves) often show uneven width and their edge lines appear
wavy, not straight (Fig. 1:3).13
5. Thickened cross-strokes. The grooves are sometimes remarkably thicker at
the intersections of two or more strokes (Fig. 1:4).14
6. Raised-edge effect. Sometimes, the edges of the stroke grooves are slightly
higher than the surrounding surface of the inscription.15
7. Relievo grid lines. Some inscriptions are written into a regular relievo grid
that allots one space for each graph (Fig. 1:2).16 More inscriptions show faint
traces of grid lines that have been removed during the post-casting polish-
ing procedure.17
8. Intaglio graphs with partial relievo strokes. Occasionally, intaglio graphs
occur with a part of their strokes in relievo (Fig. 1:7);18 in rare instances, the
entire graph is registered in relievo.19 This situation can only be preserved in
inscriptions to which abrasive polishing was not applied.
9. Missing strokes. Sometimes the intaglio graphs miss a part or the whole of a
stroke (Fig. 1:5), and occasionally, the entire graph is not registered in the
inscription. This feature is not uncommon and occurs in inscriptions that
were polished.

||
10 Sakikawa 2017.
11 Yoshikai 1996; Barnard and Cheung 1996, 248–252; Sakikawa 2017.
12 Chen Jieqi and Chen Jingdi 1919, 6; Pope et al. 1967, 96 and passim; Gettens 1969, 141–147;
Tan Derui 1999, 243; Zhang Yuyao and Zhang Tian’en 2018, 66.
13 Pope et al. 1967: 96 and passim; Gettens 1969, 141–147; Dong Yawei 2006, 110–112.
14 Barnard and Cheung 1996: 10–18; You Guoqing 2012, 349; Guan Shuqiang 2016, 185–186;
Guan Shuqiang 2017, 72.
15 Gettens 1969, 141–143; Hayashi 1979, 33–36; Barnard and Cheung 1996, 92, 218–220, 226–
236, 264–267; You Guoqing 2012, 349.
16 See Barnard and Wan, 1976 for examples.
17 Zhang 2012, 276–277.
18 Li Feng 2015b, 150; Zhou Ya 2017, 318; Shi Anrui 2020a, 153–155.
19 Zhang 2012, 273–276; Li Feng 2015b, 150.
120 | Ondřej Škrabal

10. Displaced strokes. At times, an intaglio stroke of a graph appears broken or

displaced from its original position (Fig. 1:8).20
11. Ghost characters. This is a rare feature where residues of a relievo graph are
visible in the area immediately surrounding an intaglio graph (Fig. 1:6).21

Note that some of these features remained unnoticed until fairly recently (nos 8,
9, 11) while others were considered signs of forgery (especially nos 3, 4, 5).22
These suspicions were, however, dispelled over the last 50 years by abundant
evidence from archaeologically recovered inscribed bronzes. A model of inscrip-
tion-making in the Middle and Late Western Zhou periods should convincingly
explain the presence of all 11 features.

Fig. 1: Various features of ancient Chinese bronze inscriptions. Rubbings reproduced from
Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo 2007, nos 5402.1 (1: first half of the tenth centu-
ry BCE), 2836 (2: late ninth century BCE) and 10322 (8: first half of the ninth century BCE). Photo-
graphs after Gettens 1969, 145 Fig. 187 (3) and courtesy of the Shanghai Museum (4–7).

||
20 Hayashi 1979, 42–45; Chen Chusheng 1998, 120; Chen Yingjie 2006, 220; Shi Anrui 2020a,
160–161.
21 Barnard and Cheung 1996: 261–267 (‘skeleton line graphs’); Li Feng 2015b, 150–151; Škrabal
2019, 318–323; Shi Anrui 2020a, 159–160.
22 Barnard and Cheung 1996, 9–18.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 121

4 The traditional master pattern technique: a

critique
To explain how inscriptions were made in ancient China, a variety of interpreta-
tions have been proposed during the last two centuries. One of the earliest in-
terpretations – and surely the most influential – was formulated by Ruan Yuan
阮元 (1764–1849):

余所見鐘鼎文字，揣其制作之法，蓋有四焉。一則刻字于木范為陰文，以泥抑之成陽文，
然後以銅鑄之成陰文矣。一則調極細泥以筆書于土范之上，一次書之不高，則俟其燥而
再加書之以成陽文，以銅鑄之成陰文矣。三則刻土范為陰文，以銅鑄之成陽文矣。四則
鑄銅成後鑿為篆銘。漢時銅印有鑿刻者，用此法亦陰文也。

Regarding the inscriptions on bronze vessels and bells that I have seen, should I assess
their production technique, they would be roughly of four kinds. One is carving the text
into a wooden mould to produce an intaglio inscription; impressing clay on it will then
produce a relief inscription; subsequently, casting a bronze in it will produce an intaglio
inscription. Another [technique] is mixing a very fine clay and applying it with a brush on
the surface of the clay mould. A single application would not produce a high enough
[relief], so upon hardening, more layers were added to obtain a relief inscription; upon
casting, this produced an intaglio inscription. The third [technique] is carving [a text] into
the clay mould to produce an intaglio inscription, which, upon casting, produced an
inscription in relief. The fourth [technique] is such that after the casting was completed, a
carved-style inscription was chiselled [into the surface]; among the bronze seals of the
Han period, there are [also] instances of carved [inscriptions]. This technique also
produced an intaglio inscription.23

Ruan further asserted that the Late Western Zhou San Shi pan 散氏盤 inscrip-
tion, which was executed in a style that is representative of this period, was cast
from ceramic moulds prepared using the first technique: impression from a
positive inscription carved into a wooden block. Writing around 1823, Ruan laid
the grounds for a conventional interpretation that has been widely accepted for
nearly 200 years with only minor touch-up: Scholars agreed that the inscription
was not initially incised in a wooden board, but in a clay slab, of which an im-
print was then taken to create an inscription block with mirror-reversed relievo
text. Then, the block was fired and inserted into the core (or mould) of the piece-
mould casting assembly, into which the object was cast, producing an intaglio

||
23 Ruan Yuan 1823, 17.
122 | Ondřej Škrabal

inscription.24 This is the traditional explanation, the so-called master pattern

technique.
However, already in the 1940s Rong Geng 容庚 (1894–1983) highlighted a
major problem with this interpretation: If the inscription block was produced by
an impression from a master pattern, then it must have been possible to create
several identical inscriptions through repeated impressions from one master
pattern.25 Yet, as pointed out by Rong and corroborated by all the bronzes
discovered since his work was published, even though the same text may be
copied a dozen times on the vessels cast in a set, there is no evidence of me-
chanically reproduced inscriptions in the Western Zhou period.
Moreover, this interpretation fails to account for most of the remaining fea-
tures listed above. Attempts at explaining the coexistence of the relievo grid
lines and intaglio inscription illustrate the problems with the traditional model:
To produce such inscriptions using this model, the relievo grid had to be sculpt-
ed on the master pattern block, which means additional time and material were
required beyond the default procedure; note that this complication would be
introduced only to cast a relievo grid that was, however, typically polished
away after casting.26 This is counter-intuitive. Moreover, when considering the
occasional relievo strokes or ghost characters, proponents of the traditional
explanation have obvious difficulties: Barnard candidly admitted being baffled
by this feature,27 while Li Feng 李峰 submitted a convoluted proposal that re-
mains uncompelling due to the same fallacy – it enormously complicates the
production scenario solely to explain the presence of ghost characters.28 The
ghost characters were, however, undesired and only occasionally and only by
chance did they fail to be polished away. Other features, such as the undercut-
ting, wavy lines and thickened cross-strokes, also remain unexplained by the
traditional model.
Due to some of the above shortcomings, scholars sought alternative expla-
nations. Rong Geng himself proposed that the text was first written in ink on the
surface of the inscription block and then the surrounding clay was pared down
to produce a relievo inscription, a technique already mentioned above. Chang

||
24 The loci classici are Chen Mengjia 1954, 41; Shi Zhangru 1955, 121; Barnard 1961, 157–161;
Barnard and Cheung 1996, 239–248.
25 Rong Geng 1941, 158–159.
26 For such studies, see, for instance, Barnard and Wan 1976; note that Barnard here commit-
ted the same fallacy that he himself criticised later with regards to Hayashi’s proposal concern-
ing the raised-edge effect, see Barnard and Cheung 1996, 220.
27 Barnard and Cheung 1996, 261–267.
28 Li Feng 2015a; an English translation of it was published as Li Feng 2015b.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 123

Kuang-yüan 張光遠 later elaborated on this, arguing that even the longest in-
scriptions, such as that of the Mao Gong ding 毛公鼎, were produced in this
manner,29 but his proposition has been convincingly debunked. 30 Hayashi
Minao 林巳奈夫, Matsumaru Michio 松丸道雄, Li Feng and Zhou Ya 周亞 also
submitted imaginative proposals, each of which, however, suffered from serious
shortcomings, mostly because they rendered the process much too
complicated.31 As a result, for all its drawbacks, the general literature on ancient
Chinese bronzes embraced and perpetuated the default master pattern model.

5 The modelling technique: a genesis

Of the many proposals in the prior literature, the only one that explains all elev-
en features listed above is the so-called ‘modelling technique’ (duisu fa 堆塑法).
In essence, this technique is similar to Ruan’s second proposal. In fact, Chen
Jieqi 陳介祺 (1813–1884), the most famous connoisseur and collector of ancient
Chinese bronzes, who was renowned for not having a single forgery among the
several thousand pieces in his collection, was convinced that the ancient in-
scriptions were produced by the modelling technique:

古人模範之精，今多不能思議。以土為範，範土以刀畫之成格，格上漆書字，字上再以
土堆成陽字，鑄成即成陰款。 32

The ingenuity of the moulds [produced by] the ancients cannot, for the most part, be even
imagined today. [They would] make a mould from clay, [and then] make incisions in the
mould using a knife to create a grid. In the grid, they would [first] write the [desired]
graphs using paint, and on these [painted] graphs, they would then model relief graphs
from clay. Upon casting, this produced an intaglio inscription.

Among subsequent scholars, only Shang Chengzuo 商承祚 (1902–1991)33 en-

dorsed Chen’s proposal, such that his suggestion remained neglected or even
forgotten. It was not until the late 1990s that Chen Chusheng 陳初生, Shang’s

||
29 Chang 1974–1975, 470–473.
30 Barnard and Cheung 1996, 243 n. 93; Barnard however admitted that this technique was
probably used in the case of very short inscriptions, see Barnard and Cheung 1996, 226–239.
31 Hayashi 1979; Matsumaru 1991; Li Feng 2015b; Zhou Ya 2017. The recurring fallacy in these
interpretations is that that they enormously complicate the default process only to achieve a
by-product feature.
32 Chen Jieqi and Chen Jingdi 1919, 6.
33 Shang Chengzuo 1933, 243–244.
124 | Ondřej Škrabal

former student, inspired by the phenomenon of displaced strokes, revived Chen

Jieqi’s idea with some modifications.34 Soon afterwards, in 1999, Tan Derui 譚德睿,
the foremost expert on ancient Chinese bronze casting, published an important
paper on the piece-mould casting technique. In this paper, he acknowledged
the traditional explanation, but proposed that inscriptions with the undercut
feature, such as the Liangqi zhong 梁其鐘 and Larger Ke ding 大克鼎, were pro-
duced by the modelling technique.35
That very year, the Zhouyuan Archaeology Team launched a large-scale
survey of the Zhouyuan site, which led to the discovery and excavation of an
ancient bronze foundry site west of Lijia 李家 village, Fufeng, Shaanxi. Remains
of ceramic moulds recovered from the site exhibited an interesting feature: the
raised lines of the décor were modelled from clay and attached to the mould.
Moreover, at places where the décor lines dropped from the mould, shallow
intaglio sketch lines were exposed.36 These materials were analysed by Chen
Yang 陳陽, who suggested two ways in which the relief décor lines might have
been produced: the clay lines were either modelled separately and inserted into
grooves that were previously sketched on the surface of the mould, or they were
directly squeezed into the grooves using the slip trailing method (also known as
tube lining).37 The sketched grooves served a double purpose: they constituted a
guideline for the execution of décor lines, and they provided a base on which
clay lines could be securely anchored on the surface of the mould.
News of this discovery began to circulate in academic circles soon after the
excavations and had far-reaching influence. In 2006, Lukas Nickel authored a
thorough study on ceramic moulds in which he traced the use of the modelling
technique to the Late Shang period, arguing that inscriptions were also produced
in this manner. In his view, the lines of both the décor and the inscriptions were
produced by slip trailing, and he showed how this technique elegantly resolves
the problem of undercutting.38 The same year, in his book on ancient Chinese
bronze casting, Dong Yawei 董亞巍 argued that modelling was used already in
the Middle Shang period (fourteenth to thirteenth century BCE) to create
decorated moulds, and he maintained that the majority of Shang and Zhou
inscriptions were produced with this technique. Apart from the undercutting, he

||
34 Chen Chusheng 1998.
35 Tan Derui 1999, 242–243. In his view, this was achieved either by the method proposed by
Ruan Yuan, or by applying strips of clay of the size of an individual character or of the whole
column and cutting them into shape of desired graphs.
36 Zhouyuan kaogudui 2004: 447.
37 Chen Yang 2005, 27.
38 Nickel 2006, 36–37; for a response defending the traditional view, see Bagley 2009.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 125

identified the wavy lines as an accompanying feature of the modelling

technique, and proposed that for some inscriptions, especially those from the
Late Shang and Early Western Zhou periods, the clay lines applied on the in-
scription block were carefully trimmed, while for other inscriptions, they were
left untrimmed, producing the wavy effect.39 The idea caught on, but it was not
until 2010 that Zhang Changping 張昌平 provided a reconstruction of the entire
procedure of inscribing bronzes using the modelling technique.40 Zhang’s paper
marked a breakthrough, not only because he presented solid epigraphic evi-
dence for his argument but also because he highlighted the importance of the
sketching and polishing procedures that were disregarded by some earlier au-
thors. In the last decade, other scholars have also subscribed to the modelling
interpretation, offering further evidence of how this technique successfully
explains puzzling features of Western Zhou inscriptions, including the presence
of ghost characters.41
At the same time, excavations of several bronze foundry sites have yielded
hard evidence corroborating the use of the modelling technique. In 2006, exca-
vations of the bronze foundry site at Kongtougou 孔頭溝, Qishan County,
Shaanxi, brought to light a small shard of an inscription block 3.9 cm high,
4.1 cm wide, and about 3.8 cm thick (Figs 2–3).42 Dated roughly to the second
half of the ninth century BCE, the shard bears shallow intaglio grid lines, intaglio
sketches of two complete graphs and a part of one additional graph.
A decade later, several more inscription block shards were discovered
during the excavations of another bronze foundry site at Guanzhuang 官莊,
Xinyang County, Henan.43 Similar to the Kongtougou find, these shards, dating
to the first half of the eighth century BCE, feature shallow intaglio sketches of
individual graphs, but in some places, residue of clay lines modelled in the
sketched grooves is preserved, either in full relief or partially broken.44

||
39 Dong Yawei 2006, 93–95; 110–113.
40 Zhang Changping 2010; for an English translation, see Zhang 2012.
41 See below for the individual arguments and references.
42 Guo Shijia, Chong Jianrong and Lei Xingshan 2020, 107–109. I am grateful to Guo Shijia
郭士嘉 and Lei Xingshan 雷興山 for providing photographs of the shard and for the permission
to reproduce them here.
43 Hui Xiping 2017.
44 Observations made during a personal study, 29 October 2017. Zhengzhou daxue Lishi
xueyuan et al. 2020 published only the décor moulds unearthed from this site; these were also
decorated using the modelling technique and show the very same feature. I am indebted to Gao
Xiangping 郜向平 for sharing this report while still in press. In fact, two similar shards were
reported from the excavations of a bronze foundry site at the Beiyao 北窯 District in Luoyang,
126 | Ondřej Škrabal

Fig. 2: Inscription block shard unearthed from the Kongtougou bronze foundry site (H48:6).
Late ninth century BCE. © School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University.

6 The modelling technique: a reconstruction

While the archaeological evidence is compelling in its own right, it is still neces-
sary to explain how the modelling technique can explain the long list of features
presented above. This section offers a step-by-step reconstruction of the inscrip-
tion process, with particular attention to how those features were produced.45
First, a leather-hard clay slab of the desired size was prepared (Fig. 4:1), and
the grid was incised (Fig. 4:2). The uneven width and height of grid lines in cast

||
Henan, during the 1970s; see Luoyang shi wenwu gongzuodui 1983, 439. This site is dated to
the mid-eleventh to mid-tenth century BCE, and published line drawings of two shards suggest
that they have partially preserved relievo lines. However, personal inspection or at least clear
photographs are needed before more conclusions can be drawn.
45 The reconstruction here is given for the scenario where the inscription block was used. As
mentioned above, it was also possible to produce the inscription directly on the core or outer
mould.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 127

inscriptions suggest that they were typically incised by a stylus rather than by
impressions of a long, thin bamboo slat or a similar tool. However, it is possible
that sometimes the incisions were not done freehand, but by using a straightedge.
The analysis of the inscription block shard unearthed in Kongtougou bronze
foundry site in 2006 suggests that the vertical lines were incised first.46
In the next step, the text of the inscription was incised in the prepared grid
(Fig. 4:3). Ideally, each graph would occupy one cell of the grid, but there are
cases in which graphs overwrite the horizontal grid lines to crowd more (or
evenly distribute less) characters into a column. The incised lines of the
Kongtougou shard show a U-shaped cross-section in which the bottom of the
grooves is narrower than their opening, and the middle parts of strokes are
slightly deeper than their ends (Fig. 3).47 Note that the graphs were incised in
mirror-reversed form, a practice that is still observable in much later bronze
mirror workshops.48

Fig. 3: Close-up of the Kongtougou shard (H48:6) with an intaglio graph and grid lines.
© School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University.

||
46 Guo Shijia, Chong Jianrong and Lei Xingshan 2020, 107. The size of the grid cells on this
shard is 2.3 cm in height and 1.4–1.5 cm in width; the depth and width of the incised grooves
does not exceed one millimetre, see Fig. 3.
47 Guo Shijia, Chong Jianrong and Lei Xingshan 2020, 107.
48 Note that if free rein was given to one’s hand and the sketch was prepared in positive, this
would result in a mirror-reversed graph or inscription, an effect not uncommon in ancient
Chinese bronze epigraphy. For this point, see Chen Chusheng 1998, 120; Nickel 2006, 37.
128 | Ondřej Škrabal

The question that remains to be clarified is whether the manuscript from which
the artisan transferred the text to the inscription block was already carried out
in mirror writing to facilitate the transfer, or whether the conversion occurred
during the transfer;49 the latter case would imply that the artisan was trained in
mirror-writing or made use of a handy mirror.
Next, proofreading took place – though not always, as suggested by occa-
sional mistakes in cast inscriptions. There were several ways of correcting a
mistake discovered during proofreading. An omission of an individual graph
could be remedied simply by supplementing the graph onto a blank space
available in the laid-out inscription, or by levelling up the grooves of the graph
sketched in the position where the omitted graph was originally planned and
then reincising both graphs in a somewhat smaller size in this cell.50 More com-
plex mistakes, such as inadvertent additions or omissions of larger chunks of
text, required levelling up the flawed part of the sketch and new incision of the
correct text. When the sketched grooves of unused graphs were not levelled up,
they became faint relievo ghost characters in the cast inscription.51
After proofreading came the most crucial stage of the modelling procedure.
Thin lines were modelled from clay and their bottom portions were nested in the
grooves sketched in the inscription block, so that relievo graphs were created
(Fig. 4:4). How exactly the clay lines were modelled is a question that awaits
more archaeological evidence. Both scenarios proposed by Chen Yang are feasi-
ble, but the ‘liquid’ appearance of graphs in some inscriptions (the wavy lines)
seems to suggest that the ridges of relievo graphs were produced by slip trailing,
a method in which thin lines of watered-down clay (slip) are squeezed from a
dispenser onto the surface to create a relief line. Essentially, as Chen Yang put
it, this is like decorating a cake using a piping bag.52 Upon drying, the ridges
could be trimmed with a stylus to even the width of strokes. Such a procedure
would arguably leave gouges or impressions of the stylus in the surface of the
inscription block in the immediate vicinity of the modelled ridges, which, upon
casting, would create the raised-edge effect. The slip trailing method seems
more efficient than other techniques, for which the craftsmen would need to
constantly divide their attention between ‘writing out’ the relievo lines of an
inscription and modelling the clay into the desired shape in their hand. In any

||
49 For studies on such hypothetical manuscripts, see Škrabal 2019; Shi Anrui 2020b.
50 For both types of correction, see Škrabal 2019, 309–313.
51 Škrabal 2019, 318–326. Sometimes graphs were re-sketched only to improve their position,
see Shi Anrui 2020a, 159–160.
52 Chen Yang 2005, 27.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 129

event, the cross-section of the relievo ridges on both the décor and inscription
moulds are wider at the top of the ridges than at the bottom,53 which explains
the undercutting feature.54 Moreover, where two ridges join, the excessive clay
would spread around the intersection, creating thickened cross-strokes.55
After the relievo inscription had been modelled and, optionally, proofread
and trimmed, the inscription block would have been dried, fired and embedded
in the core or outer mould (Figs 4: 5–6). The piece-mould assembly was then set
up to receive the molten bronze. When the bronze solidified and the moulds
cooled off, the assembly was dismantled, quite likely beginning by removing
the core.56 This procedure (divesting) required several strokes of a mallet, and
the laboriously produced moulds, core and the inscription block were thus
turned into shards, such as those discovered at Kongtougou and Guanzhuang.
Divesting was followed by cleaning, which included removing the sprue,
cleaning away the residue of moulds and core, deburring, polishing and per-
haps even burnishing to achieve the desired effect.57 Note that, due to the un-
dercutting, the ceramic strokes might have become wedged in the cast
inscription; this would explain why some inscription block shards do not have
relievo ridges.58 Chipped-off fragments of ceramic strokes would then have to be
removed from the inscription area.
Finally, the inscription area could be polished to remove any undesired pro-
trusions (Fig. 4:8). These protrusions were by no means limited to the grid lines.
When poured into the moulds, the weight of the molten bronze could cause
some of the relievo lines of the modelled inscription to shear off,59 and then the
bronze would flow into the exposed grooves in which the lines were originally
nested. When the casting was completed, this resulted in partial relievo strokes
in otherwise intaglio graphs (Fig. 4:7b). The degree to which graphs were flawed

||
53 For a photograph of such cross-section on a décor mould, see Chen Yang 2005, 28 figure
18:1, reproduced also in Shi Anrui 2020a, 145.
54 Nickel 2006, 36; You Guoqing 2012, 348–349.
55 You Guoqing 2012, 349; Guan Shuqiang 2016, 185–186; Guan Shuqiang 2017, 72.
56 Liu Yu 2019: 158.
57 See Dong Yawei 2006, 42–45; Hua Jueming 2007; Liu Yu 2019, 158–162 for details. Fine-
grained and coarse-grained sandstone were used for polishing, see Liu Yu 2019: 159–160. 246
sandstone whetstones were unearthed from the remains of the Late Shang bronze foundry in
Xiaomintun, see Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo Anyang gongzuodui 2006,
375–376 and plates 15–16.
58 For inscriptions containing ceramic remains, see Zhang Yuyao and Zhang Tian’en 2018, 66.
It is also possible that parts of the ridges were detached from the block later, during the dis-
carding process.
59 You Guoqing 2009, 3 and 28–29; You Guoqing 2012, 349; Guan Shuqiang 2016, 186–187.
130 | Ondřej Škrabal

in this way varied from a negligible portion of a stroke to a considerable part of

the whole graph, and occasionally, the relievo lines of the entire graph were
washed away and the graph registered in relievo upon casting.60 In some cases,
the detached relievo line was not washed away completely, dislocated from its
original position, producing the displaced stroke effect.61 Moreover, when proof-
reading and subsequent corrections left behind unused intaglio grooves in the
inscription block that were later not levelled up, the molten bronze flowed in
and turned these abandoned grooves into ghost characters in the cast inscrip-
tion. Polishing of the inscribed area would efface the relievo grid lines as well as
all relievo strokes produced by casting (Fig. 4:8b). While it was certainly desira-
ble to remove the unwanted ghost characters, polishing off the relievo strokes of
the intended graphs produced the missing stroke (or even missing graph) effect,
a toll paid for a smooth and shiny inscription area.62

Fig. 4: Production of an inscription using the modelling technique.

||
60 Zhang 2012, 276 suggested that these cases might be due to negligence that led the intaglio
sketch of a graph to not be filled by relievo clay lines. While it is possible that sculpted strokes
broke off the inscription block also during manipulation prior to casting, the displaced strokes
testify that it was not uncommon for ridges to break off when pouring the molten bronze.
61 Chen Chusheng 1998; Shi Anrui 2020a, 160–161.
62 Škrabal 2019, 325–326; Shi Anrui 2020a, 157–159. Note that the ‘missing graphs’ are typical-
ly simple graphs consisting of only few strokes; see Shi Anrui 2020a, 155 n. 1. As noted by
Hayashi 1979, 9 and 36, most of the ‘raised edges’ would also be polished away.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 131

It follows that the grid lines, relievo strokes and ghost characters can only be
observed in inscriptions that were not polished or were polished incompletely
(Fig. 4:7). In some vessels, polishing was not done due to limited accessibility of
the inscribed area, such as inside the neck of hu 壺 containers. On the other
hand, flat and open inscription areas on vessels such as gui 簋 tureens, xu 盨
containers or pan 盤 trays were nearly always polished.63

7 The modelling technique and the inscriptions

of earlier periods
While the above survey is based on evidence from the tenth to eighth centuries
BCE, archaeological evidence seems to corroborate that modelling was in use
already by the Late Shang period, though the exact procedure seems to have
differed somewhat. Between 2000 and 2001, excavations of Late Shang bronze
foundry remains in Xiaomintun 孝民屯 near Anyang, Henan, yielded a nearly
complete inscription block 6.2 cm high, 4.4 cm wide and roughly 3 cm thick,
inscribed with 11 graphs in three columns.64 All graphs were first incised in the
block, but unlike in later periods, the incisions are not limited to thin lines;
rather, the incised strokes are written out in full width. Subsequently, relievo
graphs were modelled in these incisions.65 The fact that most of the grooves
preserve remains of the modelled ridges means that they were well nested in the
grooves and would not break off as easily as in later periods.66 Thus, it seems

||
63 There are, of course, cases in which easily accessible inscriptions were left unpolished. Of
these, the Larger Ke ding inscription constitutes a special case in which the polishing proce-
dure was not completed out of concerns for legibility; see Škrabal 2019, 324–325.
64 Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo Anyang gongzuodui (2006), 374–376, plate
15.2. For an English summary, see Anyang Work Station, Institute of Archaeology, CASS 2007.
65 See You Guoqing 2012, 349; Guan Shuqiang 2016, 184–185, Guo Shijia, Chong Jianrong and
Lei Xingshan 2020, 112–113, pace Yue Zhanwei, Yue Hongbin and Liu Yu 2012, 63–64, who
claim that the block was produced by an impression from a master pattern. However, in that
case, the relievo lines of individual graphs on the Xiaomintun block would not break away so
cleanly and leave the surrounding surface undisturbed. Scholars made the same point with
regards to the Lüshun core, see below. Note that the graphs on the Xiaomintun block are writ-
ten in positive, which means that the inscription cast from it would appear mirror-reversed.
66 However, both displaced strokes and intaglio graphs with partial relievo strokes can be
observed in Late Shang bronze inscriptions; for the former, see Hayashi 1979, 42–43; for the
latter, see for example the inscription on the lid of the famous Min fanglei 皿方罍.
132 | Ondřej Škrabal

that the modelling technique evolved over time.67 The features of the Xiao-
mintun block match well those of an inscribed ceramic lid core of unknown
provenance, roughly from the mid-eleventh century BCE, which is now in the
collection of Lüshun Museum 旅順博物館 in Dalian, Liaoning. This is an unused
core,68 so the majority of its relievo graphs are preserved, but where parts of the
ridges broke off, the surrounding core surface is undisturbed, suggesting that
these graphs, too, were modelled directly on the core and not embossed from a
master pattern.69
It is obvious that the modelling technique underwent new developments
during the tenth century BCE. Earlier, the grooves incised into the inscription
block were of the same width as the modelled ridges, or even slightly wider
(producing the raised edge effect upon casting). However, during this period,
the grooves were linearized, with significantly wider ridges modelled over them.
On the one hand, this solution expedited the production of longer inscriptions,
but on the other hand, the modelled ridges were not as firmly nested in the
grooves and were more susceptible to breakage. This explains not only the dif-
ference in ductus between the Early and Middle Western Zhou periods (compare
Figs 1:1 and 1:2) but also the increasing presence of missing strokes and related
features from this time on.

8 Conclusion
In so far as production technique is concerned, ancient Chinese cast inscrip-
tions are unique in the context of the ancient world. Their specific features have
long bemused scholars; some leading specialists even considered them to be
acid etched.70 In recent years, the study of inscription-making in ancient China
has entered a new stage in which scholarly interpretations are supported by

||
67 Guan Shuqiang 2017, for instance, suggested that at an earlier stage, strips of clay were
applied on the inscription block and carved into the desired shape (as proposed in Tan Derui
1999), and at a later stage, slip trailing was employed. The proposal advanced in Zhang Yuyao
and Zhang Tian’en 2018, 65–67 combines elements of the master pattern and modelling tech-
niques but remains unconvincing as it retains the weaknesses of the traditional explanation.
68 An observation by Matsumaru Michio as quoted in Hayashi 1979, 52, n. 30. For photographs,
see Hayashi 1979, 30–31; Barnard and Cheung 1996, 214; Lüshun bowuguan 2009, 28.
69 This point was made by the most unlikely person, Noel Barnard, who, however, concluded
that the core must be a twentieth century forgery, see Barnard and Cheung 1996, 215–219. The
Xiaomintun block refutes his conclusion.
70 Gettens 1969, 146–147.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 133

archaeological evidence. The current question is not anymore what the main
technique of inscribing bronze was in ancient China, but rather when the mod-
elling technique began to be used, how exactly the relievo lines were modelled,
at what stages the moulds were baked, and what factors led to its simplification
during the tenth century BCE. The new interpretation has a direct bearing on
understanding of various aspects of ancient Chinese bronze inscriptions, from
authentication to comparative research. In fact, some of the past verdicts of
spuriousness may warrant reassessment, while later uses of the modelling
technique for both bronze and ceramic production deserve further attention.
The confidence with which Chen Jieqi identified modelling as the ancient tech-
nique to inscribe bronzes suggests that it was probably known in ceramic work-
shops of his time; indeed, slip trailing remains a common technique used in
ceramic workshops worldwide. Regarding Chinese bronze epigraphy, hard evi-
dence confirms that modelling was used as late as the fifth century BCE and was
likely that it was known in later centuries as well, perhaps even until the begin-
ning of the Common Era.71 Soon afterwards, however, the proliferation of powerful
carving tools seems to have brought to an end this remarkable chapter in the
production of written artefacts.

Acknowledgements
The research for this article was funded by the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence
Strategy – EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and
Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796. The research was
conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
(CSMC) at Universität Hamburg. I am grateful to Edward L. Shaughnessy and
two anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions that helped to improve
this article.

||
71 The inscription on the bottom side of the handle of a bronze measure dated to 9 CE, which is
in the collection of the Xiangyang City Museum, shows some features of the modelling tech-
nique; see Zhang Tian’en 2016, 134–135. However, personal study with a magnifying glass is
required to corroborate this observation.
134 | Ondřej Škrabal

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in the Arts of China, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 264–281.
Zhang Tian’en 張天恩 (ed.) (2016), Shaanxi jinwen jicheng 陝西金文集成, vol. 10, Xi’an: San-
Qin chubanshe.
Zhang Yuyao 張煜珧, and Zhang Tian’en 張天恩 (2018), ‘Shigushan qingtongqi mingwen
zhuzuo gongyi chushi’ 石鼓山青銅器銘文鑄作工藝初識, Kaogu yu wenwu 考古與文物, 6:
64–69.
Zhengzhou daxue Lishi xueyuan 鄭州大學歷史學院, Zhengzhou shi wenwu kaogu yanjiuyuan
鄭州市文物考古研究院, and Xingyang shi wenwu baohu guanli zhongxin 滎陽市文物保護
管理中心 (2020), ‘Henan Xingyang shi Guanzhuang yizhi zhutong zuofang qu 2016–2017
nian fajue jianbao’ 河南滎陽市官莊遺址鑄銅作坊區 2016–2017 年發掘簡報, Kaogu 考古,
10: 53–77.
Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo 中國社會科學院考古研究所 (ed.) (2007), Yin-
Zhou jinwen jicheng (xiuding zengbu ben) 殷周金文集成 (修訂增補本), Beijing: Zhonghua
shuju.
 How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? | 137

Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo Anyang gongzuodui 中國社會科學院考古研究所

安陽工作隊 (2006), ‘2000–2001 nian Anyang Xiaomintun dongnandi Yindai zhutong yizhi
fajue baogao’ 2000–2001 年安陽孝民屯東南地殷代鑄銅遺址發掘報告, Kaogu xuebao 考古
學報, 3: 351–381.
Zhou Ya 周亞 (2017), ‘Guanyu Da Ke ding de jige wenti’ 關於大克鼎的幾個問題, Qingtongqi yu
jinwen 青銅器與金文, 1: 306–322.
Zhouyuan kaogudui 周原考古隊 (2004), ‘2003 nian qiu Zhouyuan yizhi (IVB2 qu yu IVB3 qu)
de fajue’ 2003 年秋周原遺址 (ⅣB2 區與ⅣB3 區) 的發掘, Gudai wenming 古代文明, 3:
436–490.
Barend J. ter Haar
What Inscriptions do not Tell You about
Themselves: Chinese Cases
Abstract: Inscriptions on stone are always more than their texts, since most
people would not have been able to read them. In the Chinese context, inscrip-
tions are highly stylized, normative texts and therefore remain largely silent
about the context of their production and usage. The Chinese anecdotal record
preserves at least something of the gossip and storytelling that surrounded
inscriptions. This record teaches us how people complained about the excessive
costs involved in producing inscriptions, conflicts about their contents, and the
repurposing as well as reimagining of inscriptions after their original meaning
and purpose had been lost. This article is based on accounts that stem from the
early eighth until the early tenth century, when China was ruled by the Tang
Dynasty (618–907).

1 Introduction
China historians tend to read stone inscriptions exclusively for their contents,
overlooking the rather obvious fact that most people would have been unable to
read these texts, not only because of a lack of suitable literacy for their often
highly literary texts, but also because of their size and location, accumulated
dirt and of course damage over time.1 Many more steles have been lost than
preserved, and this process continues until the present day. If they were not de-
stroyed outright, steles have been repurposed in the walls of later buildings,
local roads, bridges, pigsties and so on.2 Even the common displacement of
inscriptions to museums or the local Cultural Bureau is a form of repurposing,
taking the object out of its original context and moving it to the limited context
of historical, aesthetic or political appreciation. Nonetheless, inscriptions on
stone steles can still be found today in any self-respecting religious institution
(see Fig. 1).

||
1 Zhao Chao 2019 provides a detailed introduction to stone inscriptions. De Groot 1897, 1100–
1164 is still the most concise introduction to grave inscriptions and their religious context.
2 Cf. Halbertsma 2008, 241–290.

Open Access. © 2021 Barend J. ter Haar, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-008
140 | Barend J. ter Haar

In this contribution I look at early evidence on the material dimensions of

inscriptions, with a special focus on their fate outside of communicative service.
In the process, I will have occasion to illustrate various material aspects, from
the selection of a stone, the production of a text and nice calligraphy, to the
final monument in the form of an inscribed stone slab or rock surface in the hills
and mountains. We will learn about their communicative function, but also
about conflicts around their contents and miracles surrounding them. Many of
these aspects are not recorded in the inscriptions themselves, but only in anec-
dotal sources such as those preserved in the late tenth-century collection enti-
tled Extensive Records from the Period of Great Peace (Taiping guangji 太平廣記).
This was one of a number of compilation projects carried out during the years
976–983 in order to enhance the cultural legitimacy of the newly founded Song
dynasty (960–1276).3 Like its fellow projects, the Extensive Records was named
after the period of compilation, which was called Great Peace or taiping 太平. It
drew its materials from a wealth of anecdotal collections dating to the preceding
centuries, which are now mostly lost. The book is organized according to topic,
ranging from Buddhist or Daoist miracle stories to accounts of foreign nations
and purely literary tales.
Although these anecdotes often include supernatural elements, the events
and people depicted in them were all considered real and true by contemporar-
ies. We should therefore take the term ‘Records’ in the title very seriously, as an
expression of the compilers’ intent. The stories also provide contextual infor-
mation about inscriptions that we cannot obtain from the objects themselves,
which tend to erase the context of their production (quite literally, as we will
see) and tell us nothing about their reception after completion. Because of their
chatty nature, these materials are often ignored as relevant historical sources by
scholars, but precisely for that reason these materials also reflect the discourse
of the social elite of the period and the way in which they talked about a broad
variety of topics, in this case inscriptions on wood, rocks, and stone.4
Although the Extensive Records includes materials from the first centuries of
the Common Era onwards, references to inscriptions largely stem from the early
eighth until the early tenth century, when China was ruled by the Tang Dynasty

||
3 On these projects, see Kurz 2003. References are to the modern standard edition, but I have
retained the chapter (juan) numbers to facilitate finding the references in other editions (in-
cluding online). Since it does not affect the arguments of this article, I have refrained from
providing references to the original provenance of the anecdotes.
4 Over the past three decades, a complete reevaluation of these sources has taken place, at
least in Western-language research. See, for instance, Campany 1996 and Dudbridge 1995.
 What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 141

(618–907) and its regional successor kingdoms. This chronological distribution

seems to reflect real changes in the production of inscriptions, which signifi-
cantly increased with the establishment of the Tang dynasty. Robert Harrist has
pointed out that prohibitions on the production of public (i.e. above ground)
inscriptions in the early third century, repeated by succeeding dynasties in
northern and southern China, led to a noticeable decrease in epigraphic produc-
tion until the early seventh century. Only the imperial centre itself was allowed
stone monuments.5 Instead people who could afford it placed inscriptions in-
side the grave of the deceased (see Fig. 2).6 This is not to say that nothing was
produced at all, but at least in the capital regions of this age’s fragmented Chi-
na, control would have been sufficient to enforce this ban. As a result, anecdo-
tal accounts about inscriptions before the early eighth century are relatively
scarce.
The principal term for a stone slab with inscriptions as a whole is bei 碑 or
‘stele’.7 This term is often used in the formal names of inscriptions and originat-
ed in the use of stone slabs as a ritual territorial marker. Other terms refer more
to the text itself than the object on which it is reproduced, such as the general ji
記 ‘(to) record’ and the more specific ming 銘 ‘inscription on a (smaller) object’.
The term ji is also widely used for records on paper and other writing surfaces.
The term ming can also be used for rock inscriptions, but even then its size is
usually smaller than a ‘record’ or ‘stele’. Inscriptions on objects with a separate
usage context such as bronzes are omitted from this contribution, since they are
better understood in that larger context, which can be primarily religious (Bud-
dhist, Daoist or otherwise) or more or less secular, for instance related to eco-
nomic and political processes or social ceremonies. Not omitted are inscriptions
on rock surfaces in the hills or mountains, though they are particular in that
they can only be seen on a pilgrimage or touristic outing – still relatively rare
undertakings in this early period.8 In traditional society, even more so than
today, accessibility was not only restricted physically, but also temporally and
financially. Rock inscriptions therefore usually only mattered to the small in-
crowd with time to spare and money to travel. Only later in imperial history did
pilgrimages increase in frequency, with the result that more people had access

||
5 Harrist 2008, 46–50, 61–63, 235–238. The period in which Buddhist steles were largely visual
with only votive inscriptions coincides with the time that inscriptions on steles were also for-
bidden in the north, see Wong 2004, 178.
6 See Davis 2015 on pre-Tang epitaphs.
7 Wong 2004, 15–41.
8 Harrist 2008. Cf. the contribution by Lothar Ledderose in this volume.
142 | Barend J. ter Haar

to rock inscriptions. Rock inscriptions in the hills or mountains are different

from the usual steles at graves or religious institutions, which might not be
moved easily either, but which were located at places of ongoing religious wor-
ship and were therefore visited much more regularly. All of these texts could
also be circulated by means of handwritten copies, rubbings, and later even in
print. We will see an example of a travelling ‘transcription’ in the mysterious
case from the Quanzhou region, discussed further below. Contrary to rock in-
scriptions, steles could also be repurposed more easily, whether for a new in-
scription or for a totally different use as part of a building.

2 Soliciting an inscription
When a stone inscription was erected, its main purpose was to praise the living
or recently deceased,9 or some kind of divine figure, on the assumption that a
stele would last over time and continue to testify. The stele also carried the
names of those involved in erecting it and thus contributed to their local reputa-
tion, even if the subject of the stele had died or moved elsewhere. It might also
contain some information on the person who produced the actual text, which
was often commissioned by the initiator(s) from a literatus known for his excel-
lent style and perhaps also calligraphy. An inscription was always written with
the person or group who ordered the text in mind. Even an extra-human or di-
vine figure might give an opinion about an inscription in a dream or vision. Like
anecdotes, inscriptions were highly subjective texts. That the process was po-
tentially contentious becomes abundantly clear from the anecdotal sources.
The following account gives a good example of the effort involved in pro-
ducing a stele, but also the political capital that was expected from it. During
the reign of Tang emperor Xianzong 憲宗 (r. 805–820), the powerful eunuch
Tutu Chengcui 吐突承璀 tried to ingratiate himself with the emperor by having
an Inscription about Virtuous Government (dezhengbei 德政碑) erected some-
where in the Chang’an capital.10 After the ‘stele pavilion’ (beiwu 碑屋) had been
erected and the surface of the selected stone had been sanded (molong shi qi
磨礱石訖), he asked the emperor to request a text. This would normally have
been written by someone from the Hanlin Academy, which was staffed by able

||
9 Ditter 2014; Choo 2015; Yang Shao-yun 2018 are excellent studies of grave inscriptions or
muzhiming 墓誌/志銘.
10 Liu Xu 1975, juan 184: 4768–4769.
 What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 143

writers with good calligraphy, but this time an official from this very institution
memorialized against it. According to him, undue praise of someone’s moral
calibre only made the emperor look ridiculous in the eyes of both barbarians
and Chinese. The emperor then ordered the destruction of the pavilion and the
disposal of the stone. The eunuch retorted that so much effort had already been
made, but the emperor now ordered that oxen should pull the stele down.11
Eulogistic inscriptions were a common practice at the time, for officials as well
as emperors, so the anecdote reflects the ongoing political struggle between
eunuchs and officials, rather than a sudden change in epigraphic practice. A
special pavilion for the stele protected an inscription against the ravages of
weather, at least as long as they lasted themselves since they were usually
constructed out of wood.
Given that an inscription was an attempt to put someone or something in a
positive light, their production was a sensitive activity. In the struggle for pres-
tige between two prominent (former) officials of the 720s, one dying official
used an elaborate ploy to trick one of his political opponents into producing a
eulogy for him after his death.12 Yao Yuanchong 姚元崇 (650–721) was on his
deathbed after a long and successful career. He felt that it was important to
create for himself an incorruptible posthumous reputation for reasons to be
suggested further below. His intention was to embarrass his rival Zhang Yue 張說
(663–730), who was known for his greediness. His sons were to display all of
their father’s clothes and other things of value at the ritual display of his spirit
tablet, for Zhang Yue to see it when he came to make his condolence call. If he
ignored it, the Yao family would be in grave trouble, probably because he might
attempt to persecute them now that their main protector had died. However, if
he did look at it, they should donate everything to him as a gift. At that point,
they should request a ‘Stele for the Spirit Road’ (shendaobei 神道碑) from him.
Once they obtained the text, they should have it immediately copied and sub-
mitted to the throne. Moreover they should have the ‘stone sanded’ (longshi 礱石)
beforehand to wait for the approved inscription and then have it ‘carved’ (junke
鐫刻) at once. The family did as instructed. As expected, Zhang Yue was too
greedy to ignore the gifts from Yao’s sons and promised to donate an inscription
for their deceased father. By the time he regretted it, it was too late since it had
already been submitted for approval to the emperor. Moreover, Yao also left
behind a last will that ordered his family not to hire Buddhist or Daoist ritual

||
11 Li Fang 1961, juan 164: 1198.
12 The following account is based on Li Fang 1961, juan 170: 1240–1241.
144 | Barend J. ter Haar

specialists. Most likely, giving up on expensive funerary rituals served to create

a positive image for the Yao family, in the ancient tradition of ritual frugality.13
What the anecdote does not tell us is that Yao’s sons had been involved in a
corruption scandal earlier, but this additional context suggests that the com-
bined funerary proceedings were intended to save the family from political
disaster after their major source of protection had died. The unusually modest
proceedings were a powerful political statement and made it much more diffi-
cult for Zhang Yue or any others to avenge themselves on Yao Yuanchong’s
descendants. The extant text of the inscription itself is little more than the usual
panegyric, from which nobody would have guessed the difficult relationship
between these two politicians.14 What the anecdote also fails to mention is that
the calligraphy of Zhang Yue’s inscription was in fact done by Emperor
Xuanzong 玄宗 (685–762, r. 713–756) himself. This would have made it com-
pletely impossible to have it changed or destroyed afterwards.15 Interestingly,
Yao Yuanchong and his descendants together built one of the richest collections
of graves and grave inscriptions in Tang history.16
A case with a much more mundane conflict about contents involves a de-
scendant of Yao Yuanchong, named Yao Yanjie 姚巖傑 (precise dates un-
known). He was known for his literary talent, but also a propensity to drink and
then misbehave. Around 874, the local official of Boyang (in modern Jiangxi)
wanted him to write an inscription commemorating the construction of official
buildings for a kickball field (juchang gongyu 鞠場公宇), a sport that involved
keeping a ball in the air by kicking it with the feet.17 He produced a text of more
than a thousand characters, but when the official wanted to change one or two
characters, he got extremely angry. The official did not let it go through. Be-
cause the stone had already been carved and erected (leshi 勒石), he now or-
dered the stele to be toppled and the text to be sanded away (longqu 磨去).18 No
doubt the official wanted a more positive assessment of his role in the project
and had been severely disappointed.
In the case of Yao Yanjie it remains unstated, but given his need to support
an alcohol addiction he probably composed his inscription for some kind of
reward. Of one talented man, Li Yong 李邕 (674–746), it is said that he received

||
13 Compare Sterckx 2009, 872–878 on early arguments for frugality in ritual expenditure.
14 Dong Gao 1987, juan 230: 2327–2329.
15 Zhu Changwen 1098, juan 6: 23a.
16 Mao Yangguang 2019.
17 Vogel 2000.
18 Li Fang 1961, juan 200: 1502–1503. Also Li Fang 1961, juan 266: 2084.
 What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 145

gifts of more than 10,000 (no unit is given) for one inscription. Nobody made as
much wealth from selling texts. On the other hand, he was also known for his
unbridled corruption, and this eventually got him executed.19 The account ex-
hibits some ambivalence toward producing inscriptions in exchange for large
sums of money, which is further illustrated by an anecdote featuring the great
poet Wang Wei 王維 (699–759). One of his neighbours liked to produce ‘stele
grave inscriptions’ (beizhi 碑誌) for other people, but on one occasion someone
bringing the requisite amount to ‘moisten the brush’ (runhao 潤毫) delivered it
to the house of the poet by mistake. He said sarcastically to the messenger: ‘The
great author lives over there’.20 In fact, the production of exaggerated epigraphic
eulogies had been an argument for the early third-century prohibition of in-
scriptions, mentioned above.
The following account takes the practice of producing inscriptions for mon-
ey to its extreme, but also makes the point that truly talented authors always
speak from their personal convictions, despite writing for a commission.
Huangfu Shi 皇甫湜 (777–835) was well-known for his compositional talent and
straight character, but also as a difficult man to deal with, prone to anger at-
tacks and drinking, leading to considerable social isolation. Nonetheless, one of
the most powerful officials of his age, Pei Du 裴度 (765–839) was somehow im-
pressed by his brazen behaviour. In 817, Pei received huge imperial rewards for
the hard-won victory over a separatist governor in the Huai River region. As a
‘believer in the teachings of the Buddha’ (xin futujiao 信浮圖教), he decided to
invest his rewards in a Buddhist monastery to collect merit after all of the kill-
ing. Thereupon he visited fellow lay Buddhist and renowned poet Bai Juyi 白居易
(772–846) to request an inscription. Huangfu Shi happened to be there as well
and felt insulted that he had not been asked himself. Pei Du now replied that he
really wanted Huangfu’s inscription, but was afraid of being turned down. After
Huangfu’s anger had subsided, he asked for a measure of liquor and went
home. He first consumed half of it, then wielded his brush and wrote his text in
one inebriated go. The text was so complicated and written in such strange
characters, that Pei Du could not read it. Since Huangfu was not that famous, he
decided that a bit more than 1000 strings of cash would be enough.21 When his
envoy offered this amount to Huangfu, the calligrapher exploded because he felt
insufficiently appreciated. He now set forth his demands, claiming that his

||
19 Li Fang 1961, juan 201: 1510–1511. The value unit could be single bronze coins or strings
containing roughly 100 coins at a time. See von Glahn 2016, 377.
20 Li Fang 1961, juan 255: 1987.
21 On a string of cash, see note 19 above.
146 | Barend J. ter Haar

composition was an act of enormous favour and asking one bale of silk for each
of the roughly 3000 characters. His boast was delivered by the embarrassed
envoy to Pei Du, who agreed to pay. Everybody was stunned at the time by the
procession of people delivering the silk, but Huangfu received it without a
shimmer of embarrassment.22 The point, in our context, is that nobody thought
that such payments were strange, only that the amount was outrageous even in
those days.
Ironically, at the same time the emperor himself had ordered Huangfu’s
friend, the famous writer and official Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824), to compose a text
to commemorate the same victory over the rebels. A conflict then arose because
Han Yu was thought to have been overly positive about the role of Pei Du, at the
expense of the general who had won the final and decisive battle. Since the
latter’s wife was an imperial princess, she could complain directly with the
emperor. As a result, the inscription which had taken two months to write and
then put in stone was effaced.23 Thus, an author might like to think of himself as
independent, but in reality he would still be constricted by social norms and
political expedience. The case of Huangfu is really the exception that proves the
rule.
Stones for use as a stele had to be acquired, often under difficult conditions.
In the capital cities of Chang’an and Luoyang, there definitely were profession-
als who took care of funerals, and this probably included the acquisition of a
stone. The existence of undertaker companies is famously illustrated by the
Story of Li Wa (Li Wa zhuan 李娃傳), in which the hero has come into hard times
after dissipating all of his wealth on a courtesan named Li Wa. He joins ‘a shop
for inauspicious affairs’ (xiongsi 凶肆) in order to make a living and eventually
becomes a successful singer of mourning songs.24 There may also have been
specialist shops for acquiring stones, but the existence of such shops is not
documented in the extant evidence. The stone slabs had to be hauled from
elsewhere and sometimes over considerable distances.
The precise geographical provenance of stones still needs to be investigat-
ed, but the following account illustrates some of the problems involved. It is
part of a long and highly critical discussion of general Gao Pian 高駢 (c. 821–
887), who is best known today for his failure to subdue the devastating rebellion
of Huang Chao 黃巢. This event lasted from 874 to 884 and effectively ended the
aristocratic society of the preceding centuries. The account provides some

||
22 Li Fang 1961, juan 244: 1889–1890. Poceski 2018, 39–74, discusses Bai’s Buddhist beliefs.
23 Hartman 1986, 83–84.
24 Li Fang 1961, juan 484: 3987–3988.
 What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 147

interesting information about the hauling of stone slabs. At some point an im-
perial edict was dispatched to erect a Shrine for Living Men (shengci 生祠) for
Gao Pian in Guangling 廣陵 (modern Yangzhou and then the third city of the
empire) and to have a ‘Eulogy in Stone’ (shisong 石頌) carved. People were dis-
patched to select a slab in Xuancheng (in modern Anhui), several hundred kil-
ometres away by water. When they reached the inspection office for the salt and
iron monopolies at Yangzhou, one of Gao Pian’s religious advisors secretly sent
people to pull the slab with fifty strong oxen to the south of the prefectural
capital during the night. He had the city wall bored through and the moat
bridged to move it into the walled city. When it became light the fences around
the stone slab’s former location were shut as before. The advisor now claimed
that the stone had been lost, but by the evening a rumour was spreading that
the stones had been moved into the city by a divine being.

駢大驚，乃於其傍立一大木柱，上以金書云。不因人力，自然而至。即令兩都出兵仗鼓樂，
迎入碧筠亭。至三橋擁鬧之處，故埋石以礙之，偽云。人牛拽不動。駢乃朱篆數字，帖
於碑上，須臾去石乃行。觀者互相謂曰。碑動也。

[Gao] Pian was greatly startled. He had a big wooden pillar erected next to it, in the top it
was written in gold: ‘It did not arrive through human force, but of its own accord’. Then he
ordered the two capitals to send an armed escort, drums and music to welcome it into the
Pavilion of Emerald Bamboo. When it reached a crowded place at the third bridge [Gao
Pian’s advisor] stranded the stone on purpose to block [the road], and falsely claimed:
‘Humans and oxen cannot pull it into motion’. [Gao] Pian then wrote several characters in
red seal script, pasted them on the stele, and after a while the stone could move again.
The spectators said to each other: ‘The stele is moving’.

The next day, however, a village hag came to the local official to complain that
yamen runners had borrowed her farming ox to pull the stele, wounding its foot
(or feet) by accident. People everywhere heard about it, at least according to our
source, and fell over with amusement.25 The chronicler undoubtedly meant this
account to shine further negative light on a general whom he held responsible
for the fall of his glorious dynasty. The account tells of the elaborate way in
which a stele might be utilized in premodern image-building, including the
notion that the stele of an important figure such as Gao Pian would move of
itself, or rather be moved by Heaven. In that respect, the manipulation of in-
scriptions by Gao Pian was no different from that by the great Tang emperors,
and an example by one of them will be given further below.26

||
25 Li Fang 1961, juan 291: 2308 for the account and the above quotation.
26 Harrist 2008, 238–244.
148 | Barend J. ter Haar

3 New meanings for ancient inscriptions

Over time, inscriptions acquired meanings and functions different from the ones
originally intended. Even mysterious signs that were not quite writing in our
modern sense were interpreted as divine script. One example stems from the
Quanzhou region, where it has continued to draw the attention of local commu-
nities as well as educated elites until today. The earliest extant account claims
that it was created in the first half of the eighth century. During a conflict about
the correct border with a neighbouring prefecture, the local prefect prayed for a
divine sign. A terrible thunder storm suddenly broke out and created a path in
the rocks that formed a perfect border, with an inscription created on the rock
face in old seal script to confirm it.27 As the following account illustrates, this
interpretation did not have much of an impact on the people living next to it,
who believed that they were plagued by a murderous dragon living in an un-
fathomably deep pool. The creature swallowed any human or animal who at-
tempted to drink from its pool.
One early evening in 810 a thunderstorm broke loose with the force of an
earthquake, after which the pool was filled up and the ground was covered in
the blood of the monster. Moreover, high up on the cliff were carved 19 charac-
ters. Nobody in the prefecture was able to decipher them. They were supposedly
written in the ‘tadpole’ (kedou 蝌蚪) seal script style, a term (with or without the
insect radical) that was often used as a general reference to texts in ancient
scripts.28 This powerful writing had brought an end to the monster. People who
had fled elsewhere now returned and the prefect named the place ‘Stone In-
scription Village’ (shiming li 石銘里). Eventually the text was copied down and
reached Luoyang, where it was ‘deciphered’ by the above-mentioned Han Yu.
According to him it was a command to punish the water monster, ending with
the term jiji 急急 that usually concludes ritual spells to command a divinity to
perform a certain task. He was known for his interest in ancient inscriptions, as
shown by a lengthy poem about the oldest known stone inscriptions in China,
the so-called Stone Drums from Qin that had been inscribed more than ten cen-
turies before.29 The Quanzhou inscription is still extant on the rocks next to the
pool, relabelled as ‘Characters of the Immortals’ (xianzi 仙字). In reality all of
the historical explanations mentioned were wrong. The drawings are mnemonic

||
27 Li Fang 1961, juan 393: 3139–3140.
28 Loewe 1993, 381. For other references to this script, see Li Fang 1961, juan 19: 132–133; juan
206: 1573; juan 209: 1602; juan 231: 1773; juan 389: 3106; juan 472: 3884.
29 Li Fang 1961, juan 392: 3130. On the Stone Drums and Han Yu, see Mattos 1988.
 What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 149

pictographs, and without the now lost oral traditions that once accompanied
them, they cannot be ‘read’ in the same way as ordinary writing.30
Strange scripts could inspire remarkable stories about their provenance. On
a peak high up on the famous Mount Lu in modern Jiangxi, many hundreds of
meters above sea-level, the legendary King Yu had once moored his ship when
he was taming the floods covering the realm. There was even a rock with a hole
in it that had been used by him to tie up a cable. This taming of the floods is
thought to have occurred over four millennia ago and belongs to the core
narratives of Chinese mythology. People believed that at that time a text in tad-
pole script had been inscribed on the top of the mountain. It was still visible
‘today’, as reported by our early tenth-century source.31 The inscription contin-
ued to fascinate later scholars as a witness to ancient times that to them were
completely historical. In reality the tadpole script probably originates in the
Cloud Seal Script (yunzhuan shu 雲篆書) from Daoist tradition. The most famous
such inscription in fact originally stood in a Daoist temple on Mount Heng (see
Fig. 3).32
When a stele had lost its relevance or literally lost its inscription due to the
impact of the elements, it could be sanded and reused.33 This was not entirely
without risk, as discovered by the famous True Lord Xu 許真君 (or Xu Xun 許遜,
239?–374?), when he repurposed a faded inscription for his belvedere (guan 觀),
as Daoist religious institutions are usually known. The long-deceased author of
the original inscription then went to an underworld agency to start a posthu-
mous lawsuit. Only by having a new stele carved with the old inscription and
carrying out a large ‘Water and Land ritual’ (shuilu dajiao 水陸大醮) for the
original author could a worse fate be averted.34 The story stems from a collection
by the Daoist political advisor, writer and ritual specialist Du Guangting 杜光庭
(850–933). It creates Daoist antecedents for a then still recent ritual invention
that definitely was of Buddhist origin, the so-called ‘Water and Land Gathering’
(shuiluhui 水陸會) that provided hungry ghosts with the merit needed for a suc-
cessful rebirth.35 For those who believed, it proved the Daoist connection of this
ritual and warned about the dangers of reusing old steles.

||
30 Yang Qinglin 2009. This dissertation also contains illustrations.
31 Li Fang 1961, juan 397: 3181. See Dudbridge 2013, 75–76.
32 Wang Chang 1805, 2 passim. Chaves 2013.
33 Li Fang 1961, juan 392: 3131–3132.
34 Li Fang 1961, juan 72: 452–453.
35 Stevenson 2014; Verellen 1989.
150 | Barend J. ter Haar

Since inscriptions were often buried in the ground on purpose as part of a

grave complex, or more or less by accident as a result of neglect, it is no surprise
that people stumbled across them during various kinds of groundwork.36 In
such cases, people had a hard time providing a cogent interpretation. Of course,
we generally only learn about those cases where the interpretation eventually
proved to be correct. In 827 a stone was found during the digging of a city moat.
It carried the text 山有石，石有玉。玉有瑕，即休也, meaning ‘the hill (or
mountain) has a stone, the stone contains a piece of jade, the jade has a flaw,
this is auspicious (xiu 休)’. At first the inscription was read as an auspicious
sign, but later a new interpretation made more sense, explaining the word xiu in
its other meaning of ‘stopping’. It was now interpreted as a prediction of the fate
of the official who received this stone, whose family-line died out a few years
later with his death.37 In this way the find of the inscription could provide
meaning to his death and the family’s sad fate, by proclaiming all of it divinely
ordained.
Over time, the stone slabs carrying inscriptions would break down until on-
ly fragments remained, but even they retained some kind of numinous aspect.
The monks of a Buddhist monastery in Xiangyang (in the north of modern
Hubei) explained the sudden appearance of a turtle that was several feet high in
their newly expanded pool, by referring to an old and fragmented inscription for
a previous monastery nearby. This text supposedly said that the pool was inhab-
ited by a ‘numinous turtle’ (linggui 靈龜) that was three and a half feet long. It
appeared every year in spring and hid in the winter; it even followed the monks
to their hall and would eat at the appointed times. Because of the turtle’s ap-
pearance, the old fragment was erected again.38 Now almost extinct, turtles of
this size were once common in the Yangzi River region. The emphatic mention
of the broken inscription in combination with the turtle suggests an additional
aspect, since larger inscriptions are traditionally erected on top of the shield of a
giant turtle. Once the stele toppled over, the turtle was often all that remained
(see Fig. 4). The connection is made explicit in the following story from Linyi in
Shandong. Here a grave inscription has been lost, and only a stone turtle re-
mained. In the first half of the fourth century, the turtle had supposedly taken

||
36 For some examples, see Li Fang 1961, juan 157: 1126–1128; juan 390: 3115–3116; juan 455:
3713–3716; juan 472: 3886–3887.
37 Li Fang 1961, juan 392: 3132. Another example in Li Fang 1961, juan 392: 3131. According to
Li Fang 1961, juan 366: 2913, all steles in the capital of the state of Min toppled over in the year
944, which was taken later to have presaged the fall of the kingdom in the next year.
38 Li Fang 1961, juan 472: 3886–3887.
 What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 151

its inscription and entered the water. He would come out covered in duckweeds.
One day someone observed the turtle entering the water and shouted at it. The
startled turtle ran away, and the stele was broken off.39

4 Divine encounters and inscriptions

Over time inscriptions would become a common feature of local religious insti-
tutions, down to the lowest village temple.40 Before the eleventh century, how-
ever, this was still unusual. The following case is something of an exception to
this rule. Here a deity even explicitly requested to be remembered.41 A local
official in Yongqing County in Fangzhou (modern Hubei) arrived in what was a
desolate county seat in the hills. He and his younger brother who was visiting
him stopped at a dilapidated temple, which still had statues, but no ‘gate
boards or signs’ (menbang paiji 門榜牌記). He inquired with the local clerks, but
they could only tell him it was the Great King of Yongqing. Thereupon his
younger brother had an encounter with the deity in his dream, which clarified
matters.

神曰。我名跡不顯久矣。鬱然欲自述其由，恐為妖怪。今吾子致問，得伸積年之憤。
我毗陵人也，大父子隱，吳書有傳。

The deity said: ‘My name and accomplishments have long been forgotten. In my sadness I
had wished to explain the details myself, but I was afraid of haunting [people by pos-
sessing them]. Now [you] have made inquiries, and I have obtained [the possibility of]
stating my frustrations of many years. I was a man from Piling42 毗陵, I cannot disclose
who was my grandfather but he has a biography in the Book of Wu. 43

The deity explained in great detail how he was called Guo 廓 (perhaps a scribal
error for Guo 郭) and had been ordered by the Emperor on High (shangdi 上帝,
the highest deity) to get rid of evil creatures in the region, such as tigers and an
evil dragon. Local people had erected a temple for him and ‘incorrectly’ (accord-
ing to the deity, or rather the younger brother’s dream) called him a ‘White Tiger

||
39 Li Fang 1961, juan 274: 2970.
40 Hansen 1990, 14–16.
41 Li Fang 1961, juan 307: 2431–2432.
42 Modern Changzhou in Jiangsu.
43 The Book of Wu (Wushu 吳書) is part of the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi 三國志),
a dynastic history of the third century. No such ancestor could be found in this source.
152 | Barend J. ter Haar

Deity’ (baihu shen 白虎神, nothing further is known about this deity). He now
requested the younger brother to correct this view, which the man did by report-
ing to the person in charge of Xiangyang (in the north of modern Hubei). The
younger brother now wrote a corrected version of the deity’s provenance on
wooden boards and placed them in the temple. Because it came to be covered
with dust and soaked by rain, the writing was about to disappear. Luckily an-
other official had a stone carved in the temple in 852 and the deity’s rectified
account continued to be preserved.
This story also tells us something else that is not often mentioned, but may
have been quite common. Apparently, first a version of the miraculous events
was written down on a wooden tablet. The much more expensive stone version
was produced only later – and subsequently lost as well. As a final note on the
supposedly mistaken identity of the cult, it is entirely possible that the cult orig-
inated in the worship of a white tiger and developed later into one for the figure
who defeated the tiger. Once upon a time, different members of the cat species
were omnipresent in China, and the history of human expansion into the forests
and hills, such as Yongqing County, is also the history of the extinction of big
felines. The hagiography of this deity seems to reflect this development from
acceptance through worship to eradication.
In another striking story, the previously mentioned Emperor Xuanzong vis-
ited Mount Hua 華山 (in modern Shaanxi), the most western of the Five Great
Mountains (wuyue 五嶽) that mark the territory of the earliest Chinese states in
the Yellow River confluence. It was part of a large propaganda campaign of
visiting the great mountains of his realm to offer sacrifice and leave his imprint
there in stone. He saw the deity of the mountain who welcomed him, but
nobody in his retinue shared this vision. Only a female medium saw the deity as
well, with a red hat and in purple clothes, welcoming the emperor. He ordered
her to command the deity to return to the temple. When he also arrived he saw
the deity again and once more the emperor and the medium were the only ones
who saw him. He then wrote a stele inscription in his own calligraphy to express
his respect and surprise. The stele was reputed to be over 50 feet high, one
fathom wide, and 4 to 5 feet thick, ranking as the biggest stone stele in the
empire.44 The largest part of the stele with the actual inscription on it was
already destroyed during the rebellions of the late ninth century, before
subsequent enthusiasts about old inscriptions and calligraphy from the
eleventh century onwards could make a rubbing. Only parts of the damaged

||
44 Li Fang 1961, juan 283: 2257–2258.
 What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 153

pedestal with some inscribed drawings still remain on the mountain today,
testifying to its former size.45
A few decades after Emperor Xuanzong, a lowly soldier passed by the Shrine
of the Marchmount (yueci 嶽祠) at the same Mount Hua. Stark naked and drunk
with sacrificial liquor, he offered a prayer expressing his frustrations about his
career. He slept off his stupor in the ‘stele hall’ (beitang 碑堂) during daytime,
where he was visited by the deity in a dream and was predicted a high office. Of
course, he only found out that it was true towards the end of his life when he
was about to be executed as a rebel in 784, but had indeed reached the predict-
ed office.46 The story shows that such a building was an extension of the temple,
allowing the deity to visit a lowly soldier and predict his career – even though it
would have been more useful to warn him not to join any rebels.

5 Concluding comments
This article has not dealt much with the intrinsic value of stone inscriptions as
historical evidence, which at least in Western research is still a relatively under-
studied topic, not least because they can be hard to read, whether literally on
the original stone, linguistically in terms of prose and poetry, or contextually.47
Instead, the article has focused primarily on the stone inscription as a social,
political, and religious phenomenon in itself. The anecdotal material reveals a
dimension that we cannot learn from the eulogistic texts themselves, ranging
from conflict and embarrassment during their production, to different kinds of
unintended use, decay, destruction, and reuse for other purposes. Things may
sometimes have happened differently from the way that they are described in
these anecdotes, but this is certainly how educated elites at the time thought
about the production and later fate of inscriptions. Many people were involved
in their production, from the stone masons who hewed out a suitable piece of
rock to manufacture a stone slab with an appropriate surface, the transporters
of the slab to its eventual location, the producers of the text and the calligraphy
(which might be different persons), the stone carvers, and of course the family
or community which had ordered and financed the whole enterprise. Potentially,
only the producers of the text and calligraphy were literate and usually only

||
45 Huayin xianzhi 1788, juan 16: 45a–46b.
46 Li Fang 1961, juan 304: 2410–2401.
47 Brown 2008.
154 | Barend J. ter Haar

they were literate enough to appreciate the often very ornate and contrived texts.
It is also this aesthetic aspect that interested later collectors the most and still
does today.
Over time many inscriptions have been removed from their original context,
a process that is still going on today in the interest of local construction pro-
jects. Often we only have a transcription or rubbing of the text on the front,
without the ornamentation or the inscription on the back, or in some cases even
the sides. Lots of non-textual information has thus been lost, and the anecdotal
literature is one way of creating a richer context than the texts themselves could
ever provide.

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Fig. 1: Inscriptions as part of a larger religious landscape in a Buddhist monastery located on

Mount Wutai in Shanxi province. Photograph by the author, July 2016.

Fig. 2: A Tang grave inscription; collection Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada. Creative
Commons license <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Epitaph_for_Mei_Duan_and_his_
wife,_Lady_Hu,_China,_Anyang,_Tang_dynasty,_713_AD,_limestone_-_Royal_Ontario_Museum_-
_DSC03583.JPG>.
 What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases | 157

Fig. 3: Tadpole inscription ascribed to King Yu from the mythical Xia 夏 dynasty (its dates are
sometimes given as circa 2070 to circa 1600 BCE) taken from a Daoist temple on Mount Heng (in
Hunan province), then lost and since reinscribed on a modern stone in a modern pavilion. Crea-
tive Commons license <https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:大禹陵岣嵝碑.JPG>.
158 | Barend J. ter Haar

Fig. 4: Inscriptions on turtles or other mythical animals with shields preserved in the Temple
for the Deity of the Saltpond near Xiezhou in Southern Shanxi. All steles have been toppled
(probably in the late 1960s) and were restored more recently. Photograph by the author, May
2007.
Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin,
Oliver Hahn
A New Standard Protocol for Identification
of Writing Media
Abstract: Our standard protocol for the characterisation of writing materials
within advanced manuscript studies has been successfully used to investigate
manuscripts written with a pure ink on a homogeneous writing surface. How-
ever, this protocol is inadequate for analysing documents penned in mixed inks.
We present here the advantages and limitations of the improved version of the
protocol, which now includes imaging further into the infrared region
(1100−1700 nm).

1 Introduction
To assist scholars of manuscript studies, the Federal Institute of the Materials
Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin and the Centre for the Study of Manu-
script Cultures (CSMC) in Hamburg have developed a two-part protocol of non-
destructive ink analysis: a primary screening performed with NIR (near infrared)
and UV (ultraviolet) reflectography at two specific wavelengths, followed by an
in-depth analysis using spectroscopic techniques that include X-ray Fluores-
cence (XRF) and, in individual cases, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and
Raman spectroscopy.1 The primary screening was specifically developed for
manuscripts written on homogeneous substrates with a pure ink type.2 The
inadequacy of the initial protocol became increasingly apparent during the
studies of papyri, manuscripts coming from an archaeological contest, and
Arabic inks.3

||
1 Rabin et al. 2012.
2 Rabin 2015; Cohen et al. 2017.
3 We are referring in particular to PhD researches on Coptic manuscripts written on papyrus
and parchment and dating from the second to the eight centuries CE (Ghigo 2020 and Ghigo et
al. 2020); on Arabic-Jewish manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah written on paper and
parchment in the eleventh century CE (Cohen 2020); and on black inks reproduced from Arabic
recipes dated from the ninth to the twentieth centuries CE (Colini 2018).

Open Access. © 2021 Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn, published by
De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-009
162 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

When organising a new research project to focus on the materiality of Ara-

bic fragments from Egypt during the first five centuries of Islam, it was clear
from the historical material circumstances that the standard protocol would
need an update.4
During the Umayyad period, and specifically at the beginning of the eighth
century CE, when the Arabs conquered Central Asia, paper was introduced into
the Islamic world thanks to the Sogdians, who were familiar with both Chinese
and Central Asian paper types.5 The new writing material was positively re-
ceived, in particular the Central Asia type obtained from rags, and it eventually
replaced papyrus, which was the main writing support, together with parch-
ment, until the tenth century CE. In Egypt, the transition from papyrus to paper
took place between 870 and 970 CE, although paper had already become the
preferred writing support by 930–940 CE.6 A combination of economic advan-
tages and of prestige and legitimacy embedded in the new writing material
seems to have been the reasons motivating this transition.7
Parchment was also frequently used, in Egypt and in the Islamic world, but
it was specifically employed for relevant and durable contracts (such as pur-
chase deeds and documents related to marriage), luxurious items and texts
connected with religion and esoterism (Qur’ans and Jewish liturgical scrolls, for
instance, but also amulets and magical texts).8 Parchment continued to be used
after the introduction of paper, and although it was never completely substi-
tuted by the new writing support, its use slowly decreased in the following

||
4 The research project RFA01 ‘The Scribe’s Choice: Writing Supports in Arabic Documents of
the Early Islamic Centuries’, part of the Excellence Cluster 2176 ‘Understanding Written Arte-
facts’, Universität Hamburg.
5 The earliest surviving Arabic texts written on paper are the documents found at Sanjar-Shah
(Tajikistan) and dating between 720 and 790 CE. Their paper was most likely imported from
China, as it is made of pure new paper mulberry fibres, and differs from the Central Asian type
as this is made of recycled fibres (mainly hemp, ramie and flax) from rags; Haim et al. 2016,
163−168; Shatzmiller 2018, 472−475. For a detailed explanation concerning the diffusion of
paper by Sogdians and the adoption by Umayyads and Abbasids, see Rustow 2020, 116−135.
6 Grob 2010, 11−13; Rustow 2020, 135. It is possible, however, that paper was imported, mainly
from Syria, as early as 860 CE; Youssef-Grob 2015, 431−432.
7 See Shatzmiller for the economic reasons (Shatzmiller 2018, 475−485) and Rustow for the
prestige associated to paper (Rustow 2020, 135−137).
8 Rustow 2020, 137; Cohen 2020, 92−94; Bausi et al. 2015, 89−90. Entries of parchment frag-
ments in the Arabic Papyrology Database (APD) confirm this trend <https://www.apd.gwi.uni-
muenchen.de/apd/show_new.jsp> (accessed on 10 Dec. 2020).
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 163

centuries. Less common writing supports used in Egypt include leather, textile,
bones, wooden tablets and ostraca.9
With regards to writing media, an overall familiarity with inks of different
types and chemical compositions is well attested in the Middle East in the tenth
and eleventh centuries CE. The inks of that time belonged to three typologically
distinct classes: carbon, plant, and iron-gall inks.10
Carbon inks are obtained by mixing charcoal or soot with a water-soluble
binder, such as gum arabic (common in the Middle East) or proteinaceous glues
(common in the Far East), and dispersing the mixture in a water-based solvent.11
Plant inks are mainly composed of tannins and are obtained by cooking or mac-
erating various vegetal materials. Unlike the plant inks used in Europe, gall
nuts are rarely used as ingredients according to the Arabic sources; instead, the
few Arabic recipes call for bark, fruits or flowers.12 Iron-gall inks are obtained by
the reaction between iron ions (Fe2+) with gallic acid in a water-based solvent,
with the addition of a binder, normally gum arabic. The most common source of
iron ions is vitriol (a mixture of hydrated metallic sulphates), but the recipes
also attest to non-vitriolic iron-gall inks, which were prepared using filings,
slags, nails and pieces of iron. Though the best source of gallic acid is gall nuts,
they could be substituted by a variety of tannin-rich plant matter (e.g. tree bark,
fruits and fruit rinds, leaves, etc.) that was cooked or macerated.
The distinct optical properties of carbon, plant and iron-gall inks can be
used to differentiate them: carbon ink maintains its solid black colour across the
ultraviolet, visible and infrared regions of the light spectrum; plant ink turns
transparent at around 750 nm; and iron-gall ink gradually loses opacity towards
the longer wavelengths.13 Furthermore, tannins’ ability to quench fluorescence
enhances the contrast between a fluorescing background and the text, making
UV reflectography a useful tool for identifying their presence.
In addition to observing their distinct optical properties, quantitative and
semi-quantitative X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) measurements can
also be used to detect differences in the elemental composition of marker ele-
ments (such as copper, manganese or zinc in vitriol-based iron-gall inks), mak-
ing this another powerful tool for manuscript studies. The fingerprint model,

||
9 Grohmann 1952, 44−62.
10 Cohen et al. 2017; Rabin 2017; Colini 2018, 17−18 and 39−40.
11 Zerdoun 1983, 55−67 and 71−90.
12 For European recipes of plant inks made with the extract of gall nuts, see Zerdoun 1983, 180
and 306−307. For Arabic plant inks, see Colini 2018, 40 and 119−220.
13 Mrusek et al. 1995, 72.
164 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

introduced some fifteen years ago, presents iron-gall ink as a series of ratios of
the vitriolic impurities to iron (the main component of the ink) and also consid-
ers the relevant impurities of the paper.14 The use of NIR imaging, accompanied
by a semi-quantitative calculation of the iron-gall fingerprints, have shown
excellent results in advanced codicological studies of medieval European man-
uscripts on paper and parchment.15
Besides these pure types, another class of inks appears to have been quite
popular among the Arabic sources: mixed inks.16 Depending on how these inks
were prepared, two subtypes can be defined: mixed carbon-plant inks and
mixed carbon-iron-gall inks. The former, which are characterised by the addi-
tion of plant extracts rich in tannins to a carbon ink, are attested in the sources
as early as the ninth century CE.17 Recipes of mixed carbon-iron-gall inks ap-
peared later, in the thirteen century, although one of them is attributed to a
vizier who died in 806 CE.18 Their formulations can range from adding a small
amount of soot or charcoal to an iron-gall ink, to adding vitriol and tannins to a
carbon ink; therefore, inks with different ratios of carbon to iron are necessarily
included in the same subtype. Currently, use of the mixed inks in Medieval pe-
riod are considered rare and are only sporadically identified in manuscripts;
however, this may be due to the difficulty of their identification rather than their
absence.19 Rabin suggests that mixed inks played an important role in the tran-
sition from the carbon inks of Antiquity to the iron-gall inks of the Middle Ages.20
Currently, a growing number of publications report presence of metals in
the inks dating to the Greco-Roman period: carbon-based inks that also contain
different admixtures or metallic elements, such as copper and lead.21 Chris-
tiansen attributes presence of copper in the inks to the use of soot that came
from metallurgical plants, while lead compounds could be used for their drying

||
14 Hahn et al. 2004.
15 Hahn et al. 2008a; Geissbühler et al. 2018.
16 Colini 2018, 17−19 and 40.
17 Colini 2018, 39. The recipes can be found in the appendix, Colini 2018, 119−220.
18 Colini 2018, 40. The recipes can be found in the appendix, Colini 2018, 119−220.
19 The limitation of the current protocol for identification of the tannins is discussed in Rabin
2015, Colini et al. 2018, Cohen 2020, Ghigo et al. 2020, Ghigo 2020.
20 Rabin 2017, 7−11, Nehring et al. 2021.
21 Carbon inks containing copper were found in the Genesis Apocryphon scroll (1Q GenAp)
from the Dead Sea Scrolls collection (Nir-El and Broshi 1996), in two fragments of private letters
from Pathyris and in two others from the Tebtunis temple library (Christiansen et al. 2017), and
a documentary papyrus from Fayum (Rabin et al. 2019). Carbon inks containing lead were
identified in two fragments of the Herculaneum papyri (Brun et al. 2016), a fragment from Dime
(Colini et al. 2018) and two others from the Tebtunis temple library (Christiansen et al. 2020).
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 165

properties.22 It must be stressed, however, that in the absence of a non-

destructive method that can unequivocally identify the presence of tannins in
the ink, it is impossible to differentiate between a carbon ink with an admixture
of iron or copper from a carbon-iron-gall mixed ink.
Here, we present the tests conducted with the new mobile equipment OPUS
Instruments APOLLO Infrared Reflectography Imaging System (IRR), intended
to unambiguously identify carbon in mixed inks. During the preparatory stage
of the aforementioned research project, fifteen Arabic fragments preserved in
the Department of Papyri of the Austrian National Library (ÖNB), Vienna, were
tested.

2 Description of the corpus

Table 1 summarises the known historical data of the fifteen Arabic fragments
from the Department of Papyri of the Austrian National Library (ÖNB), Vienna,
investigated in this work. The collection was established in 1883 following sev-
eral purchases made between 1878 and 1882 by the Archduke Rainer who was
persuaded by Josef von Karabacek (1845−1918), Professor of History of the
Orient at the University of Vienna, to buy a large number of papyri from the
Viennese antiques dealer Theodor Graf (1840−1903).23 The majority of the frag-
ments in the collection come from the excavation sites of al-Ušmūnayn (the
ancient city of Hermopolis Magna) and Ihnasiya (Heracleopolis Magna) in cen-
tral Egypt, as well as various archaeological sites in the Fayum oasis.24

||
22 The first statement can be found in Christiansen et al. 2017, 7; the second in Christiansen et
al. 2020, 27834.
23 <https://www.onb.ac.at/en/library/departments/papyri/about-the-department-of-papyri>
(access on 06 Apr. 2021).
24 When talking about provenance, a distinction should be made between the finding place,
the actual place of production of the written artefacts and the internal references to locations in
the texts. Since the fragments in the collection were acquired through the antiques market, the
place of production is extremely difficult to identify, and while the finding place is often
provided in the acquisition records, they are not always reliable. Finding place and area of
production may coincide, but this is not always the case: letters, for example, often have a
different place of production than the site where they were excavated. When a location
mentioned in the text, such as a village referred to in a sales contract, can be found, it is
possible that this location coincides with the place of production, although each instance
should be evaluated individually. In this paper we are using the concept of provenance in a
broad sense, including all the aforementioned meanings.
Table 1: List of fragments ordered by date.

Shelf mark Type of Subtype of document Date (CE) Date in the text Provenance Writing h × w (mm)
document support

A.P.6004 Legal Receipt of ḫarāǧ on an 900 287 AH al-Ušmūnayn Papyrus 245 × 80

inheritance
A.Ch.9 Legal Acknowledgement of a debt 900, July 287 AH, Raǧab Paper 125 × 257
A.P.4097 Protocol 902−3 Papyrus 170 × 108
A.Ch.12868 Paraliterary Ephemeris 931−2 300 (Persian) Aswān Paper 178 × 115
A.P.14000 Legal Receipt of ḫarāǧ 932 320 AH al-Ušmūnayn Papyrus 100 × 95
A.Ch.7814 Legal Receipt of ḫarāǧ 937 325 AH Paper 160 × 110
A.P.14063 Legal Receipt of per capita tax (jizyah) 942, 13 Aug. 330 AH, 18 Pachon Papyrus 40 × 92
A.Perg.82 Legal Contract of sale (house) 945 333 AH al-Ušmūnayn Parchment 286 × 256
A.P.4360 Protocol 944−6 Papyrus 260 × 137
A.Perg.340 Legal Receipt of marriage gift 948, Nov. 337 AH, Ǧumāda I Parchment 130 × 120
A.Ch.1488 Paraliterary Almanac 990−1 707 (Coptic) Paper 49 × 81
A.Ch.32363 Paraliterary Ephemeris 1002−3 371 (Persian) Paper 59 × 48
A.Perg.236 Paraliterary Horoscope 1002 Parchment 86 × 55
A.Ch.7379 Legal Receipt of per capita tax (jizyah) 1036, 8 July 427 AH, 11 Ramaḍān al-Ušmūnayn Paper 55 × 70
A.Ch.1252 + Paraliterary Ephemeris 1044−5 413 (Persian) Paper 57 × 64;
166 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

A.Ch.14324 40 × 61
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 167

The manuscripts selected for this study – written in black inks on parchment,
papyrus and paper – are dated between the tenth and the first half of the eleven
century CE and represent different contents and contexts of production.

3 Experimental section
The writing supports of the fragments were first described according to their
visual characteristics, both in ambient and transmitted light (using a light
sheet). The latter is commonly used to observe the marks left by the sieve during
paper production, but it also reveals the fibre distribution of a papyrus sheet.

3.1 Dino-Lite USB microscope, AD413T-I2V

Following a visual description, we conducted the primary screening with a
handheld Dino-Lite USB microscope. Measuring just 10 cm in length, this minia-
ture microscope features built-in LED illumination at 395 nm (UV) and 940 nm
(NIR), as well as a customised external white light (VIS) source mounted on the
microscope. This instrument is used to differentiate the types of inks by compar-
ing the change of opacity between the visible and the infrared image. In addi-
tion to the NIR micrographs, we usually also examine the images captured
under UV light: the presence of tannins can be inferred from the enhanced
contrast of ink and substrate, a result of tannins’ ability to quench the UV-
induced fluorescence of organic supports. In some cases, the dimensions of the
writing stroke appear larger in the UV image compared to the VIS image due to
the spreading of tannins in the writing support.

3.2 Elio Bruker Nano GmbH (formerly XG Lab)

This X-ray spectrometer features a 4W low-power rhodium tube and adjustable
excitation parameters. It has a 17 mm2 Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) with energy
resolution < 140 eV for Mn Kα. The beam size is roughly 1 mm. The measure-
ments were performed on single spots at 40 kV and 80 μA, with an acquisition
time of 2 minutes. Bruker’s SPEKTRA software was used for the peak fitting and
the semi-quantitative data evaluation. This simple portable instrument is
usually the first choice when a quick identification of elemental composition is
required and the inked areas are compatible with the beam spot size.
168 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

3.3 OPUS Instruments Apollo

Verification of the presence of carbon in the inks was performed with OPUS
Instruments APOLLO Infrared Reflectography Imaging System (IRR). The regu-
lar Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) sensing range (900–1700 nm) of the 128×128-
pixel scanning InGaAs sensor was reduced by the following filters: Short Wave
Pass Filter (SWP1250, range 900–1250 nm), Band Pass Filter (BPF1250–1510,
range 1250–1510 nm) and Long Wave Pass Filter (LWP1510, range 1510–1700
nm). Each filter was mounted in front of the IR lens (150 mm, f/5.6–f/45) with
the aperture set to f/11. The working distance between the sensor and the object
was set to 73 cm and the acquisition time to 50 ms per tile. Two 20W halogen
lamps provided broadband illumination. The filters allow us to limit the range
of infrared light to the portion where iron-gall inks become completely trans-
parent, thereby enabling the discrimination of pure iron-gall inks and mixed
inks.

4 Results and discussion

The fact that the original protocol was never intended for the complete charac-
terisation of mixed inks, which were hardly employed in late medieval or Euro-
pean manuscripts, has been discussed at length elsewhere.25 Here, we would
like to present three selected examples from the corpus to illustrate some com-
mon classes of inks encountered during field studies. Fig. 1 shows, on the right,
the photographs of these fragments; the blue squares highlight the area shown
in the Dino-Lite micrographs, taken in visible light and at 940 nm (NIR), which
appear in the middle of the figure. On the left, we present the XRF spectra of the
writing supports and of the inks.
The ink of the papyrus fragment A.P.4360, in Fig. 1a, is easily identified as
an iron-gall ink because its opacity decreases noticeably (but not completely) at
940 nm when compared to the visible light image. Furthermore, in the XRF
spectra, the signal of iron from the inscribed area far exceeds that detected on
the uninscribed papyrus. The ink of the main text of the contract on the parch-
ment manuscript A.Perg.82, in Fig. 1b, is most probably of the carbon ink varie-
ty, as there is neither a change in opacity at 940 nm nor any meaningful change
between the spectra of the inscribed and uninscribed areas.

||
25 Colini et al. 2018; Ghigo et al. 2020.
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 169

Fig. 1: On the left, XRF spectra of writing supports and of inks; micrographs at 50x magnification
of the measured spot taken with Dino-Lite in VIS light and at 940 nm (NIR); on the right, image
in visible light of the entire fragment with the area of the micrographs highlighted in blue: A)
A.P.4360; B) A.Perg.82; C) A.Ch.9. Manuscript images © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Papyrussammlung.

The fragment in Fig. 1c, A.Ch.9, contains four different inks; the ink in question
is found at the end of the bottom line, a later remark attesting that debt has
been partially cleared. This line is written with two inks, the beginning with a
brown-red one that has corroded the paper, the ending with a darker one and
170 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

slightly thinner pen strokes.26 The ink in which these last words were written
shows little opacity change at 940 nm compared to the visible image, as seen in
the Dino-Lite micrograph in Fig. 1c. By comparing the XRF spectra of this ink
and the writing support, an increase in the amounts of iron, calcium and potas-
sium in the inscribed area can be detected (black curve). Based on the current
protocol, we tentatively conclude that we are dealing here, in A.Ch.9, with a
non-vitriolic carbon-iron-gall mixed ink.
As the case in Fig. 1c illustrates, it is difficult to verify the presence of iron in
the writing media because the paper also contains a high amount of the same
element. This is indicative of a larger problem of identifying mixed inks, on
papyrus or Arabic paper using the XRF-method. The low iron signal in the ink,
accompanied by a heterogeneous distribution of iron in the writing support
resulting in a strong noise of the iron signals, makes the use of the fingerprint
model practically impossible, since the calculations require small quantities
and homogeneous distribution of iron signals in the writing support.
In Fig. 2, we illustrate the average iron content of three fragments (A.Perg.82,
A.Ch.32363 and A.P.14063) from the Vienna Papyri Collection. The error bars
represent the standard deviation (i.e. the dispersion of the data relative to its
arithmetical average).

Fig. 2: Distribution of iron in the writing supports of three fragments: A.Perg.82 (parchment, in
orange), A.Ch.32363 (paper, in light blue) and A.P.14063 (papyrus, in green).

||
26 Unfortunately, the edition of the fragment does not clarify whether these last words were
added to the line or if they were written by another scribe. In fact, this part of the document could
only partially be read and translated due to its preservation state; Youssef-Grob 2015, 440−441.
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 171

As we can see, the writing supports of the analysed fragments have high iron
concentrations, especially paper and papyrus. The smaller error bar of the
parchment average, compared to those of paper and papyrus, indicates that the
distribution of iron in the parchment fragment is more homogeneous. The heter-
ogeneous distribution of elements is caused by the intrinsically uneven struc-
ture of papyrus, and also by residual archaeological materials (e.g. dirt, sand,
etc.) that contaminate it with iron. It is possible that the tools used to cut and
beat the rags as well as the water employed in papermaking were responsible
for the iron contamination in paper fragments. Furthermore, conservation treat-
ments or abrasions resulting from past use may also contribute to the con-
tamination of the writing support or the wider distribution of iron that was ini-
tially localised in the inked area.27 Thus, not only do paper and papyrus contain
more iron, but its distribution is also extremely uneven.28
It is clear that when NIR reflectography at 940 nm, coupled with XRF, fails
to identify the ink type, we must resort to the IR reflectography method original-
ly proposed by Mrusek and colleagues.29 In this study, we tested the Infrared
Reflectography Imaging System (IRR) OPUS Instruments Apollo, in addition to
the NIR screening conducted with the Dino-Lite and XRF analysis conducted
with Elio.
The performance and suitability of the instrument were tested on a set of
three-year-old ink samples prepared at the manuscript lab of the CSMC, Univer-
sity of Hamburg.30 Fig. 3a shows a picture of the inks – respectively, an iron-gall
ink, a carbon ink, a mixed carbon-plant ink and a mixed carbon-iron-gall ink –
taken in visible light. The images in Fig. 3b-c-d were taken with the Apollo imag-
ing system equipped with the SWP1250, BPF1250–1510 and LWP1510 filters,
respectively. As expected, the carbon ink shows no change in opacity across all
four images, while the mixed inks progressively become more transparent, al-
though they remain visible even in Fig. 3d. The iron-gall ink, in contrast, shows

||
27 Water-based conservation treatments can cause the delocalisation of the soluble parts of
the iron-gall inks resulting in the emergence of an iron-rich background in the writing support;
Hahn et al. 2008b. The use of the tannic tincture caused delocalization of iron and potassium
in the Vercelli Book; Rabin et al. 2015.
28 Similar observations based on a higher number of documents can be found in Cohen 2020,
120−124 and 142–150.
29 Mrusek et al. 1995.
30 The inks were prepared in 2016 according to Arabic recipes. They were artificially aged for
49 days in the ageing chamber WK11-180/40 by Weiss Umwelttechnik GmbH at BAM, with the
condition of T=80°C; RH=65%, and subsequently stored in the rooms of CSMC. Colini 2018, 59–
78 (nos 17, 52, 165, 173) and 82–87.
172 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

a clear change in opacity in Fig. 3b, while traces of it are barely detectable in
Fig. 3c, and it becomes completely undetectable in Fig. 3d.

Fig. 3: Results of IR reflectography on three-year-old ink samples, normalized to Spectralon.

From top to bottom: iron-gall ink, carbon ink, mixed carbon-plant ink; mixed carbon-iron-gall
ink. A) image taken in visible light; B) image taken with Apollo Imaging System with SWP1250
filter; C) image taken with Apollo Imaging System with BPF1250–1510 filter; D) image taken
with Apollo Imaging System with LWP1510 filter.

The lower contrast between the iron-gall ink and the writing support in the
BPF1250–1510 image (Fig. 3c) compared to the higher contrast in the SWP1250
image (Fig. 3b) suggests that the iron component must have stopped absorbing
light shortly above 1250 nm; this may be due to the prevalence of insoluble
black iron (III) bis-gallate in freshly made inks, which is significantly higher
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 173

than the amount in ancient ones.31 This assumption is based on reports, from
the late eighteenth century CE onwards, of originally black iron-gall inks degrad-
ing into brownish substances.32
The low contrast or ‘faint trace’ observed in the fresh iron-gall ink sample in
the BPF1250–1510 (Fig. 3c) image can be explained by the broad spectral width
of the band pass filter (260 nm) and the inability of the imaging sensor to dis-
criminate the energy (wavelength) of the reflected photons. Each pixel of the
InGaAs sensor simply counts and digitises the number of incoming photons that
were generated by the broadband illumination using halogen lamps. For pixels
corresponding to ink, the photons absorbed in the 1250–1300 nm range do not
reach the sensor and, consequently, fewer total photons are counted. These
pixels then have slightly lower intensity values than the pixels corresponding to
the surrounding and underlying writing support, which explains the low contrast.
The spectral properties of the BPF1250–1510 filter are therefore not optimal
for the unequivocal identification of the presence of iron-gall inks and carbon,
but they still provide valuable information for the discrimination of inks. A se-
ries of measurements on the original documents with a device that can operate
within the spectral range of 900–1700 nm and with a higher spectral resolution
of 10 nm would be necessary to study and understand the absorption properties
of iron-gall inks depending on their chemical composition, thickness and their
interplay with the writing supports, specifically in the range of 1200–1300 nm. A
comparison of the spectral reflectance curves of iron-gall ink and the writing
support would significantly narrow the range of wavelengths (down to ±10 nm)
at which the iron-gall inks stop absorbing and lose their opacity completely.
Given the aforementioned reasons, the LWP1510 filter would be a better
choice to verify the presence of carbon. This filter enables wavelengths longer
than 1510 nm (sufficiently above the critical region of 1200–1300 nm) to pass
through and therefore ensures that there is only carbon absorbing in this region
of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, images acquired with this filter ap-
pear dark and underexposed even under the maximum exposure time of 50 ms
and halogen lamps set to full power. We believe that the source of this problem
lies, on the one hand, in the low transmission of the filter, and on the other
hand, in the apparent drop in the intensity of the light provided by the halogen
lamp in this spectral region. Unfortunately, it is not possible to increase the
exposure time to collect more photons. Being underexposed, the images must
then undergo the post-processing step of histogram stretching in order to be

||
31 Krekel 1999.
32 Ribeaucourt 1797; Fuchs 2003, 160−161.
174 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

viewed on a computer monitor by the researcher. Stretching the histogram to

enhance the appearance can also create artefacts in the pictures by enhancing
the noise.
Based on the outcome of the tests on ink samples prior to the imaging in
Vienna and on the underexposed LWP1510 images, it was decided to select the
BPF1250–1510 filter and include its results in the protocol. The permanence of
iron-gall ink beyond 1250 nm in the tests was regarded as exceptional due to the
young age of the media. We thus expected that it would still be possible to dis-
tinguish mixed inks from pure iron-gall inks, as the carbon particles dispersed
in the plant or iron-gall ink base would have a stronger contrast, and therefore a
much darker appearance, than the low contrast ‘faint trace’ of iron-gall ink.
The decision to use only one filter was additionally motivated by the need to
minimise the exposure to heat generated by the broadband halogen light
sources. As each scan takes ten to twenty minutes, adding a second filter to the
protocol would increase the time that the fragment is exposed to heat, which is
not ideal for manuscript preservation. Changes in temperature can cause the
relative humidity in the area surrounding the object to fluctuate, resulting in
changes to the water content of the manuscript, which desorbs water particles
into the air. This desorption can create alterations, such as waves and cracks, to
the writing supports; particularly susceptible are parchment, which is highly
sensitive to temperature and relative humidity fluctuations, and papyrus,
whose fibres are often already dry and fragile. To address this issue, we are
developing a novel illumination panel set that consists of short-wave infrared
(SWIR) LEDs and limits the heat emission to a technically plausible minimum.
Because available LEDs emit considerably less heat than halogen or incandes-
cent lamps, we will significantly reduce the potential risk of causing irreversible
alterations to the manuscripts.
The application of this revised protocol to identify mixed inks is demon-
strated by the imaging results of the bottom line of fragment A.Ch.9 (Fig. 4a). In
the BPF1250–1510 image (Fig. 4b), the low contrast of this part of the text is
indicative of an iron-gall ink with the exception of the last words, which show
only a slight change in opacity. This confirms that the line was written using
two different inks and that the last words contain carbon, as they have a strong
contrast in the 1250–1510 nm range. By combining this result with the previous
observations displayed in Fig. 1c, we can conclude that those words were writ-
ten with a non-vitriolic carbon-iron-gall mixed ink. To confirm the identification
of this ink on A.Ch.9 as a mixed carbon-iron-gall ink beyond any doubt, we
should have also used the LWP1510 filter. Unfortunately, this was not done
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 175

because we expected that the BPF1250–1510 filter alone would provide suffi-
cient information to discriminate between iron-gall and mixed inks.

Fig. 4: A) Photograph of A.Ch.9 in visible light © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Papyrus-

sammlung; B) Picture of the same fragment taken with Apollo Imaging System with BPF1250–
1510 filter.

Because the presence of plant and iron-gall components is determined by the

absence of their signal (i.e. no contrast) above 900 nm and 1300 nm, respective-
ly, the change in opacity of a mixed ink is highly dependent on the ratio of plant
or iron-gall and carbon components. When the proportion of carbon, which
continues absorbing throughout the entire range, significantly outweighs that
of the other ingredients, it becomes impossible to discern changes to the opacity
176 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

of mixed inks. The exact ratio that prevents identification is not yet known, but
it will be investigated in future studies.
The importance of resolving this issue becomes apparent when examining
the ink used to write the tax receipt in the papyrus fragment A.P.14000 (Fig. 5),
which remains difficult to identify even after performing IR reflectography.

Fig. 5: A) Photograph of A.P.14000 in visible light © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,

Papyrussammlung; B) Picture of the same fragment taken with Apollo Imaging System with
BPF1250–1510 filter; C) XRF spectra of writing supports and inks, and micrographs at 50x
magnification of the measured spot taken with Dino-Lite in VIS light and at 940 nm (NIR).
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 177

Compared to the image taken in visible light, no change in opacity can be ob-
served in the image taken at 940 nm (Fig. 5c) nor in the 1250–1510 nm range
(Fig. 5b), a clear indication of a carbon-based ink. In the XRF spectra, however,
there is an increase in the intensities corresponding to iron and potassium and
the appearance of the copper- and zinc-related peaks in the inscribed area
(black curve in Fig. 5c). These elements suggest the presence of a vitriolic com-
ponent in the ink. We therefore conclude that we are dealing here, in A.P.14000,
with a carbon-iron-gall mixed ink with a high carbon component.

5 Conclusions
In this paper we present the advantages and limitations of the improved version
of the ink identification protocol, which was tested on fifteen Arabic fragments
preserved in the Department of Papyri of the Austrian National Library (ÖNB),
Vienna. In table 2, we provide a summary of the results obtained by the applica-
tion of the improved version of the protocol on the writing media of the ana-
lysed fragments.

Table 2: Results of the analytical campaign on inks. The fragments are ordered by date.

Shelf mark Writing Date (CE) Type of ink

A.P.6004 Receipt (v) 900 Carbon ink

Bottom notation (v) unknown Carbon ink

Letter (r) unknown Carbon ink with addition of copper

A.Ch.9 First subscription 900, July Carbon ink
(lines 1-2)
Second subscription 900, July Carbon ink
(lines 3-5)
Later remark (line 6) After 900, July Iron-gall ink
Last words of remark After 900, July Mixed ink (iron-gall with addition of
(line 6) carbon ink)
A.P.4097 Protocol (r) 902-3 Iron-gall ink
List of names (v) After 902-3 Mixed ink (carbon with little addition of
iron-gall ink)
A.Ch.12868 Black ink 931-2 Plant ink or iron-poor iron-gall ink
Red ink 931-2 Vermillion with some red lead
178 | Claudia Colini, Ivan Shevchuk, Kyle Ann Huskin, Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn

Table 2 (continued).

Shelf mark Writing Date (CE) Type of ink

A.P.14000 Black ink 932 Mixed ink (carbon with addition of
vitriolic iron-gall ink)
A.Ch.7814 Tax receipt (v) 937 Mixed ink (carbon with little addition of
iron-gall ink)
Letter (r) Before 937 Carbon ink
(2nd use)
Previous text (r) Before 937 Carbon ink
(1st use)
A.P.14063 Black ink (r) 942, 13 Aug. Carbon ink
Black ink (v) unknown Carbon ink
A.Perg.82 Black ink (several 945 Carbon ink
hands)
A.P.4360 Protocol 944-6 Iron-gall ink
A.Perg.340 Brown ink (several 948, Nov. Iron-gall ink (likely same ink for all the
hands) hands)
A.Ch.1488 Black-brown ink and 990-1 Iron-poor iron-gall ink
lines
A.Ch.32363 Black-brown ink 1002-3 Plant ink or iron-poor iron-gall ink
Lines 1002-3 Plant ink or iron-poor iron-gall ink
Red inks 1002-3 Iron based pigment (red ochre?)
A.Perg.236 Black ink 1002 Carbon ink
A.Ch.7379 Tax receipt (r) 1036, 8 July Carbon ink
Other text (v) Before 1036 Carbon ink
(1st use)
A.Ch.1252 + Black ink 1044-5 Iron-gall ink
A.Ch.14324
Lines 1044-5 Iron-gall ink

Red ink 1044-5 Vermillion with some red lead

This study has shown that adding an IRR mobile camera to the standard proto-
col would enable the detection of carbon in the inks, and thus the discrimina-
tion between iron-gall and mixed inks. For the unequivocal identification of
carbon, the IRR investigation needs to be conducted at wavelengths higher than
1300 nm. For this reason, the Long Wave Pass Filter (LWP1510) will replace the
initially selected Band Pass Filter (BPF1250–1510) in our routine protocol. To
address the issue of LWP1510 images being underexposed and reduce the risk of
 A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media | 179

introducing post-processing artefacts, we will work closely with the manufac-

turers of the system to design a new, LED-based illumination set that is opti-
mised for the range of 1500–1700 nm. LED light sources, which irradiate less
heat, will also render the ink identification protocol much safer for the objects
from a conservation perspective.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the director of the Vienna Papyri Collection, Bertrand
Palme, and the staff at the National Library of Austria (ÖNB) for their help and
support, especially Simone Suppan and Andrea Donau. Our special thanks go to
the people at OPUS Instruments, who provided immediate answers to our ques-
tions and helped us to get acquainted with the system. Our warmest gratitude
goes also to our research team in Berlin and Hamburg, in particular to Olivier
Bonnerot, Sebastian Bosch, Zina Cohen, Tea Ghigo and Greg Nehring.
The research for this paper was funded by the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence
Strategy – EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and
Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796. The research was
conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
(CSMC) at Hamburg University.

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Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer
Mass Spectrometry-Based Proteomics
and Metaproteomics Analysis of Ancient
Manuscripts
Abstract: Ancient manuscripts may contain a large amount of additional infor-
mation besides the written words. This information is not readily visible to the
naked eye and is also analytically very challenging to uncover. In the last ten
years, mass spectrometric techniques in particular have emerged in this context
to provide additional information about the history of an ancient manuscript
and the living conditions at that time through proteomics and metaproteomics
analyses. This additional information includes not only the methods of book
production and the raw materials used, but also the historical usages of the
manuscripts. This review is intended to provide insights into the scientific ques-
tions that can be addressed with mass spectrometric proteome analyses, as well
as an overview of the possible methods and procedures. In addition to the cor-
rect handling of the valuable samples, the various possibilities of sampling as
non-invasively as possible as well as technical aspects and data evaluation that
need to be considered will be discussed.

1 Introduction
In the last twenty years, the so-called ‘omics-disciplines’ have increasingly
moved into the focus of many research areas. This includes not only the classi-
cal disciplines of the natural sciences, but increasingly also the humanities to
address archaeometric issues. The suffix ‘-omics’ describes the hypothesis-free,
non-targeted analysis of complete or almost complete cellular levels (genome,
transcriptome, proteome, metabolome), although even these techniques often
fail to detect all substances or sequences. Depending on the cellular level ana-
lysed, the terms genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics have
been introduced, which together describe the flow of information from genotype
to phenotype (Fig. 1).1 In addition, many other neologisms have since emerged,
including the research areas paleogenomics and paleoproteomics. According to

||
1 Creydt and Fischer 2018; Dettmer et al. 2007.

Open Access. © 2021 Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer, published by De Gruyter. This work is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-010
184 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

Hendy’s recently published definition, the focus of both disciplines is the study
of ‘archaeological, historical, and paleontological remains and materials’ using
ancient DNA (aDNA) or ancient proteins or ancient peptides.2 This is because it
can be assumed that, depending on the history, state of preservation, the age of
a sample or microbial infestation, some of the proteins have since been degrad-
ed into peptides. However, little is currently known about the degree of protein
conservation in ancient samples, as the detection methods that have been pre-
dominantly used to date are based on the detection of short amino acid se-
quences (see Section 3.4 top-down approaches).3 In addition, proteins have a
low solubility in water and are comparatively difficult to extract using standard
methods, especially since proteins agglomerate and show crosslinking reactions
over the time, further complicating their analysis, which is why the analytical
focus is usually on peptides.4
Palaeoproteomics is a relatively young discipline that emerged in the early
2000s and which has become increasingly relevant due to the advancing devel-
opment in mass spectrometry (MS).5 Although the discovery that amino acids
can also be detected in fossils that are hundreds of millions of years old is not
new and can be traced back to the 1950s.6 Compared to aDNA, it is assumed that
ancient peptide sequences are more stable and can therefore also be used for an
analysis if aDNA can no longer be detected. According to current knowledge,
the oldest DNA residues that could still be sequenced, were found in a tooth
from Homo antecessor, which are estimated to be 800,000 years old, and in a
horse bone, which is approximately 700,000 years old.7 In contrast to these
results, large proteome residues could also be detected in the molar tooth of a
rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus), which lived 1.8 million years ago after the attempt
to obtain DNA initially failed.8 Furthermore, performing proteome analyses is
quicker and cheaper compared to genome studies.9
Nevertheless, the analysis of the proteome cannot completely replace the
DNA analysis, so that these two techniques complement each other optimally.
For example, a comparatively quick species identification can be made with
proteome analyses, but the sex or relatedness cannot be determined, which in

||
2 Hendy 2021.
3 Cleland and Schroeter 2018; Hendy 2021.
4 Orsini et al. 2017.
5 Ostrom et al. 2000.
6 Abelson 1954a; Abelson 1954b.
7 Orlando et al. 2013; Welker et al. 2020.
8 Cappellini et al. 2019.
9 Fiddyment et al. 2019.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 185

turn is possible using DNA studies.10 For this reason, it has recently been pro-
posed to carry out proteome analyses first and then proceed with DNA analyses
based on the results obtained.11

2 Which scientific questions can be answered in

the context of manuscript science?
The word ‘manuscript’ is derived from the Latin ‘manu scriptum’ which means
‘written by hand’. With the development of the first scripts and alphabets in
different parts of the world, a wide variety of raw materials were used as writing
surfaces, depending on availability. These included, for example, metal, fired
and unfired clay, wax tablets, palm leaves, wood, bark, bamboo, cloths made of
cotton, linen or silk, bones and ivory, animal skins that haven been converted
into leather, parchment, or vellum as well as papyrus and paper. As diverse as
the writing surfaces are, so are the writing instruments.12 Accordingly, a wide
variety of analytical platforms have to be used for the analysis of manuscripts
and numerous of complementary techniques and sampling procedures are often
required in order to obtain correct interpretations and assumptions, as has re-
cently been demonstrated by some forgeries.13 In addition to the genome and
proteome already mentioned, small molecules (<1,000 Da), elements or isotope
ratios are also analysed.14
Using proteomics-based methods, it is possible to more deeply characterise
organic writing materials that still contain protein residues and to identify the
species (Fig. 1). This works especially well with writing materials that are made
from animal skins. In this context, the analysis of parchment is particularly
relevant because a large part of the historically preserved documents were made
on parchment. The identification of the animal species used allows conclusions
to be drawn about the geographical origin, since the parchment was made with
animals (e.g. sheep, cattle, goat) that were available locally. Sometimes the
intended use is related to the type of animal skin. For example, a special animal

||
10 Teasdale et al. 2021.
11 Collins et al. 2006; Fiddyment et al. 2019.
12 Colomo 2012.
13 Newton et al. 2018; Rabin and Hahn 2020.
14 Dallongeville et al. 2016; Vilanova and Porcar 2020.
186 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

parchment was sometimes used for illustrations.15 Toniolo et al. were the first to
obtain a sufficient amount of proteins or peptides from a very thin parchment
(vellum) to perform species identification on a thirteenth-century pocket Bible.16

Fig. 1: The cellular cascade and its hidden information that can be obtained with proteomics
and metaproteomics analyses.

While this study is based on destructive sampling, Collins and Buckley used a
less invasive sampling method that came to be known as ‘zooarchaeology by
mass spectrometry’ (ZooMS) and ‘electrostatic zooarchaeology by mass spec-
trometry’ (eZooMS). ZooMS describes the almost non-destructive identification
of animal species on the basis of characteristic peptide sequences (peptide mass
fingerprinting, PMF), which are obtained from collagen I by tryptic digestion
(see Section 3.4, bottom-up approach). eZooMs includes non-invasive sampling
with the help of a commercially available plastic eraser (see Section 3.3.1). In the
research of parchment, this approach is therefore particularly suitable for a
species identification of the animals used, since animal skins consist mainly of
the protein collagen I, so that in the meantime several studies have been pub-
lished in this context.17
While proteomics studies on the analysis of ancient manuscripts made from
animal skins are comparatively advanced, research on other writing surfaces is
still in its infancy. For example, manuscripts made from silk, also an animal

||
15 Fiddyment et al. 2015; Teasdale et al. 2021.
16 Toniolo et al. 2012.
17 Collins et al. 2010; Fiddyment et al. 2015; Fiddyment et al. 2021; Teasdale et al. 2021.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 187

product that was primarily used in China, could be suitable for proteomics stud-
ies. Even if no studies have yet been published in the context of manuscripts.
Nevertheless, degradation processes of silk have already been successfully in-
vestigated by means of proteomics analyses on cultural relicts made from an-
cient silk, and species identifications have been carried out on silk spinners in
order to be able to trace the origin of ancient artefacts.18
In contrast, when using plant-based raw materials, it can be assumed that
performing proteome analyses will be even more challenging. This is mainly
due to the lower protein content of these materials and possibly the higher de-
gree of processing, such as with paper, which makes it even more difficult to
extract sufficient amounts of proteins and peptides from ancient manuscripts.
Nevertheless, plant raw materials also have a small proportion of proteins and
peptides that potentially still be detected as the sensitivity of MS instruments
increases and depending on degradation processes. However, there is still too
little knowledge in this regard to be able to make a more detailed assessment.
Alternatively, genomics and metabolomics (in particular lipidomics) analyses
should be more appropriate in this context.19
In addition, proteome-based analyses can also be used to estimate the age
or the state of preservation of the manuscripts, whereby exogenous influences
must also be taken into account (see Section 3.2). The age of ancient artefacts is
usually estimated by means of radiocarbon dating, by comparing the decay of
the radioactive carbon isotopes 14C to 12C. However, this method is comparatively
laborious and requires a sample volume of 3-10 mg, i.e. it is a destructive sam-
pling, which is why it cannot always be performed.20 However, research efforts
are underway to reduce the sample size required for isotope measurements to
less than 50 µg.21 In addition, it may also be useful to use several complemen-
tary approaches to verify the results obtained or to expose potential falsifica-
tions.22
Furthermore, proteomics analyses can provide information about surface
treatments and, in the case of illuminated manuscripts, information about the
colour binders and glues used, in order to better place the ancient manuscripts
in their historical and also technical context or, if necessary, to be able to take

||
18 Chen et al. 2020; Gu et al. 2019; Li et al. 2019; Solazzo 2019.
19 Kostyukevich et al. 2018; Schulz et al. 2018.
20 Brock 2013.
21 Kasso et al. 2020.
22 Mazza 2019; Rabin and Hahn 2020.
188 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

appropriate conservation and restoration steps.23 The protein-containing bind-

ers, which are suitable for the production of colours, include, e.g. eggs (egg
yolk/egg white) from different birds, gelatin or collagen from various animals,
and casein of milk. Using proteomics, it is not only possible to differentiate
between individual protein binders as such, but also to characterise the raw
materials used in more detail. For example, whether whole eggs or only the yolk
or white were used, since the proteome is composed differently depending on
the raw material used. Such sub-differentiation is not possible by means of DNA
analysis.24
While proteomics refers to the analysis of the proteome of an individual or-
ganelle, cells, tissues or an entire organism,25 metaproteome analyses include
proteome studies of other organisms. Originally, when the term metaproteomics
was introduced in 2004, it primarily referred to microbial communities.26 How-
ever, when analysing ancient artefacts, in addition to microbial proteome resi-
dues, the remains of many other organisms can often be detected, too. These
foreign protein and peptide profiles can be used to obtain information not only
about the manuscript itself, but also, for example, about a possible pest infesta-
tion, biodeterioration, and even about the author or the reader.27 For instance,
on the original manuscript of Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, pep-
tide biomarkers for the author’s nephrotic syndrome could be found.28 Other
applications include the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the note-
books of the Russian writer Anton Chekov and the detection of plague patho-
gens (Yersinia pestis) in death registries of Milan from 1630. In the last-
mentioned study, residues of vegetable proteins could also be proved, which
allow conclusions to be drawn about the meals of the secretaries from this
time.29 Furthermore, a recent study using a medieval parchment document on
childbirth detected human body fluids in addition to numerous nonhuman
residues of egg, milk, legumes, cereals and honey, presumably used for medical
reasons, suggesting that this manuscript was indeed used in childbirth.30

||
23 Van der Werf et al. 2017.
24 Calvano et al. 2020a; Dallongeville et al. 2013; Kuckova et al. 2004; van der Werf et al. 2017.
25 Lim and Elenitoba-Johnson 2004.
26 Rodriguez-Valera 2004.
27 Marvasi et al. 2019.
28 Zilberstein et al. 2016.
29 D’Amato et al. 2018a.
30 D’Amato et al. 2018b.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 189

3 Basics of proteomics analyses of ancient

manuscripts
3.1 Handling and laboratory work with ancient manuscripts
for proteome analyses
Ancient manuscripts have a high cultural heritage and are unique, rare as well
as irreplaceable. Therefore, they should be handled with care and only by ap-
propriately trained experts. Manuscripts are best stored for longer periods in
special archives that ensure optimal storage parameters and protection against
fire and water damage and take precautions against theft. By monitoring tem-
perature and humidity as well as ensuring adequate ventilation, pest and fungal
infestation can also be avoided, and chemical degradation processes can be
reduced. Ancient objects should also not be exposed to short-wave UV light,
particularly rich in energy, because UV light accelerates the decay of organic
materials, so that they turn yellow and brittle. In addition, inks, and colours
fade. Dust and dirt should also be kept out of the archives, or the manuscripts
should be protected in appropriate acid-free packaging. In the best-case scenar-
io, laboratories that regularly work with manuscripts meet these requirements
mentioned and have appropriately equipped rooms for storing valuable arte-
facts. Further details in this context can be found, among others, in ISO 11799,31
which defines the requirements for archive rooms and packaging.
Concerning the practical implementation of proteome-based studies on an-
cient artefacts, there are currently no generally applicable guidelines, as this is
a very young research discipline. Due to this gap, some helpful information
have recently been published in this context, which should promote the process
of establishing generally recognised standards.32 In addition, recommendations
for dealing with aDNA can serve as orientation, which also include the construc-
tion and installation of suitable laboratories.33 As when working with aDNA,
contamination of the samples must be avoided. Consequently, practical work
with ancient materials should be carried out spatially separated from other

||
31 International organization for standardization (ISO) 11799 (2017), Information and docu-
mentation — Document storage requirements for archive and library materials,
<https://www.iso.org/standard/63810.html> (accessed on 24 Jan. 2021).
32 Fiddyment et al. 2019.
33 Fulton and Shapiro 2019; Gilbert et al. 2005.
190 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

work, especially with modern samples. In the best case, a separate laminar flow
workbench and/or a clean room is available for this purpose.34
To avoid contaminations brought from other laboratories, the work should
be carried out in clean rooms firstly in the morning. Furthermore, appropriate
protective clothing should also be worn (full bodysuit including shoes, hairnet,
safety glasses, face mask and powder-free gloves). Gloves made of nitrile are
suitable, but latex gloves should be avoided as they can contain high levels of
protein. The same applies to clothing or jewellery made of wood, wool, rubber,
silk, or leather. In contrast, synthetic materials are particularly recommended. It
is advisable to wear two pairs of gloves on top of each other, of which only the
upper pair is changed regularly. Chemicals should be used in the highest purity
available. In addition, stock solutions must be portioned, and the aliquots regu-
larly exchanged. The reuse of consumables should also be avoided. Likewise,
only pipette tips with filters should be used. Bleach solution and subsequently
70% ethanol are suitable for regular cleaning of all work surfaces and equip-
ment. As with DNA studies, irradiation of surfaces and materials can help dena-
ture proteins to ensure the cleanest possible work environment.35

3.2 Dealing with contaminations

In addition to proteins and peptides from the material of the writing medium,
signals can also come from bacteria, viruses, fungi, insects, leftovers of the
readers or authors, or manual handling. They do not always have to be contam-
inations in the negative sense but can be used for metaproteomics analyses to
obtain further information about the manuscript (see Section 2). Nevertheless,
dealing with unwanted contaminant is not easy, e. g. if it originates from recent
conservation and restoration measures, was created during the recovery of his-
torical documents, or an incorrect handling, e. g. if gloves were not worn. In the
best case, such manipulations are known and can be taken into account accord-
ingly in order to avoid misinterpretations.
A comparatively reliable method to distinguish ancient from modern age
proteins and peptides allows the degree of the post-translational modifications
(PTMs) e. g. deamidation from glutamine to glutamic acid and asparagine to
aspartic acid with the loss of the ammonium group. Glutamine deamidation is
preferred for age estimation because deamination of asparagine is about 10

||
34 Fiddyment et al. 2019.
35 Fiddyment et al. 2019; Fulton and Shapiro 2019; Gilbert et al. 2005; Llamas et al. 2017.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 191

times faster compared to glutamine. Nevertheless, in addition to age, other

exogenous factors such as the storage parameters have an impact on the degree
of deamination, which may have to be taken into account, so direct correlations
are not always possible.36 Another way to estimate age and protein degradation
is to study amino acid racemisation (AAR), which is the conversion of the L-
configuration of amino acids commonly found in living organisms to D-
enantiomers. There are a number of ways to detect D-amino acids, for example
by chromatographic separation on chiral stationary phases or by converting the
amino acids into diasteromers, which can then also be separated on achiral
phases. In addition, enzymatic detection methods, for example, are also suita-
ble. Nevertheless, even with these methods, the influences of the environment
during the storage of the documents must be taken into account.37 In addition to
the age-dependent modifications explained, other reactions can also provide
information about the age of proteins, such as hydroxylation in collagen-
containing matrices.38 Furthermore, additional information can be obtained
from the fragmentation pattern of certain proteins and peptides. For this pur-
pose, the systematic analysis of samples with known ageing grades is suitable,
which can be used as references and in the determination of further molecular
markers for a comparison.39 Furthermore, common contaminants, e.g., such as
human creatine or human serum albumin, can be identified with the help of
databases such as the ‘common Repository of Adventitious Proteins’ (cRAP,
https://www.thegpm.org/crap/)40 or the MaxQuant database.41
During the laboratory work, extraction blanks should also be processed and
then measured, in order to be able to take into account the purity of the chemi-
cals and contamination if necessary. In addition, samples and protein standards
should also be stored separately from one another in order not to risk cross
contamination.

3.3 Sampling strategies

Sampling should be as gentle and minimally invasive as possible, at best non-
destructive, without contaminating the manuscript. In addition, it must be

||
36 Leo et al. 2011; Ramsøe et al. 2020; Schroeter and Cleland 2015.
37 Carenzi et al. 2020; Collins et al. 2006; Rosini et al. 2020.
38 Cleland et al. 2015; Hill et al. 2015.
39 Li et al. 2015.
40 Mellacheruvu et al. 2013.
41 Cox and Mann 2008.
192 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

ensured that the analytes are not subject to changes that could, in the worst
case, lead to false conclusions. The location of the sampling on the manuscript
is also crucial, as various factors can have an influence on the preservation of
proteins and peptides.
Starting from destructive micro-sampling strategies, in which a few milli- or
micrograms of materials are taken from the analysis object using tools such as
scalpels and tweezers, the focus in the last five years has been on the develop-
ment of non-invasive or almost non-invasive methods. The criticism that non-
destructive methods are relatively insensitive is increasingly being eclipsed by
new mass spectrometric developments with ever-improving sensitivity.

3.3.1 On-Site Sampling Strategies

On-site sampling strategies have the advantage that the historical documents do
not have to be transported to a laboratory, i.e. sampling can also be done direct-
ly in libraries, museums, archives or private collections, which greatly facili-
tates access to the samples. In addition, these methods are relatively easy to
perform and require only a minimal labour. Furthermore, the documents can be
of any size and do not need to be cut up (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Overview of different on-site sampling strategies that are suitable for manuscripts.

The first almost non-invasive on-site sampling method was described by the
group of Matthew Collins, in which analytes are detached from the surface of
different materials by means of a simple plastic eraser made of polyvinyl chlo-
ride (PVC) using the triboelectric effect. In this procedure, the analytes are
picked up by the eraser through careful rubbing. The resulting polymer resi-
dues, with the adhering peptides, can presumably be stored at room tempera-
ture for any length of time without changes occurring. At an appropriate time,
eraser crumb samples are mixed with a trypsin-containing solution for enzymatic
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 193

digestion (see Section 3.4) so that the peptides obtained pass into solution and
can be analysed.42
Another non-destructive alternative is the use of a special ethyl-vinyl ace-
tate (EVA) film made from C8 and/or C18 resins as well as cations/anion ex-
changers to which the molecules are bound. The film is produced using an
extruder, in a thickness of 150–200 μm. Before use, the film is moistened and
then placed on the document for several minutes. In addition to macromole-
cules such as proteins and DNA, peptides as well as metabolites are also ab-
sorbed. Superficially, non-covalent bonds such as polar ion-ion interactions and
hydrogen bonds as well as hydrophobic van der Waals forces are effective. Non-
covalent bonds such as polar ion-ion interactions and hydrogen bonds as well
as hydrophobic van der Waals forces are the primary agents. Depending on the
material and preferred analyte class, the EVA technology offers different modi-
fications by adding various chemical additives to the starting material so that an
optimal result can be achieved. Compared to an invasive method on wall paint-
ings and canvases for the detection of binders, qualitatively fewer proteins were
detected, but the binders used could be identified on the basis of the remaining
signals. In addition, studies on the surface of parchment, for example, have
shown that no damage occurs, or residues remain.43
An alternative option for sampling is the use of a class I hydrophobin
(Vmh2) of the fungus Pleurotus ostreatus. With hydrophobin Vmh2 as mediator,
in situ digestion with trypsin can also be performed. Hydrophobin Vmh2, which
is initially in an ethanolic solution, is spotted onto small plates made of
cellulose acetate. After the alcohol has evaporated, trypsin is added, which is
immobilised on hydrophobin Vmh2. Shortly before use, the plates are
moistened with an aqueous buffer solution so that the optimal ambient
conditions for the activation of trypsin are present. The cellulose acetate plates
are placed on the sample material for approx. 10 min and after drying, the
peptides can simply be washed off and analysed. This method was originally
developed for the detection of binders in paintings. In the meantime, however,
several metaproteomics analyses have been carried out on paper and on
parchment documents.44
Another method, also suitable for in situ digestion with trypsin, is based on
the use of a hydrophilic gel of poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)/poly(vinyl-

||
42 Fiddyment et al. 2015.
43 D’Amato et al. 2018a; D’Amato et al. 2018b; Manfredi et al. 2017; Righetti et al. 2019,
Righetti et al. 2020; Zilberstein et al. 2016; Zilberstein et al. 2020.
44 Cicatiello et al. 2018; Ntasi et al. 2021.
194 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

pyrrolidone) (pHEMA/PVP) loaded with trypsin before use. So far, this recently
introduced method has not been applied to manuscripts. The analyses carried
out concentrated primarily on work of arts and statues, but a transfer to other
materials is quite conceivable.45
A very simple procedure that can be carried out with standard chemicals,
has recently been proposed for the authentication of historical manuscripts.
Based on a liquid extraction surface analysis (LESA) approach, 2 µL of a mixture
of methanol, water and a small amount of formic acid are added to the manu-
script using a pipette. After pulling up and emptying the pipette several times,
the solvent is analysed by MS. The focus of this procedure was primarily the
analysis of small molecules, but it can be assumed that this approach could also
potentially be suitable for the detection of peptides for metaproteomics interpre-
tations.46
Compared to the method with the eraser, the other methods require some-
what more time, as the absorbent material must be in contact with the objects
for longer. However, a comparison of which of the presented methods is best
suited for different materials and issues is still pending.

3.3.2 Sampling in the laboratory: Ambient ionisation and laser ablation

techniques

Ambient ionisation techniques, which can be coupled using different mass

analysers, are usually carried out in appropriately equipped laboratories,
i.e. the artefact must first be transported there. In ambient ionisation sources,
the ions are formed outside the MS device. The main advantage is that no sam-
ple preparation is required, and sampling is practically non-destructive. Fur-
thermore, these developments usually can also be used to generate spatially
resolved chemical images, which is why they are also referred to as mass spec-
trometry imaging (MSI). For some techniques, however, it should be noted that
the object to be analysed must not be too large. In addition, the analysis of larg-
er peptides and proteins with ambient ionisation methods is not that simple,
due to their molecular weight, the poor desorption efficiency and the surround-
ing matrix.47

||
45 Calvano et al. 2020a; Calvano et al. 2020b.
46 Newton et al. 2018.
47 Douglass and Venter 2013.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 195

Using relatively established desorption electrospray ionisation mass spec-

trometry (DESI-MS), the surface of an artefact is exposed to an electrospray
cloud (see Section 3.5) so that the analytes are directly desorbed and ionised.
The optimisation of various parameters such as the distance or the angle of the
electrospray and the MS inlet is decisive in determining which analyte classes
are detected.48 So far, this method has been used, for example, to detect proteins
(app. 20 kDa) and peptides after in situ digestion on flint flakes and potsherd
samples, but the analysis of historical manuscripts has also been possible.49 By
means of a nanospray DESI (nano-DESI) source, the spatial resolution can also
be reduced from approx. 40 µm to 10 µm and splashing effects can be avoided,
so that destructive processes are minimised.50
Another modification of an electrospray ionisation (ESI) source is the laser
ablation electrospray ionisation (LAESI) procedure, in which the sample first
has to be slightly moistened. Subsequently, the analytes are ablated from the
surface by means of an infrared (IR) laser, in which initially mainly the water
molecules evaporate abruptly. During this process, the analytes are carried
along into the resulting ablation plume and can then be ionised using an elec-
trospray, consequently, this is a two-stage process.51 It is also conceivable to
replace the usual nanosecond IR laser with a more efficient picosecond IR laser
(PIRL) in order to be able to detect larger proteins efficiently while damaging the
surrounding analysis material as little as possible, since the lateral resolution
(∼100μm) is 3-fold smaller than by means of a nanosecond laser.52 It is also
possible to decouple the laser from the ionisation and ablate the samples on
site. The collected ablation plume can later be analysed by MS in the laboratory.
Such technologies are already used in proteome analysis for medical questions,
e.g. for the identification of different tissue types, but have hardly been validat-
ed in studies on ancient artefacts. However, these approaches could become
increasingly relevant in the near future and as technology develops.
In addition to the techniques described above, there are numerous other re-
search efforts and ambient ionisation techniques e.g. LESA, Matrix-assisted
laser desorption electrospray ionisation (MALDESI) or time-of-flight-secondary
ion mass spectrometry (SIMS-ToF) that could have the potential to become more

||
48 Takáts et al. 2005.
49 Heaton et al. 2009; Newton et al. 2018; Schedl et al. 2015; Stephens et al. 2010.
50 Roach et al. 2010.
51 Nemes and Vertes 2007; Stephens et al. 2010.
52 Zou et al. 2015.
196 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

relevant for the MS analysis of peptides and proteins of historical documents in

the future.53

3.4 Mass spectrometric strategies for proteomics analysis

The primary goal of proteome and metaproteome analyses of ancient artefacts is
to identify proteins and peptides. This is mainly achieved by clarifying the pri-
mary structure, i.e. the amino acid sequence or fragments thereof, and the sub-
sequent comparison and assignment using databases (see Section 3.6).
Sequencing of amino acid sequences was traditionally carried out using
Edman’s method.54 However, this procedure is both very complex and requires
the presence of isolated analytes. Therefore, this procedure is not suitable for
the analysis of more complex extracts and, moreover, is not capable of high
throughput. Other approaches are based on immunoassays to bind certain se-
quences, but these are very limiting for qualitative approaches and also not very
sensitive.55 For this reason, MS methods have primarily become established.
There are mainly two different approaches:
In the bottom-up approach, proteins and peptides are first digested enzy-
matically. Usually, the enzyme trypsin is used as the gold standard, which hy-
drolytically cleaves the amino acids arginine and lysine at the C-terminus. The
peptides obtained have a length of 7–20 amino acids and molecular masses of
0.7 kDa–3 kDa. However, the disadvantage of using trypsin is that this enzyme
is sometimes too efficient and about 56% of the peptide fragments obtained are
too small for further data evaluation. Hence, it may be helpful to try other endo-
peptidases as well.56
The peptide fragments are then separated one-dimensionally or two-
dimensionally by liquid chromatography (LC).57 In contrast to a direct infusion
mass spectrometry (DIMS) approach, not all analytes reach the ion source at the
same time, but rather with a time delay. In addition to gaining information
about the retention time, ion suppression effects are reduced so that a greater
number of molecules can be detected overall. This advantage is of particular

||
53 Cleland and Schroeter 2018; Feider et al. 2019; Spraker et al. 2020.
54 Edman 1949.
55 Cartechini et al. 2010; Hendy 2021; Manfredi et al. 2017; Palmieri et al. 2013; Sciutto et al.
2016.
56 Cristobal et al. 2017; Pandeswari and Sabareesh 2019; Swaney et al. 2010; Tsiatsiani and
Heck 2015.
57 Delmotte et al. 2007.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 197

relevance for the detection of minor compounds and not only abundant ana-
lytes. In most studies, LC separation is performed by reverse phase (RP) chroma-
tography utilising hydrophobic interactions. In this context, water and
acetonitrile are the most suitable eluents. A small addition of formic acid to the
eluent can be helpful in order to achieve a positive net charge of the peptides,
which in turn has a positive effect on the ionisation. In addition, hydrophilic
interactions with potential silanol residues of the stationary phase are sup-
pressed, which in turn leads to greater retention and better peak shapes. How-
ever, the use of formic acid carries the risk of causing undesired formylation
reactions on the peptides. Therefore, the amount of formic acid should not be
too high.58 In addition to the use of stationary RP, other LC separation principles
are also suitable for the analysis of peptides. These include the use of hydro-
philic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC), ion exchange chromatog-
raphy, or size exclusion chromatography, although with the latter two it must
be taken into account that high salt concentrations must be used which are not
compatible with the MS instruments, which is why they are of subordinate rele-
vance.59
High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ultra-high performance
liquid chromatography (UHPLC) as well as nano-LC devices are suitable for
chromatographic separation. Compared to HPLC systems, significantly higher
back pressures can be generated using HPLC systems (up to approx. 1,300 bar).
Therefore, by means of UHPLC, stationary phases with smaller particle sizes <3
µm can be used, which results in improved resolution, sensitivity and shorter
analysis times. In addition, nano-LC devices are increasingly being used for
proteomics studies. The main advantage is improved sensitivity, as more in-
tense, albeit narrower, peaks are produced. This means that low-abundant pep-
tides can still be recorded. Therefore, nano-LC devices are particularly
recommended for studies on ancient artefacts, when often only sample material
and proteome residues are available. With particularly sensitive methods, de-
tection limits in the low femtomol and sometimes even attomol range can be
achieved, whereby the selected mass analyser also has a major influence.60
Nano-columns typically have an inner diameter of 50–100 µm and particle
size of 1.4–5 µm. They are operated at flow rates of about 100–500 nL/min. The
comparatively low flow rates imply lower ion suppression in the subsequent
ionisation step, which in turn is also reflected in an increased sensitivity. De-

||
58 Lenčo et al. 2020.
59 Badgett et al. 2018; Mant et al. 2007.
60 Ivanov et al. 2003; Martin et al. 2000.
198 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

pending on the manufacturer, nano-LC systems can withstand back pressures of

up to 1,000 bar. Unlike UHPLC or HPLC systems, it is not possible to apply the
sample extract directly to the nano-column, since the low flow rates would re-
quire a large amount of time for the extract to reach the analytical column.
Therefore, the extract is first added to a trap column using a microcharge pump,
which allows higher flow rates. This step also allows sample enrichment and
purification. Water with little amount of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) is suitable for
loading the trap column in order to bind the peptides to the trap column first,
while the salts are rinsed away. TFA is a better ion pair reagent than, for exam-
ple, formic acid, which is why the analytes bind more strongly to the stationary
phase. Subsequently, the trap column is switched into the nano-LC system,
using water and acetonitrile together with formic acid as additive as described
above, since TFA can lead to strong suppression effects during ionisation. By
increasing the acetonitrile content, the peptides then elute gradually from the
analytical nano-column. As an alternative to trap columns, injection loops with
fixed volumes can also be used, but these are only suitable for small sample
volumes and can lead to wide peak shapes. In addition, the loops do not allow
an online desalting step.61 In addition to the ‘classic’ columns described, chip-
based systems are also suitable for achieving purification and separation of the
smallest amounts of analytes. Such chips can be replaced very easily using a
‘plug and play’ procedure and require almost no manual effort. Chip systems
can now be purchased commercially from various suppliers. In addition, a
number of developments can be expected in this area over the next few years.62
The procedure described is also known as shotgun approach, which has be-
come well established in recent years. The shotgun approach differs from pro-
cedures in which proteins are first separated using two-dimensional
polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D page) before tryptic digestion takes
place. The main advantage of the shotgun strategy is that many proteins and
peptides can be identified simultaneously with relatively little effort. A disad-
vantage, however, is that due to the fragmentation PTMs, protein truncations
and alternative splicing events of eukaryotic organisms cannot always be taken
into account, which on the one hand leads to a limited sequence coverage and
on the other hand to a significant loss of information. Despite this drawback,
most scientists prefer the bottom-up approach rather than the top-down ap-
proach presented below.63

||
61 Noga et al. 2007; Wilson et al. 2015.
62 Vargas Medina et al. 2020.
63 Aebersold and Mann 2003; Dupree et al. 2020; Zhang et al. 2013.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 199

In contrast to the bottom-up approach, the top-down approach aims to ana-

lyse intact proteins. Accordingly, there is no enzymatic digestion. After isolating
the proteins, which can already be challenging because proteins have lower
solubilities than peptides, a chromatographic separation is also carried out
either by electrophoresis and/or by LC. However, the separation and
purification of proteins is significantly more complex than the separation of
peptides and a comparatively large part of the analytes is already lost in this
process. In addition, the comparatively low utilisation of top-down strategies is
due to the limited size of proteins that can be detected by MS detectors with
sufficient sensitivity and resolution.64 Usually, only proteins <30 kDa are
detected.65 However, a lot of research is currently being carried out on both
disadvantages in order to overcome these drawbacks in the future.66
In some cases, well-preserved and larger proteins can be detected in ancient
fossils, as the surrounding biominerals of bones or teeth have good preservation
properties. For example, in 2,000-year-old ancient bone, approx. 30 kDa pro-
teins could be detected and proteins that were still in good condition could also
be recorded in the brain tissue of the Tyrolean Iceman ‘Ötzi’.67 For such samples,
the use of a top-down approach may be useful. However, the extent to which a
top-down approach can provide additional information for proteome and meta-
proteome analysis of ancient manuscripts has not yet been investigated. Nev-
ertheless, a use of top-down approaches would be conceivable to analyse the
chemical composition of comparatively stable proteins such as collagen in
leather or parchment in more detail. Further possible applications include stud-
ies on protein survival and degradation.68 Also, whether enzymatic digestion
can be dispensed with and whether it is sufficient to analyse only the undigest-
ed fragments that arise solely due to the ageing process has not been adequately
researched and certainly offers potential for further investigations. However, it
must be noted that the last option mentioned is not a top-down approach in the
classic sense.
To overcome the disadvantages of bottom-up approaches, which are mainly
based on a low sequence coverage, and of top-down approaches, which are
more associated with technical limitations, new considerations deal with mid-
dle-down approaches as a further strategy. This middle way, although not yet

||
64 Chen et al., 2018; Padula et al. 2017.
65 Fornelli et al. 2018.
66 Shin et al. 2018; Toby et al. 2016.
67 Bona et al. 2014; Maixner et al. 2013.
68 Hendy et al. 2021.
200 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

widely used, involves enzymatic digestion with special proteases that are less
efficient than trypsin, yielding longer peptide fragments of about 20-100 amino
acids that have a molecular mass of 2.5 kDa-10 kDa. Because larger fragments
are obtained overall, both the number of peptides and the complexity of the
sample extracts decrease. As a result, the requirements for chromatographic
separation are reduced, too. At the same time, more unique fragments are
formed so that the sequence coverage increases and PTMs as well as pro-
teoforms can be analysed more easily.69 So far, the middle-down strategy has
been used to a very limited extent. Nevertheless, there could also be great po-
tential here for the proteomics analysis of ancient documents.

3.5 Technology requirements for proteomics analyses using

mass spectrometry
Since the development of the first MS instruments by Aston and Thomson at the
beginning of the twentieth century, a wide variety of techniques and designs
have been developed for various scientific issues and applications, and yet they
are all based on a similar principle: (i) The desorption of the analytes into the
gas phase including their ionisation, (ii) the separation of the ions according to
their mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) and (iii) the detection.70 Nevertheless, the dif-
ferent types are more or less suitable for the analysis of proteins and peptides;
in the following sections we will briefly discuss the most important ones.
Some potential ion sources for the desorption and ionisation of the analytes
have already been explained in Section 3.3.2. However, the most commonly
used ion sources for the detection of proteins and peptides are ESI and matrix-
assisted laser desorption/ionisation (MALDI). Both techniques are soft ionisa-
tion sources in which the analytes fragment only weakly, if at all. MALDI is
based on the use of UV-absorbing substances, the so-called matrix, which are
mixed with the analytes. The matrix must be present in a large excess so that a
solid matrix crystal is formed by co-crystallisation. Subsequently, the matrix is
then ablated using a pulsed UV laser, and the analytes are entrained and ion-
ised, although the exact ionisation process is not yet fully understood. However,
different theories exist. MALDI predominantly leads to the formation of singly
charged adducts such as, for example, [M+H]+, [M+Na]+ or [M+K]+.71

||
69 Cristobal et al. 2017; Pandeswari and Sabareesh 2019.
70 Smoluch and Silberring 2019.
71 Dreisewerd 2003; Karas and Hillenkamp 1988.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 201

Compared to MALDI, online couplings with LC principles are possible using

ESI. The eluate of the LC is sprayed under atmospheric pressure by means of
nitrogen within an electric field. As the solvent evaporates, the charged analytes
accumulate on the surface of the individual droplets. Due to the high charge
density, the individual droplets disintegrate like an explosion (Coulomb explo-
sion) until only the charged analytes are present and passed into the MS.72
Characteristic of the ESI process is the formation of pseudo ([M+H]+, [M+H]-) and
adduct molecules ([M+Na]+, [M+NH4]+ etc.) as well as the induction of multiple
charges ([M+H]2+, [M+3H]3+etc.), especially with higher mass molecules like
proteins. With certain additives such as weak acids or salts to the eluents, the
ionisation processes can be influenced and thus possibly higher signal intensi-
ties can be achieved.73 Nanospray-ESI sources enable the formation of a stable
spray and maximum sensitivity even at low flow rates, which is particularly
relevant when only small amounts of the analytes are available.74 Since MALDI
and ESI are based on different ionisation processes and are complementary to
each other, it is recommended to use both techniques in order to record the
maximum information content from the proteome of a sample.75
To determine the m/z ratios of proteins and peptides, high-resolution ana-
lysers such as time-of-flight (ToF), orbitrap or fourier-transform ion-cyclotron-
resonance (FT-ICR) analysers are primarily used. The various mass analysers
differ mainly in resolution, accuracy, measuring range, scan rate and price.76
ToF analysers are combined with both ESI and MALDI ion sources. They are
characterised by fast scan rates and are therefore suitable for fast LC separa-
tions. In addition, very large m/z-ratios can still be analysed with them. Com-
pared to ToF analysers, orbitraps are comparatively compact, but do not allow
as fast scan rates. In addition, the mass range is limited to about m/z 6,000.
However, they have a significantly better resolution and MSn spectra can be
recorded. The highest mass resolution is achieved with FT-ICR devices. They are
also the most expensive both to purchase and to maintain, as they are operated
with superconducting magnets that are cooled with liquid nitrogen and helium.
However, scan rates are the lowest compared to the other two analysers. Usual-
ly, different analysers are coupled with each other so that MS/MS or MSn exper-
iments are possible.

||
72 Yamashita and Fenn 1984.
73 García 2005; Leitner et al. 2007; Nshanian et al. 2018.
74 Karas et al. 2000; Wilm and Mann 1994.
75 Nadler et al. 2017.
76 Creydt and Fischer 2020.
202 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

In recent years, the market leaders have also equipped some of their LC-ESI-
QToF devices with ion mobility spectroscopy (IMS) cells. Depending on the
device manufacturer (Agilent, Bruker or Waters), different designs are available,
all with the aim of introducing an additional orthogonal separation in order to
be able to distinguish compounds that have the same (isobars) or a very similar
m/z ratios. The ion mobility of a molecule is influenced by the mass and the
charge but also by its size and shape (collision cross section, CCS). Especially in
proteomics studies, this technology offers a high added value, both at the pro-
tein level, to distinguish structural conformers and especially at the peptide
level in shotgun approaches to increase the sequence coverage, as isobar frag-
ments can be separated better and background noise is reduced, which leads to
an improved signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, this technique can also be very
helpful in identifying PTMs.77 Even if, to our knowledge, no comprehensive
studies using IMS devices have yet been carried out on ancient artefacts, it can
be assumed that this technology will have a high added value in future studies.

3.6 Data evaluation

The identification of peptides and their associated proteins in proteomics and
metaproteomics experiments is often challenging and can be very time-
consuming. In the simplest case, with PMF approaches, which are usually car-
ried out with MALDI-ToF devices, a bottom-up experiment is carried out and,
after enzymatic digestion, the peptides obtained are measured by MS in full-
scan mode (Fig. 3A). In this way, no sequence data are obtained, but a finger-
print that is dependent on both the peptide or protein and the enzyme. The
protein can then be identified on the basis of a comparison of the peak list ob-
tained with the corresponding sequence databases. The ZooMS method already
presented is based on this procedure (see Section 2). The prerequisite for this
simple and quick procedure is, on the one hand, that there are as few impurities
or PTMs as possible and, on the other hand, that the corresponding sequences
are available in the protein or genome databases used, such as Swiss-Prot or
NCBI. Suitable search programs are, for example Mascot,78 MS-FiT,79 ProFound80

||
77 Dodds and Baker 2019; Winter et al. 2019.
78 Perkins et al. 1999.
79 https://prospector.ucsf.edu/prospector/cgi-bin/msform.cgi?form=msfitstandard (accessed
on 24 Jan. 2021).
80 Zhang and Chait 2000.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 203

or PeptIdent.81 Sometimes it can be helpful to use different programs and data-

bases, as the tools rely on different algorithms and quality parameters for the
calculations.82
If PMF is not sufficient for reliable identification, e. g. because the extract is
not pure enough, or if the peptide sequence is to be determined more precisely,
peptide fragment fingerprinting (PFF) approaches are particularly suitable
(Fig. 3B).

Fig. 3: Workflow of A) PMF and B) PFF. While only MS spectra are recorded for PMF experiments,
PFF studies enable additional structural information by generating MS2 or MSn spectra.

For this purpose, the peptides are subjected to mass spectrometric frag-
mentation after enzymatic digestion, so that even smaller fragment ions are

||
81 NCSC US, PeptIdent <http://www.pdg.cnb.uam.es/cursos/BioInfo2004/pages/visualizacion/
programas_manuales/spdbv_userguide/us.expasy.org/tools/peptident.html> (accessed on 24 Jan.
2021).
82 Damodaran et al. 2007; Dupree et al. 2020; Henzel et al. 2003; Zengin et al. 2017.
204 | Marina Creydt, Markus Fischer

obtained. In this way, structural information for a database comparison is ob-

tained. The Mascot software can also be used for this step. In addition to many
other programs, SEQUEST83 is a helpful tool in this context, especially when
spectra with low signal-to-noise ratios are available. PFF experiments are also
suitable for de novo sequencing, which is relevant if peptides are not registered
in databases, and PTMs can be more easily traced.84
In addition to the procedures explained, as in many other research areas,
bioinformatic methods for pattern recognition are becoming increasingly rele-
vant.85 These have the advantage, on the one hand, that the data can be evalu-
ated automatically and, on the other hand, that more signals and multivariate
relationships can be taken into account so that sub-differentiations can be made
between the various sample groups. Overall, more signals can be used in this
way than with a pure database comparison, which assumes that the signals are
already known. At the same time, relevant marker signals can be extracted, the
structure of which can be particularly relevant for further interpretations. While
such approaches have so far hardly been pursued in manuscript research using
proteomics, the work on other ancient artefacts or with other technological
platforms is already more advanced.86 This procedure assumes that reference
samples are measured using the same method, but the larger such a database
becomes, the more information can be made available. It can be assumed that
some developments in this area can be expected in the next few years.

4 Conclusions
Although paleoprotomics is a comparatively young discipline, numerous break-
throughs have already been made in manuscript research. Above all, the pro-
gress from destructive sampling to non-invasive procedures is of great value
and enables research in this area to be progressed increasingly, as the acquisi-
tion of samples as a whole is made significantly easier. Further future develop-
ments on the part of MS and also chromatographic methods will make it
possible to measure with ever greater sensitivity, so that details of the proteome
can be recorded better and better. In this regard, we see great potential in the
establishment of IMS technologies. Some successes could already be recorded

||
83 Eng et al. 1994.
84 Dupree et al. 2020; Na and Paek 2020; Zengin et al. 2017.
85 Creydt and Fischer 2020.
86 Alvarez et al. 2019; Bacci et al. 2001; Gu and Buckley 2018; Navas et al. 2008.
 Proteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts | 205

on the data evaluation side. Nevertheless, there are still some challenges to be
mastered in this area in order to achieve a greater coverage of the sequences
and improve the database research. Furthermore, with the implementation of
bioinformatic methods it should be possible to obtain a large amount of addi-
tional information via a manuscript, since signals that have not yet been inter-
preted can be explained better. There is further potential in expanding the
currently predominantly applied bottom-up approaches to middle-down and
top-down strategies, since in this way less information could be lost.
Overall, the proteomics and metaproteomics analysis of ancient manu-
scripts offers a great deal of added information, also in connection with other,
comparatively more established methods. Based on the successes already
achieved, further progress can be expected in the next few years, even if there is
still much to be done.

Acknowledgements
This publication was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG,
German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2176
‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in
Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796 and was conducted within the
scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität
Hamburg.

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Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico
Laurenza
Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript
with Anatomic Drawings and Notes
Abstract: In this paper, we discuss the importance of scientifically investigating
cultural artefacts in a non-invasive way. Taking as test case Leonardo da Vinci’s
Manuscript with anatomic drawings and notes, which is stored in Weimar, we
clarify fundamental steps in the chronology of this folio. By means of microsco-
py, infrared reflectography, UV photography, and X-ray fluorescence analysis,
we were able to identify various types of sketching material and several varie-
ties of iron gall ink. For his sketches, Leonardo used two different sketching
tools, a lead pencil and a graphite pencil, as well as several types of ink for de-
veloping these sketches into drawings. With regard to ink, it is important to
observe that there is no difference between the ink Leonardo used for drawing
and the ink he used for writing text. Based on the materials analysed, we sug-
gest a chronology for the creation of this unique folio.

1 Introduction
The particular manuscript with anatomic drawings and notes1 that is now kept
in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar2 originally belonged to the Royal Collection in
Windsor (Anatomic manuscript B or Fogli B).3 It is unclear how this folio – formerly
part of the Anatomy B folios, related to RL 19095, and facing RL 19052 – made its
way to Weimar.4 There might be a connection to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
who was also interested in anatomical study, especially in studies of skulls.5 It
would be interesting to consider whether this manuscript came to Weimar at
Goethe’s urging.6

||
1 See also Keele 1983.
2 Favaro 1928.
3 Keele and Pedretti 1980, 164–167, 820–822, 830; Clayton and Philo 1992, 74–76; Pedretti
2005, 165–178.
4 Steinitz 1960, Möller 1930.
5 Marmor 1988.
6 Mildenberger et al. 2016.

Open Access. © 2021 Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza, published by
De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-011
214 | Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza

2 Current state of research

Most scholars date the drawing to about 1506–1508,7 which seems to be con-
firmed by the hatched areas. During the 1490s, hatching along the outline and
within the figure was done with straight lines.8

Fig. 1: Presentation of the recto (left) and verso side (right) of the folio. Recto, upper half, from
the right: frontal view of male genitalia; bladder (also dissected), muscles of the anal sphinc-
ter. Lower half: frontal view of female genitalia. Verso, above: brain with cerebral ventricles,
emergence of the spinal cord (flanked by two small cords), cranial nerves. Cranial nerves illus-
trated (top to bottom): the olfactory nerves directed toward the frontal sinus, the optic chiasm
with nerves and optical tracts, the trigeminal branches, the vagus nerve. Lower right: exploded
view of the head, with the cranial vault, brain with cranial nerves, and the cranial base. Lower
left: frontal view of the male genitalia. © Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Klassik Stiftung
Weimar.

The contents of this folio are dominated by scholastic analogical thought,

which, after centuries of verbal expression, finds a formidable visual expression

||
7 Müntz 1899, 526.
8 See also Herrlinger 1953.
 Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript with Anatomic Drawings and Notes | 215

for the first time in Leonardo. There are two main sets of analogies here: the
analogies between male and female genitalia, and the analogies between the
reproductive and nervous systems. On the recto side of the folio, the female
genitalia (below) are coupled with the depiction of the male genitalia (upper
right), both presented in a frontal view. On the Windsor folio (RL 19059v; K/P
54v), which originally opposite the recto side of the Weimar folio, both images
are again paired in a side view9. A notation on the Weimar folio highlights the
analogy: ‘The female has two sperm ducts in the form of testicles, and her sperm
is first blood like that of the man […]’ Scholastic medicine described the female
genital organs as being analogous to male organs, except that the female organs
are internal.
Our main task is not an art-historical interpretation of the drawings, which
have been described in detail elsewhere and do not require further inter-
pretation here. Rather, based on the physically available materials, we shed
light on the genesis of the folio and thus the relationship between text and
drawing.

3 Scientific analysis
In summary, the focus of this paper is the material aspects of the folio and the
findings of scientific analysis. The drawing and the text passages were executed
in different iron gall inks. As mentioned above, visual inspection reveals at least
two different colours; a closer investigation reveals what appear to be addition-
al different ink colours (see Fig. 2). Moreover, traces of preliminary sketches are
visible to the naked eye.

||
9 Keele 1983, 66–67, 350–351.
216 | Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza

Fig. 2: Detailed views of different parts of the sheet, showing what appear to be different ink
colours. These ‘differing colours’ may in fact be caused by the presence (or absence) of mate-
rials used in preliminary sketches or by corrosion processes.

Because the folio is unique and fragile, it must be kept in a controlled environ-
ment and cannot be moved. In addition, any analysis of its composition must be
conducted without taking samples and without touching the surface of the ob-
ject. We therefore used UV photography (UV), infrared reflectography (IRR), and
X-ray fluorescence analysis to investigate the drawings and text passages (see
Appendix).

4 First results
4.1 UV/IRR
Figure 3 displays various microscopic images taken of several details under UV,
VIS, and NIR light. Due to their tannin content, iron gall inks are clearly visible
under UV light, whereas the preliminary sketches are visible under NIR illumi-
nation.
 Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript with Anatomic Drawings and Notes | 217

Fig. 3: Microscopic images taken under UV light (365 nm, first column), visible light (second
column), and NIR light (third column). First row: part of a man’s head; second row: part of a
male genital organ; third row: star-like marker on the verso side; last row: star-like marker on
the recto side. In contrast to IR radiation, UV light is easily absorbed by tannins and increases
the visibility of iron gall inks. In addition to the drawings and text passages, elements such as
the star-like patterns are visible under UV light.

Infrared reflectography (IRR) of both pages clearly reveals preliminary sketches

beneath the various drawings. However, not all parts exhibit sketches (Fig. 4).
On the recto side, preliminary sketches of female genital organs (front view) and
a bladder (side view) are clearly visible. In contrast to these drawings, the
218 | Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza

drawings of the male genital organs and the five muscles of an anus do not
appear to be based on any preliminary sketches. In addition, another prelimi-
nary sketch below the bladder drawing was not elaborated.
On the verso side, we can observe preliminary sketches of a man’s head
with brain (side view), the figure of the top of a skull with brain and related
nerves (side view), and the male genital organs (front view). Therefore, a similar
pictorial object was sketched in one case but not in the other.

Fig. 4: IRR (1000 nm) of recto (left) and verso side (right).

It is remarkable that we were able to detect the element lead (Pb) in various
amounts irregularly disseminated throughout the paper. An elaborate analysis
by means of XRF reveals two different types of material for sketching. In the
upper parts of each side, Leonardo used a carbon-based material (i.e. a graphite
pencil), whereas the lower parts of each side were executed with a lead pen. It is
impossible to say why Leonardo used two different types of material for sketch-
ing (see Fig. 5). Furthermore, we cannot reconstruct the chronology of the pre-
liminary sketches based on the analytical results, which were conducted on
only one object.
 Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript with Anatomic Drawings and Notes | 219

Fig. 5: Detailed views of two different preliminary sketches under IR light (1000 nm) – left:
graphite pencil; right: lead pen.

4.2 XRF
Investigation of the iron gall ink by means of XRF shows that three different
types of ink were used for the drawings and the text passages. In addition, we
analysed two iron gall inks that were used for the stars and the pagination char-
acter y. It must be emphasized that the star-like markers on the recto side are
nearly washed out (in contrast to the verso side); these measurements therefore
contain a significant measuring error. Nevertheless, it is possible to prove the
similarity of the ink used for these markers.
Figure 6 displays, in different colours, the elements of the different groups
of iron gall ink. Leonardo did not restrict himself to two types of ink for the
drawings and text passages. The two visible colours of ink are due either to a
chemical reaction or to the mixing of iron gall ink with the sketching material.
We were able to identify three different inks, types A, B, and C, in the drawings
and text passages; the markers were performed with ink type D; and the pagina-
tion character was written with ink type E.
220 | Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza

Fig. 6: Fingerprint values (e.g. relative concentration) of different elements (potassium, K;

manganese, Mn; nickel, Ni; copper, Cu; zinc, Zn) present in the iron gall inks. The error bars
indicate analytical error.

Based on the various materials, we can reconstruct the chronology of the two
pages. As mentioned before, it is not possible to fix the sequence of the various
preliminary sketches based on the analytical results. Nevertheless for the recto
side we may conclude that Leonardo first used a lead pencil for the preliminary
sketch of the female genital organs and then switched to a carbon-based mate-
rial, maybe graphite, for the preliminary sketch of the bladder (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7: Reconstruction of the chronology of preliminary drawings (red: lead pen; black: graphite
pencil).
 Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript with Anatomic Drawings and Notes | 221

In the next step, most of the drawings and the text passages were executed with
one iron gall ink, type A (Fig. 8, brown lines). It must be emphasized that all
preliminary sketches (in either led pen or graphite pencil) were then elaborated
with this type of ink. After this step, additional parts of the drawings were exe-
cuted in two different types of ink: type B (Fig. 8, blue) and type C (Fig. 8,
green). Finally, the markers (Fig. 8, red) and the pagination (Fig. 8, violet) were
added. It is very important to emphasize that Leonardo mostly used the same
ink for the drawings and for the text passages.

Fig. 8: Reconstruction of the iron gall ink drawings and the text passages.

5 Conclusion
Scientific investigation of this folio reveals distinct steps in the chronology of
Leonardo’s anatomic sketchbook. We have been able to identify various types of
sketching material and various types of iron gall ink. Leonardo used two differ-
ent sketching materials, and he used several inks to develop the sketches into
drawings. It is remarkable that there is no difference between the ink used for
drawing and the ink used for text. These findings lead to a general interpretation
222 | Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza

of the scientific results, based on different types of hatching corresponding to

different functions, and might provide new insights into Leonardo’s creative
working process.
As mentioned before, the relation of this folio to the bundle of anatomic
drawings stored in the Windsor Castle collection is evident. It is noteworthy that
we analysed only one folio of the whole codex. To answer broader questions
about the use of two different sketching materials, the varying use of ink for
drawings and for text passages, and the significance of star-like markers, addi-
tional analysis of these objects will have to be conducted.

6 Excursus
6.1 Reconstruction of the primary appearance
Regarding the chemical composition of iron gall ink, it should be borne in mind
that the appearance of the various types of iron gall ink may have changed over
time. During the manufacturing process, iron gall ink is black due to the for-
mation of the black ferro-gallate pigment. With age, the colour can change from
black to brown, depending on storage conditions, climate, and the chemical
composition of the ink itself. These phenomena have been well known for gen-
erations and were first described by Ribeaucourt.10 On the other hand, paper
degrades and turns brown due to oxidation and other corrosion processes. Fur-
ther details are discussed elsewhere.11
Figure 9 shows how the two pages may have appeared originally. The vari-
ous types of iron gall ink are all black, and the optical interference of the differ-
ent sketching materials is not visible.

||
10 Ribeaucourt 1797.
11 Meyer et al. 2015.
 Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript with Anatomic Drawings and Notes | 223

Fig. 9: Reconstruction of the original appearance

6.2 The paper

Visually observed under grazing light, the surface of the paper exhibits textile
imprints. These imprints are due to the use of wool felt during production of the
paper. There is no difference between the recto and verso sides. Therefore, it is
not possible to distinguish between a sieve and a felt side. Examination of the
folio under transmitted light reveals no watermark; however, two other observa-
tions indicate an early type of paper. The rib wires are very broad (up to 1 mm).
The copper wire was first drawn and then flattened. No weft-wire structure is
visible; presumably, the weft wires were not woven in during the construction
of the sieve. The rib wires were not fixed, or horsehair was used as weft wire,
and the wires are therefore invisible in the paper structure (see Fig. 10).12

||
12 Dietz and Wintermann 2013.
224 | Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza

Fig. 10: Visualization of the paper structure.

Appendix
Multispectral Imaging analysis: UV photography (UV) and
Infrared Reflectography (IRR)
Infrared and UV reflectography are well-established, non-destructive exam-
ination tools that can reveal information about a broad range of cultural herit-
age artefacts. Both techniques may be described as Multispectral Imaging (MSI)
techniques.
UVA (320–400 nm) is most commonly used in the examination of artefacts.
Some materials absorb UV radiation and re-emit it in the visible spectrum as
UV-induced visible fluorescence. UV radiation causes visible fluorescence in
various proteinaceous materials such as glue and paper sizing implements and
is easily absorbed by tannins.
Infrared radiation used for the examination of cultural artefacts is generally
divided into near IR (NIR, 700–1000 nm) and mid IR (MIR, 1000–3000 nm).
Many materials exhibit different visual appearances under specific wavelengths
 Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript with Anatomic Drawings and Notes | 225

of IR radiation, depending on whether they absorb, transmit, or reflect the radi-

ation. Most important in these investigations is the behaviour of certain types of
ink and drawing media, which enables classification of these materials. Carbon-
based ink, graphite, charcoal, and metal points easily absorb in MIR, while
organic ink and iron gall ink become increasingly transparent under longer
wavelengths.13
We used a USB microscope equipped with white light LEDs in addition to
the UV (390 nm) and near infrared LEDs (NIR, 940 nm) (magnification × 3.4). In
addition, the objects were photographed with an X71 Microbox camera under
UV (365 nm), normal, and NIR (1100 nm) illumination.

Fingerprint model
It is well known that iron gall inks are produced by mixing natural iron vitriol
with gallnut extracts. Because the inks are made from natural raw materials,
they have heterogeneous, often very different, compositions.14 In addition to
iron sulfate, they contain secondary components, such as vitriols of the alumi-
num (Al), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), or zinc (Zn),15 which are also referred to
as ‘metal salts’. These metals do not contribute to colour formation in the ink
solution, but they may change the chemical properties of the inks and influence
corrosion processes. The varying composition of these different vitriols is a
characteristic property of historical iron gall inks and makes their exact deter-
mination possible.16
The inorganic contaminants mentioned above provide a basis for differenti-
ating between the iron gall inks. The present micro-XRF measurements of the
iron gall inks were quantified using the composition fingerprint model, which is
based on fundamental parameter procedures leading to the value Wi (relative
amount of weight concentration of the element i, e.g. Mn, Cu, Zn, relative to
Fe).17 Ageing phenomena have no influence on the method of analysis we used,
because even if the appearance of an iron gall ink has changed (e.g. from black
to brown) due to chemical corrosion processes that alter the organic material,
the proportion of metal salts in the ink remains the same.

||
13 Mrusek et al. 1995.
14 Krekel 1999, Oltrogge 2005.
15 Hickel 1963, Lucarelli and Mando 1996.
16 Hahn 2010.
17 Hahn et al. 2004, Malzer et al. 2004.
226 | Oliver Hahn, Uwe Golle, Carsten Wintermann, Domenico Laurenza

X-ray fluorescence (XRF)

Elemental analyses were carried out with the mobile energy dispersive micro-X-
ray spectrometer ARTAX® (Bruker GmbH, Berlin), which consists of an air-
cooled, low-power molybdenum tube, polycapillary X-ray optics (measuring a
spot size 70 µm in diameter), an electrothermally cooled Xflash detector, and a
CCD camera for sample positioning. Additional open helium purging in the
excitation and detection paths enables the determination of light elements
(11 < Z < 20) without a vacuum. All measurements were made using a 30 W low-
power Mo tube, 45 kV, 600 µA, with an acquisition time of 15 s (live time) to
minimize the risk of damage. For better statistics, at least ten single measure-
ments were averaged for one data point. Further details of the method are de-
scribed elsewhere.18

Acknowledgements
The authors want to thank Christien Melzer (Klassik Stiftung Weimar) and
Ursula Verena Fischer Pace (Rome) for fruitful suggestions and discussions.

References
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Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu
Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond
Visible Examination
Abstract: A series of thirty-five engraved gems from the collection of the Muse-
um für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, were re-examined using non-destructive
material-science methods in order to verify the previously determined rock type.
The results of four selected, engraved gems containing pictorial elements as
well as inscribed letters are presented in detail as a showcase of opaque gems.
These intaglios originate from different epochs and places in the Mediterranean.
They were analysed using both classical gemmological approaches and the
more advanced Raman and infrared-reflectance spectroscopic methods, which
can fingerprint the solid material on the basis of its atomic structure and chemi-
cal composition. The results demonstrate the potential of these spectroscopic
methods for unambiguous identification of engraved gems and, more im-
portantly, the necessity of applying them along with traditional gemmological
methods for a correct material identification, which may furthermore help in
tracing the origin of the inscribed gem.

1 Introduction
The appearance of writing and creation of written artefacts was a key factor for
the development and survival of ancient cultures. To better understand the role
of written artefacts in this evolution, researchers ought to examine not only the
message left by former generations, but also the process of creating the mes-
sage: choice of writing support, development of suitable tools, and the estab-
lishment of production processes.
The diversity of written artefacts in terms of material support is huge and
includes clay tablets, stones, metal, ivory, parchment, palm leaves, paper, etc.
Among these, gems were chosen as both portable and durable, seemingly ever-
lasting messengers, i.e. they were intended to deliver the text message to differ-
ent places within the same time period as well as into the future. Gems are
generally characterized by appealing visual appearance (to catch the eye)1 as

||
1 See e.g. Rapp 2009.

Open Access. © 2021 Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, published by De Gruyter.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-012
230 | Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

well as by having mechanical and chemical resistance to intensive everyday

use. However, gemstones with a high level of hardness, such as ruby or sap-
phire (Al2O3-based, Mohs hardness2 9) and diamond (built up of four-
coordinated carbon, Mohs hardness 10) are very difficult to carve and hence are
rarely used as writing supports. Thus, most of the ancient engraved gems are
varieties of quartz (SiO2, framework silicates, Mohs hardness ~7), jade (com-
posed of chain silicates, Mohs hardness ~6–7), and rocks containing predomi-
nantly layered silicates which have Mohs hardness ranging between 2 and 4.
Typical examples of silica varieties are carnelian, jasper, agate, chalcedony, and
opal, whereas the latter group includes soapstone, serpentinite, and mica rocks.
Carnelian can be clearly distinguished from the other rocks mentioned above
because it is translucent and appears optically homogenous and reddish in
colour. Agate, chalcedony, and opal can also be identified by their common
visual appearance. However, these mineral varieties may appear opaque, like
jade, soapstone, serpentinite, and mica rocks, and sometimes the identification
of opaque rocks via classical gemmological methods can be very challenging or
almost impossible, even for experienced researchers, especially if the samples
do not exhibit polished surfaces suitable for the determination of optical con-
stants.
This reality calls for the application of more sophisticated analytical meth-
ods, which are sensitive to both the atomic structure and chemical composition
and thus can provide the information necessary to unambiguously identify the
mineral phases composing the gem. Since such methods should be non-
destructive, one has to use techniques in which the reflection signal from the
sample is analysed. Therefore, Raman spectroscopy and infrared (IR) reflec-
tance spectroscopy are very suitable for this purpose. Both methods are based
on the interaction between the incident electromagnetic radiation and the so-
called normal vibrational modes of the solid sample, i.e. the set of atomic vibra-
tions around the equilibrium positions of atoms that are allowed to exist in the
material without destroying it. Hence, the resulting measured spectra carry
unique information about the atomic-scale configuration and can truly finger-
print crystalline as well as amorphous phases.
Over the last decade, Raman spectroscopy has become popular for fast,
easy-to-handle, non-destructive mineral identification.3 This is partially due to

||
2 The Mohs hardness scale represents the scratch resistance of solids relative to ten reference
minerals, with diamond having the maximum value of 10. The absolute hardness plotted
against the Mohs hardness resembles an exponential growth function. See e.g. Rapp 2009.
3 See e.g. Giarola et al. 2012; Centeno 2015.
 Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination | 231

the continuously growing databases available online, free of charge,4 but also
because of the establishment of strategies and protocols for quantitative deter-
mination of the chemical formulas of complex silicate minerals.5 A thorough
quantitative analysis of the phase and chemical compositions is also of great
significance for analysing portable, mineral-base written artefacts because it
may considerably advance provenance studies. However, Raman spectroscopy
has one drawback that may hamper its application to natural samples: the ex-
istence of strong photoluminescence background (due to substitution or struc-
tural defects) combined with weak Raman signals may result in unfeasibility to
detect any usable spectral profile. Infrared reflectance spectroscopy is rarely
used for mineral identification because the assessable spectral range for prob-
ing the atomic vibrations is restricted due to instrument limitations. Besides, the
collected spectral profiles are quite different from the IR spectra measured in the
common transmittance regime due to the combined effect of multiple light-
matter interaction processes. Nevertheless in the case of poor-quality Raman
spectra, IR reflectance spectroscopy becomes the technique of choice as a non-
destructive method that is also applicable to samples exhibiting strong photo-
luminescence.
In order to explore the potential of Raman and IR reflectance spectroscopy
for identifying the rock type of engraved gems, we have analysed thirty-five
samples from the collection of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MKG),
Hamburg. Here we report our results for four selected samples, which contain
symbols and written text along with engraved figures; these samples appear
opaque and are thus representative for our study. We show that the original
material assignment of these gems needs to be revised, and also demonstrate
that if the writing support is atypical, then the material profile can be a marker
for provenance.

2 Materials and methods

2.1 Samples and classical examination
The catalogue numbers, locality, and inscription age of the intaglios studied
here are given in Table 1. The table also summarizes the previous rock-type

||
4 See e.g. Lafuente et al. 2015.
5 Bendel and Schmidt 2008, 1055; Bersani et al. 2009, 484; Bersani et al. 2018, 684; Huang et
al. 2000, 473; Kuebler et al. 2006, 6201; Leissner et al. 2015, 2682; Watenphul et al. 2016, 970.
232 | Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

identification.6 Gem #1964.294 has been so far described as soapstone, gems

#1964.324 and #1965.130 as jasper, and gem #1965.122 as moss agate. The intaglios
were first re-examined using classical non-destructive gemmological approaches,
namely: (i) observation of general appearance (e.g. colour, transparency, tex-
ture, occurrence of luminescence upon UV irradiation); (ii) determination of
specific gravity and refractive index; and (iii) further physical properties
(e.g. magnetic activity).

Table 1: Gem catalogue number, locality and age of inscription (after Zazoff 1975), material
identification according to classical gemmological methods, and material identification via
Raman or IR reflectance spectroscopy.

Gem Locality / inscription age Classical gemmological Raman /

methods IR spectroscopy

previously this study

1964.294 Melos, Greece (?); second soapstone serpentinite muscovite variety

half of the 7th c. BCE
1964.324 Phoenicia – Carthage; green jasper green jasper opal A + glauconite as a
6th c. BCE colouring agent
1965.122 locality unknown; 3 rd– black jasper serpentinite + Fe-containing
4th c. CE; inscription: Greek magnetite antigorite + magnetite
1965.130 Persia; 6th–7th c. CE moss agate serpentinite antigorite + magnetite
with magnetite
grains

2.2 Raman spectroscopy

The Raman spectra were collected in back-scattering geometry with a Horiba
Jobin-Yvon T6400 triple-monochromator system equipped with an Olympus
BX41 confocal microscope and an LN2-cooled Symphony CCD Detector. The
spectra were excited with the green line (=514.532 nm) of the Coherent Innova
90C FreD Ar+ laser. The spectrometer was calibrated to the position of the
Raman peak of Si wafer at 520.5 cm-1, the spectral resolution was ~2 cm-1, while
the precision in determining the peak positions was ~0.35 cm-1. All spectra were

||
6 Zazoff 1975 provides a catalogue with commentary of the collection of engraved gems at the
MKG.
 Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination | 233

collected with 50 long-working distance objective, using a confocal hole of 400
m, which helped to reduce the undesired photoluminescence background. The
laser power delivered on the sample surface was ~7.9 mW, while the diameter of
the laser spot was approximately 2 m. Several points from the same sample
were probed in order to check for reproducibility of the spectra from the areas
with the same appearance under a microscope. The Raman spectra presented
below are baseline corrected for the continuum photoluminescence background,
using spline interpolation, and temperature reduced to account for the Bose-
Einstein phonon population. It is worth noting that none of these data-
evaluation steps influences the peak positions, and the aforementioned evalua-
tion procedure is not required for a simple phase identification based on quali-
tative comparison with reference spectra.

2.3 IR reflectance spectroscopy

The IR reflectance spectra were collected with a Bruker Vertex 70 FTIR spec-
trometer equipped with a Hyperion 2000 IR microscope with a 15 IR objective,
using a Globar as IR white source, a wide-range MIR-FIR beam splitter, and an
LN-MCT-D316-025 detector. The instrumental resolution was 2 cm-1 and the mir-
ror scanner velocity was 20.0 kHz. The spectra were collected from an area of
the size 8080 m.
The spectra of the engraved gems were compared with the spectra of refer-
ence mineral samples from the collection of the Mineralogical Museum, CeNak,
Universität Hamburg, which were measured under the same experimental con-
ditions as the gem spectra.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Engraved gem #1964.294
Among the intaglios in the collection of the MKG, two stones – due to their
characteristic material and style – are referred to as island gems, that is, archaic
intaglios, probably from Melos. The Cycladic island was a centre of art at the
end of the seventh as well as at the beginning of the sixth century BCE.7 Boardman
points out that ‘serpentine’ is the most common gem used in Melos and is

||
7 Boardman 1963, 106–107, refers to the exquisite pieces of jewelry from the Melian school.
234 | Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

represented in almost every shade of green. Furtwängler called the material

steatite, thus trying to qualify the colour or translucency, and he has been
followed by most subsequent archaeologists who have considered the matter
(including Zazoff 1975).8 Interestingly, Boardman also touches on the subject of
the disagreement between scientists and archaeologists over terminology.
Although he admits that the description will be ‘wholly unacceptable to the
petrologist’, he deems its use justified in this case, since ‘no archaeologist will
be misled by another’s use of it’.9 This approach might have been acceptable in
times when natural sciences and humanities had less contact, and collaborative
work was seen as unnecessary. One of the aims of the cooperation between
scientists and humanities scholars in Hamburg is to correct these obvious
mistakes and prevent them from occurring again.
Gem #1964.294 is a lentoid intaglio (2.00 – 1.95 – 0.63 cm), drilled horizon-
tally and obviously engraved with a manual graver. It shows the upper body of a
winged horse antipodically connected to a winged Capricorn, which is a typical
Melian pictorial element. Zazoff emphasizes the special quality of the work
which distinguishes the stone from other specimens and dates it to the second
half of the seventh century BCE.10 Gem #1964.290, on the other hand, is amygda-
loid and has been dated to the beginning of the seventh century BCE.11 The deco-
ration is a lizard in top view, although there are several alterations to the
natural form of the animal.
Using gemmological approaches, this sample has been identified as soap-
stone (Zazoff) or serpentinite (this study). It is commonly accepted that soap-
stone consists largely of talc (end-member formula Mg3[Si4O10](OH)2), which is a
layered silicate mineral exhibiting a sandwich structure of two SiO4-tetrahedral
layers and one MgO6-octahedral layer. Serpentinite is a rock composed predom-
inantly of serpentine minerals: another group of layered silicates characterized
with an end-member formula Mg3[Si2O5](OH)4 and a sandwich structure of one
SiO4-tetrahedral and one MgO6-octahedral layer. The three main structural poly-
morphs of serpentine are antigorite, lizardite, and chrysotile, which differ from
each other in the undulation of the sandwich slabs. The spectral differences
among the three serpentine minerals (if they have exactly the same composi-

||
8 Boardman 1963, 15. Furtwängler 1900, 22.
9 Boardman 1963, 16.
10 Zazoff 1975, 355, n. 9 and t. 247, Boardman 1963, 63, n. 247. On the technique, cf. Boardman
1963, 19–20, who shows similar intaglios from Melos now to be found in London, Paris, and
Munich amongst other places.
11 Zazoff 1975, 355–356, n. 10 and t. 247.
 Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination | 235

tion) are only subtle, but serpentines can be clearly distinguished from the other
layered silicates and in particular from talc via their Raman scattering.12
Raman spectroscopy revealed that gem #1964.294 is neither soapstone, nor
serpentine (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Raman spectra of gems #1964.294 and #1964.290 compared to reference spectra of
serpentine (Fe-containing antigorite), soapstone, muscovite, and Cr-bearing muscovite (fuchsite)
as well as photographs of the engraved side of the samples. In the graph, the dashed vertical
line traces the position of the strongest OH-stretching peak in near-end-member muscovite;
the vertical arrow points to the higher-wavenumber shoulder, which is more pronounced in
gems #1964.294 and #1964.290 than in the reference muscovite samples. Spectra in the plot
are vertically offset for clarity.

The Raman spectrum profile of this sample clearly indicates that it is muscovite
(another layered silicate with the chemical formula KAl2[AlSi3O10](OH)2), as the
positions of all observed peaks generated by framework vibrations (in the range
151200 cm-1) match those of reference near-end-member muscovite as well as of
Cr-bearing muscovite. Muscovite is commonly transparent and colourless to
pale yellow, whereas Cr-bearing muscovite, having a tiny amount of Cr replac-
ing Al in the octahedral layer, can be light greenish, which is a bit closer to the
appearance of gem #1964.294. However, colour and translucency can be influ-
enced by the presence of other chemical elements substituting for Al or by the
small average size of the mineral grains. If only the latter occurs, the Raman

||
12 Wang et al. 2015, 829.
236 | Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

spectra would not be affected, whereas compositional changes larger than 23
% should reflect onto the Raman spectra. Variations in the crystal chemistry of
hydrous silicates can be best detected via changes in the positions and relative
intensities of the Raman or infrared peaks generated by the OH stretching
modes, which appear in the range 34003750 cm-1.13 A close examination of this
spectral range indicates that the strongest OH-stretching peak of gem #1964.294
is slightly shifted to higher wavenumbers in comparison with the reference
muscovite and that the higher-wavenumber shoulder near 3650 cm-1 is more
pronounced for the studied gem than for the reference muscovite. This result
indicates that the engraved gem is built of muscovite with specific (atypical)
crystal chemistry. Further studies involving complementary analytical methods
on series of reference samples are necessary in order to establish a correlation
between Raman spectra and the crystal chemistry of muscovite, which will
make possible the non-destructive determination of the chemical composition
of engraved artefacts with muscovite rocks as a writing support. Nevertheless,
Raman spectroscopy clearly shows that this sample consists of muscovite with
substitution disorder, and its appearance additionally suggests that it is an
aggregate of fine-grained muscovite.
It should also be noted that according to Raman spectroscopy, among all
thirty-five engraved gems from the MKG collections that were part of this inves-
tigation, only the two samples from Melos, #1964.290 and #1964.294, exhibit the
same atomic structure and chemistry. Thus, a scientific analysis of similar is-
land gems ascribed to this area, which macroscopically appear as soapstone or
serpentinite, may prove useful in establishing whether in fact they are musco-
vite with the same crystal chemistry as that of #1964.294 and consequently, the
same provenance.

3.2 Engraved gem #1965.122

The dark and polished intaglio (2.00 – 2.52 – 0.54 cm), with a pictorial element
and inscription, probably dates to the third or fourth century CE (Zazoff). The
gem features a female lion-griffon, combining elements of a griffon, a lioness, as
well as other animals, and resembles in its presentation the griffon of Nemesis
as depicted in Roman art, although the right fork here is supported on a branch
and not on a wheel as usual.14 Above the figure, the Greek letters KΑΚΑΛΧΕ can

||
13 Leissner et al. 2015, Watenphul et al. 2016.
14 Zazoff 1975, 390 n. 82; Simon 1962, 770–771.
 Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination | 237

be read.15 These seem to be an abbreviated form of κακόν and ἀλαλκεῖν, ‘to ward
off evil’. This combination of words is found in Hesiod’s Theogonia, when the
poet describes the suffering of Prometheus. Heracles is credited with relieving
the sinner (Theog. 527): κακὴν δ’ ἀπὸ νοῦσον ἀλάλκεν, ‘relieved from pernicious
disease’. The verb is mainly found in the Homeric epics, and Pindar uses it once,
praising Chiron as a protector.16 These mythological references to gods and he-
roes are well in line with the depiction of the griffon, which was originally used
at the Persian royal court as a symbol of power.
This intaglio has been previously ascribed as jasper (Zazoff), which is an
opaque rock containing predominantly quartz and other minor minerals that
determine the colour of the stone (usually reddish, brownish, yellowish, green,
or black). Our re-examination using classical approaches, however, suggests
this gem is serpentinite, although serpentine is usually greenish rather than
blackish in colour. Additional mineral grains embedded into the serpentine
matrix could hardly be seen when examining with a classical gemmological
lens. However, this gem displays strong magnetic activity, indicating a large
fraction of magnetite (Fe3O4), which should be responsible for the overall black
colour of the intaglio.
One could speculate that the magnetic behaviour of this stone was recog-
nised by the ancient users and consequently added to the magic qualities of the
intaglio, which are defined by the inscribed text; we would then have an ancient
‘spiritual’ variant of a modern concept from our technology-oriented society:
‘material properties determine the material functionality’.
The Raman spectroscopic analysis (see Fig. 2) confirmed the conclusion of
our macroscopic re-examination: under high magnification, plenty of submi-
crometre-size mineral grains with high reflectivity can be observed, whose
Raman scattering indicates they are magnetite, while the matrix shows a typical
spectrum of serpentine, more specifically Fe-containing antigorite17. As can be
seen in Fig. 2, the Raman spectrum collected from the matrix of #1965.122 is
almost identical with that of the reference greenish antigorite, indicating nearly
the same crystal chemistry. The main compositional variation in serpentines is

||
15 Zazoff 1975, 390, interprets them as a combination of κακος [sic] and ἀπαλλάσσω, ‘Vom
Bösen befreien’. He is right on the general meaning, but the derivation he posits is not entirely
correct.
16 E.g. Homer, Iliad, 23, 185: ἀλλὰ κύνας μὲν ἄλαλκε Διὸς θυγάτηρ Ἀφροδίτη ‘The daughter of
Zeus, Aphrodite, warded off the dogs’, referring to her protection of Hector’s corpse; Hector
had been slain by Achilles, who had threatened that Hector’s corpse would be consumed by
dogs. Similarly: Homer, Iliad, 19,30; 21,138 and Pindar, Nemean Odes, 4,60.
17 Wang et al. 2015, 829.
238 | Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

the ratio Fe2+/Mg in the octahedral layer. Our ongoing study on series of
reference antigorite samples with different amounts of iron aims to establish a
method for non-destructive determination of Fe2+/Mg, which is another material
parameter that can quantitatively characterise written artefacts on a serpentine
base.

Fig. 2: Raman spectra of gem #1965.122 collected from the matrix and from blackish inclusions,
compared to reference spectra of Fe-containing antigorite (serpentine mineral group) and
magnetite, respectively, as well as a photograph of the engraved side of the intaglio. Spectra
in the plot are vertically offset for clarity.

3.3 Engraved gem #1965.130

Most interesting is a large (3.4 – 3.4 – 1.44 cm) and unique intaglio classified by
Zazoff as a Sassanian seal and dated to the sixth or seventh century CE. Zazoff
based his dating on the form of the crown of the bust on the reverse.18 On the
obverse he sees Gaymoarth, the Iranian Urmensch depicted within a circle of
creatures present at his birth.19 A long inscription in Pahlavi surrounds the
pictorial elements on both sides as well as on the vertical rim of the disc. It
seems that the artist tried to copy a template but did not understand it. The

||
18 Zazoff 1975, 395 n. 93.
19 Zazoff refers to Ackerman 1936, 126-127, who presents an illustration of a similar seal now
in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (see n. 21).
 Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination | 239

remnants do not allow for a complete textual context and meaning.20 The deci-
pherable parts contain conjurations and thus point to the use of the disc in
magical contexts. In a comprehensive study on magic seals from Sassanian
Iran, R. Gyselen shows two close parallels from Berlin and Boston but is una-
ware of the piece in Hamburg.21 She is cautious in identifying the figure on the
back of the disc and does not attempt a mythological match.22 Another seal of
the same kind was described by E.W. West in 1882. He saw ink impressions of a
stone amulet enclosed in a letter written by A.D. Mordtmann from Constanti-
nople in 1875 to Prof. Haug in Munich. The disc seems to have been offered to
Dr. Mordtmann for the sum of £ 45.23 West considers the inscription legible and
understandable, dates it, due to linguistic criteria, to the late seventh century CE
and even provides a translation. In the text, which he interprets as part of a
private letter – although from an insulting correspondence between two men –
he sees no indication of the later use of the disc as an amulet. Whether the stone
described by him is in fact one of the three discs now kept in Hamburg, Berlin,
and Boston or yet another example of this specific kind of object remains to be
seen.24
Based on its macroscopic appearance, this sample has previously been
identified as moss agate. The dominant mineral phase of agate is quartz (crys-
talline SiO2 polymorph), and moss agate refers to greenish agate, which con-
tains moss-like mineral inclusions, usually green amphibole or chlorite. Re-
examination using classical approaches, however, suggests that the matrix is
also serpentine (see Table 1) and contains blackish grains with metallic lustre
that may be magnetite. The latter assumption is supported by the fact that
whole gem exhibits subtle magnetic activity.

||
20 Zazoff 1975, 395 n. 93, indicating that the information on the inscription was provided by
R.N. Frye, a historian and orientalist, who held a visiting professorship at the University of
Hamburg in 1968–69.
21 Gyselen 1995, 25–28 with Figs 2a and 2b. On the Boston seal, see Pope and Ackerman 1964,
803 and pl. 256 W AA. The disc is presented as a ‘Gnostic amulet’ in the online collection of the
Museum of Fine Arts, <https://collections.mfa.org/objects/134006/gnostic-amulet;jsessionid=
16F89FDFC20A15060E8911DAD7CCE9A9> (accessed on 1 Dec. 2020). On the Berlin seal, see
Enderlein 1986, 28, n. 24.
22 Gyselen 1995, 28: ‘personnage à pieds fourchus’. It seems to her that the engraver wanted to
depict a person dressed in a characteristic fashion, which is still hard to define.
23 West 1882, 223.
24 C.G. Cereti will closely scrutinize the example from Hamburg and prepare a publication.
240 | Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

The Raman scattering collected from this sample (see Fig. 3) verifies that the
dominant phase is a serpentine polymorph, most probably antigorite25. Howev-
er, the positions of the OH-stretching peaks indicate that this serpentine mineral
contains a smaller amount of Fe2+ in comparison to the reference green an-
tigorite as well as to the matrix of gem #1965.122. For now, only qualitative
statements can be made, but as mentioned above we are currently working on
developing a strategy for non-destructive quantitative determination of the
crystal chemistry of this subgroup of layered silicates. The Raman analysis also
confirms that the grains with metallic lustre are magnetite.

Fig. 3: Raman spectrum of gem #1965.130 compared to a reference spectrum of Fe-containing

antigorite (serpentine mineral group) and photographs of the top and bottom side of the inta-
glio. Spectra in the plot are vertically offset for clarity.

3.4 Engraved gem #1964.324

This Phoenician pendant (1.45 – 1.08 – 0.77 cm) has the typical form of a scarab,
held by a golden band and is dated to the sixth century BCE. Isis-Hathor is
carved within a field framed by a ribbon. She sits on a throne wearing the head-
dress of Hathor: the sun within the horns of a cow. Whereas the ankh symbol on
the side of her throne is probably a deliberate reference to eternal life, the other
hieroglyphs are arranged in a nonsensical way and do not form a readable text.
The inscription is thus to be seen as an imitation of an Egyptian artefact in-
spired by the Egyptianising models circulating at the time. To the untrained eye

||
25 Wang et al. 2015, 829.
 Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination | 241

of the ancient beholder, the hieroglyphs may have presented a protective ‘text’
with magical functions.26
Macroscopic examination, previously by Zazoff and now undertaken as part
of this study, identifies this gem as green jasper. It should be recalled that jasper
is a rock with quartz (crystalline SiO2) as the chief mineral. Our efforts to detect
Raman signals on the topic of the photoluminescence background failed, al-
though Raman peaks from quartz were easily detected from other jasper samples
exhibiting a similar level of photoluminescence background. Hence, we sup-
pose that gem #1964.324 might be non-crystalline, since amorphous solids in
general have much weaker Raman cross section than crystalline solids. We have
tried to use red laser (632. 8 nm) or blue laser (488.0), but the undesired photo-
luminescence background remained too high. Neither did prolonged irradiation
of the sample help to reduce the background. Thus, we applied IR reflectance
spectroscopy to check the mineral phases composing this sample (see Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Infrared reflectance spectrum of gem #1964.324 compared to reference spectra of quartz,
opal A, and glauconite as well as photographs of the top and bottom side of the sample. The
arrows in the plot mark the contribution of glauconite to the IR spectrum of gem #1964.324;
spectra are vertically offset for clarity.

The comparison with reference IR reflectance spectra collected from quartz and
opal A (amorphous SiO2·nH2O) reveals that the matrix is amorphous opal, i.e. this

||
26 Zazoff 1975, 357, n. 11. We would like to thank L. Mascia, Hamburg, for valuable insights
from her ongoing PhD project.
242 | Boriana Mihailova, Jochen Schlüter, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

gem cannot be classified as jasper. Moreover, examination of a few green earth

pigments via IR reflectance spectroscopy shows that the gem contains
glauconite, having characteristic peaks at 960 and 668 cm-1 (marked by arrow in
Fig. 4). It is worth noting that both opal A and glauconite are commonly formed
as a result of marine sedimentary diagenesis, i.e. they may indeed appear
together in a mineral assembly, which is fully consistent with the mineral phase
identification via IR reflectance spectroscopy.

4 Conclusion
We demonstrate that:
– Classical gemmological approaches alone can be insufficient to properly
identify the material of opaque engraved gems.
– Raman spectroscopy is a very efficient non-destructive method for immedi-
ate mineral-phase identification of opaque gems, based on literature data
and existing spectral databases. Moreover, this analytical method has great
potential in developing strategies for non-invasively determining the con-
tent of minor elements in the structure of layered silicates, e.g. serpentines
and muscovite; such a determination would help to better characterize the
writing support and, in turn, to verify the provenance of portable rock-
based written artefacts.
– Infrared reflectance spectroscopy can be also useful for non-destructive
material profiling of engraved gems, especially when the utilization of
Raman spectroscopy is impeded due to the presence of pronounced and un-
desired photoluminescence background. In this case, however, it is advisa-
ble for researchers to select and measure suitable reference minerals or
rocks by themselves, because the quality of the sample surface and the ex-
perimental conditions can considerably affect the total reflectivity, which
interferes with the peaks generated by atomic vibrations.

For the study of written artefacts in general, close mineralogical analysis of

gems is both necessary and highly advantageous. Apart from information about
provenance – for which a large and internationally available database will have
to be established – information about the quality of the stones as well as about
their appearance adds to the description of the writing and the pictorial ele-
ments. Only a holistic approach of this sort renders it possible to understand not
merely the gem and its engravings separately, but the written artefact as an
undivided entity.
 Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination | 243

Acknowledgements
We thank Frank Hildebrandt, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, for
kindly providing access to the gems studied in this article. This study was funded
by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)
under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Arte-
facts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, project
no. 390893796. The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for
the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at the University of Hamburg.

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Ralf Möller
Humanities-Centred Artificial Intelligence
(CHAI) as an Emerging Paradigm
Abstract: This essay argues that there needs to be a shift in artificial intelli-
gence, namely, a shift from the perspective of computation-oriented machine
learning to the perspective of application-oriented machine training. With a
training perspective on artificial intelligence rather than a learning perspective,
issues raised by the humanities will become ever more important in the devel-
opment of new artificial intelligence systems; from a training perspective, the
goal is that intelligent systems act in ethical ways, solve tasks in trustworthy
ways, and that system configuration be controlled by humanities researchers
during a basic training phase. The central idea of Humanities-Centred AI (CHAI)
is that intelligent systems, proven to be a useful support to humanities re-
searchers in solving their humanities-research problems, will also be suitable
for other application domains because the models used internally by these sys-
tems contain sufficient information about human culture. Humanities research-
ers can even actively shape these models, which can then be shared among
agents and reused in different contexts. A prerequisite is that artificial intelli-
gence moves away from offering so-called artificial intelligence methods for
computer scientists and instead provide useful abstractions in the form of intel-
ligent agents whose instruction or training is controlled by humanities re-
searchers.

1 Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science that studies the synthesis and analysis
of intelligent systems as part of application systems and services. In AI termi-
nology, intelligent systems are composed of agents.1 Before we analyse what
intelligent systems actually are, we must first examine this notion of an intelli-
gent agent. Agents can be mere software systems or, e.g. humanoid robots
equipped with respective hardware. From a technical point of view, the behav-
iour of human beings interacting with intelligent systems can, in principle, also

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1 Russell and Norvig 2020; Poole and Mackworth 2017; Shoham and Leyton-Brown 2012.

Open Access. © 2021 Ralf Möller, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-013
246 | Ralf Möller

be abstracted as agent behaviour. As we will see in this article, the standard

notion of computational correctness2 applies to simple programs but neither to
humans nor to computational intelligent agents.
To benefit from AI, humans communicate goals to agents, which, roughly
speaking, then interpret and adopt goal specifications as precisely as possible.
Then, agents fulfil respective goals as accurately as possible with a sequence of
dedicated actions that agents compute by means of, for instance, planning algo-
rithms,3 while continuously checking whether the underlying goals for the
planning process are still based on valid assumptions. To fulfil their goals,
agents try to automatically acquire suitable models. While many AI proponents
tend to say that agents acquire ‘knowledge’ and that they ‘learn’, basically what
is accomplished is that models are built on the basis of sequences of inputs
(‘percept’ sequences) that the agent receives or acquires from its host environ-
ment. Note that models used by an agent can be declarative, i.e. models can
have a formal semantics and can be queried in various ways, or the models can
be merely computational, i.e. they can be directly executed with specific param-
eter settings such that computational results are obtained which are required
for fulfilling goals on the one hand and for interacting with humans in an antic-
ipatable way on the other. Algorithms for answering queries with respect to a
model often become ‘inference’ or ‘reasoning’ algorithms such that one can
avoid mathematical formality. The old satirical saying, ‘Do not anthropomor-
phise computers; they really hate that’, is certainly applicable in this context. In
order to keep the text of this article non-technical, we also use respective
notions for discussing artificial intelligence in general and agents in particular,
but we emphasize that quite simple, non-magical technical definitions of terms
such as ‘inference’ or ‘reasoning’ can be given with reference to formal mathe-
matical models.
Interestingly, when speaking about intelligent agents, it is indeed rather
hard to avoid the terms ‘knowledge’ or ‘learning’. Learning as a subfield of AI
has developed tremendously in recent years due to advances in computer tech-
nology4 as well as in mathematics.5 While early learning approaches still relied
on vast amounts of labelled training data (pairs of input and expected output
for supervised learning), today even unsupervised learning is of enormous prac-
tical relevance, e.g. in building language models for processing text data in

||
2 Dijkstra 1968; Hoare 1969.
3 LaValle 2006; Ghallab, Nau and Traverso 2016.
4 Soyata 2020.
5 Deisenroth, Faisal and Ong 2020.
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 247

various languages. Relevant features of data are no longer hand-crafted before-

hand but are determined automatically during learning (learning of representa-
tions). Even one-shot or few-shot learning has become an aspirational research
topic lately.6
Rather than focusing on single agents, we introduce the notion of an intelli-
gent system. An intelligent system is a system that can be composed of one
agent or a set of agents. In the latter case, a system is comprised of a mechanism
that sets up the rules for agent cooperation. No matter what kind of intelligent
system is used, it has become clear that the performance of intelligent systems
of the future will heavily rely on well-selected data for building and operating a
system. In the very near future, we will see a switch from technical issues of
machine learning in computer science as they are prominently discussed now to
the more general topic of systematic machine training, with a focus on the selec-
tion, preparation, and curation of appropriate teaching material for intelligent
systems (and single agents) such that certain non-trivial tasks can be carried out
successfully. Humanities research, e.g. in the area of philology, will become an
important driving factor for AI applications that use natural-language pro-
cessing technology, in which agent reasoning is language based.7

Example
Let us consider an information retrieval example in which we imagine an
agent that can find relevant documents for helping a scholar solve a
humanities research problem. The agent must be instructed about the prob-
lem-related field of expertise of the scholar. [...] The agent plans a sequence
of actions (i.e. its own actions and the possible actions of the scholar) that
provide the means for posing follow-up queries or for providing reinforce-
ment feedback. The utility measure of the agent is assumed to be maxim-
ised if the scholar is satisfied with the (final) retrieval result.

We will see an interesting shift from today’s engineering-based AI to a future

Humanities-Centred AI because the notion of machine training will be dominant
in the future, and new research areas in the humanities will emerge that deal
with how to advise agents, e.g. information retrieval agents. Scholars will select
training material (e.g. reference libraries) for agents and specify web-mining
goals to prepare agents for specific tasks.

||
6 Yao 2021.
7 MacCartney 2009.
248 | Ralf Möller

Example
For instance, a researcher might want to obtain scientific publications and
data for a research project concerning cuneiform clay tablets but limit the
publications to those that are already summarized and appropriately linked
to relevant X-ray or CT data of clay tablets.

The vision is that a humanities scholar will educate a web-mining agent so that
it can accomplish this task successfully. While building a model for the schol-
ar’s information-retrieval problem, the agent internally constructs so-called
subjective content descriptions (‘semantic annotations’) of the documents in the
reference library. The descriptions (or annotations) are subjective because the
agent tries to describe both the reference library’s content (e.g. with symbolic
descriptions of entities identified in the text) and the model of the scholar’s
research problem provided by the reference library (i.e. for other scholars, dif-
ferent content descriptions might be generated). The reference library can be
updated by the humanities scholar, and she or he can check whether the agent
produces better answers than for previous (and hopefully future) information-
retrieval queries. The better the reference library gets (and the more focused the
string queries are), the better the agent is instructed about the nature of the
research problem to be solved.
Well-organised machine-readable descriptions of, e.g. written artefacts and
other humanities research topics will allow AI systems to reduce their present
brittleness in communication with humans by anticipating at least some aspects
of human thinking and behaviour.

Example
The (symbolic) subjective content descriptions provide a (rough) represen-
tation of the knowledge of a certain domain from a subjective point of view.8
Those subjective content descriptions that help solve research problems
(indicated to the agent with reinforcement feedback) can then be used to
generate a formal model of a problem domain via machine-learning tech-
niques. The agent can then exploit this model to support other humanities
scholars in the future. Providing a reference library for instructing an agent
in a particular task therefore trains the agent in solving other problems as
well. The better the reference libraries are composed, and the more that rel-
evant problems are solved in co-operation with the agent, the better the
agent is trained, and the better the services of the agent will become.

||
8 Cf. Moretti 2016.
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 249

Only if training material is carefully selected by humanities researchers

dealing with language and cultural artefacts in an appropriate way, will
agents become trustworthy service providers. Agents that are trained by
humanities researchers in the anticipated way, i.e. with the right literature
at the right time, will also be enormously helpful for systematically con-
structing, e.g. chatbots to be used in application contexts that are complete-
ly different compared to the initial context of finding relevant documents
for solving a humanities research problem as envisioned at the beginning of
this example.

In the following paragraphs, we analyse some requirements for making this

vision of Humanities-Centred AI a reality. In order to draw up a roadmap for
investigating this topic, we need to delve a little bit deeper into AI as a field of
research and its public perception.

2 On the self-conception of contemporary

artificial intelligence
The essential assumption of AI is that agents are situated in an environment and
that by perceiving this environment, agents can construct (or learn) a model of
it (and possibly of other agents in that same environment). Agents act rationally
by calculating optimal actions (or sequences of actions) from their local point of
view, based on their current goals.9 Computed actions, when executed, may
exert an influence on the environment, the state of which must then be captured
again by the agent so that it can continue to act optimally (cyclic interaction
with the environment). Goals can be hierarchically structured and prioritised.

Example
Let us consider an agent playing chess (i.e. a chess program). The agent
analyses the chess board, and, when it’s the agent’s turn, computes the best
move by recursively speculating what the opponent could do, what the best
move would be then, and so on. Note that because the search space is so
immense that the agent can hardly find an optimal move for a complex mid-
game board position, the agent needs to cut the search short and make
estimations about its winning chances in a particular situation. Once a

||
9 Eisenführ, Weber and Langer 2010.
250 | Ralf Möller

move is selected, the agent executes the move (or just announces the move
to the environment, which then executes the move). Chess is a simple agent
scenario because every agent has perfect information about the state of the
environment (the board), and all moves have deterministic effects. The
assumption of perfect information being available, however, is not neces-
sarily useful in most settings.

The acquisition of information about the environment can also include feedback
regarding the choice of past actions by the agent, and this feedback may cause
the agent to reassess its internal state and its planning for future action (rein-
forcement).10 Sequential-decision theory solves the problem of determining the
best action even when the state as well as the effect of actions are uncertain,11
but theory assumes that both the distribution of events in the environment and
all possible actions are known a priori, which is usually an inappropriate
assumption in real-world settings. Over time an agent can estimate, e.g. the
distribution of certain representative values for describing the environment,
and the agent also has to conceive new actions on the fly (e.g. during a web-
mining mission). When planning optimal actions, every agent is subject to the
laws of complexity theory, i.e. the rationality of agents is quite limited, and not
only under strict time constraints. In other words: optimal actions cannot nec-
essarily be determined with available computational resources (time and
memory). Since optimal actions can sometimes only be calculated approximate-
ly, it has to be accepted that the theoretically achievable goals of an agent are
not always achieved or are only achieved in a delayed fashion.
The described form of system construction with situated agents, which from
their local point of view act optimally in an environment, i.e. act rationally,
forms the basis for an artificial concept of intelligence. An agent is considered
intelligent if, through situated interaction with the environment, it achieves its
goals in an unexpectedly short time (from the perspective of a human observer
that interprets the agent’s behaviour from the outside). Some formalisations of
AI even require that goals be achieved in rather different contexts (or environ-
ments), based on abstract descriptions (a set of rules) that an environment pro-
vides to an agent, e.g. rules of different games such as Chess, Go, or Shigo. For
each of these games, it has been shown that with reinforcement learning12 a
system can be indeed generated just from a description of the rules of the game

||
10 Sutton and Barto 2018.
11 Hastie and Dawer 2010.
12 Sutton and Barto 2018.
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 251

(artificial general intelligence or general game playing).13 Even more impressive

is that generated systems can easily beat human players. It should be empha-
sised, however, that games are definitely very specific problems. The generated
systems will almost always win against human players, but they cannot explain
to a beginner how to become a good player, which clearly shows the limits of
contemporary AI. Nevertheless from the analysis of solutions to very specific
problems, general techniques for the analysis and synthesis of intelligent sys-
tems can indeed be derived.
We emphasize that the attribution of intelligence depends on the expecta-
tions of the human being who interprets the behaviour of computational agents.

Example
If, for example, a chess agent (or chess program) has the goal of winning
1000 games, and achieves this goal in a little more than 1000 games, 1010
games, say, and one does not expect it to achieve this goal after 1010 games,
then one might call this chess program intelligent.

An information-retrieval agent that provides decent information-retrieval

results with only few interaction cycles, when given a reference library and
some form of query, would also be considered intelligent.

A pocket calculator, however, is expected to correctly calculate 1000 out of

1000 addition operations; therefore the calculator program is hardly ever
called intelligent.

If people expect a program to always win or to always compute the correct

result, then they tend not to call that program intelligent. Needless to say, sys-
tem-performance expectations can certainly change over time.

2.1 Misunderstandings
In any case, the concept of intelligence is poorly defined without taking into
account the situation in which an agent is working. It is also important to
understand that the intelligence of agents only shows itself from the outside.
That is, the intelligence of agents, which we humans read into their behaviour
as software or hardware systems, is achieved with classical techniques of

||
13 Genesereth and Thielscher 2015.
252 | Ralf Möller

computer science. Classifying a computational method as an AI method does

not really lead to deep insights. There are no intelligent algorithms or intelligent
data. There are, however, intelligently developed algorithms and intelligently
collected (or composed) data. But the latter tasks are accomplished by human
experts. Although we often read it in the press, it does not make much sense to
speak about the generation of an AI or the integration of an AI into a system.
Using the term ‘Intellectics’14 would perhaps have been more appropriate for the
scientific field of artificial intelligence.15
It is also important to understand that in AI the term ‘learning’ primarily
refers to an agent building a model of its environment at runtime: i.e. the agent
applies learning algorithms to data from its ‘sensors’ to better achieve its goals
(besides exploiting reinforcing feedback from the environment). The use of
learning techniques at the developmental stage of agents to generate an initial
model or behaviour is nevertheless certainly possible, but using learning tech-
niques in this way does not hit the core of AI and can also be understood as data
science for the development of agent systems. Knowledge-based learning or
model-based learning can be used at development time as well as at runtime.16
Learning by using prior knowledge is indeed essential to reducing necessary
training data, because for the vast majority of learning problems it is quite diffi-
cult to provide sufficient training data at runtime – a fact that is often discussed,
but hardly really tackled today. With prior knowledge, it becomes possible to
automatically structure the hypothesis space for possible learning outcomes,
which is a necessary prerequisite for effective agents. Speaking in terms of ‘edu-
cating an agent,’ we see that training includes taking care of at runtime (not
only at setup time) so that the agents learn the right thing. We could, then,
extend the notion of machine training to ongoing machine training,17 and the
most appropriate sequence of training steps, to be defined by humanities
researchers, definitely matters in this context.
A common misconception is to assume that in AI, learning (at runtime) is
only relevant in relation to the models used (e.g. for improving functionalities
such as the classification of images, recognition of objects, etc.). It is equally
important that agents analyse their input data (perceptual data) in order to
develop certain strategies to deal efficiently with the very limited resources,

||
14 <http://www.intellektik.de> (accessed on 30 June 2021).
15 Hölldobler 2000.
16 Bishop 2013.
17 Continual learning also means that existing functionality which has proven to be beneficial
is not overwritten by new learning activities.
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 253

with respect to time and space, for determining the best next action. With tech-
niques such as automated machine learning (AutoML),18 i.e. automatic algo-
rithm configuration and parameterisation, very efficient strategies for
processing sequences of percepts can be automatically generated or learned
after a short training phase. There are application scenarios in which agents
first process simple instances of a problem class (e.g. solving satisfiability [SAT]
problems for Boolean formulas) in order to identify suitable strategies for solv-
ing harder problems from the respective problem class. Only after warming up
can difficult instances of a problem class be tackled successfully.

Example
For instance, solving Sudoku problems might be reduced to solving the
satisfiability of Boolean formulas (automatically derived to encode the orig-
inal Sudoku problem). The encoding formulas have a certain structure, and
initially solving easier Sudoku problems can help the solver adapt to the
specific formulas and develop dedicated strategies to solve the satisfiability
problem for Sudoku-specific Boolean formulas, such that more difficult
Sudoku problems (resulting in more difficult SAT problems) can also be
solved.

Without adaptation through simple problems, it may be that difficult problems

cannot be processed at all with given time constraints without running into a
timeout. Learning to perform inference strategies can be much more important
in practical applications than learning functionality. This kind of learning sce-
nario is also part of the training metaphor; one must be able to evaluate (using
challenge tasks) whether an agent is ready for the next steps involving more
complex tasks.

2.2 Applications
Agents are not explicitly modelled in the software in every application. In some
applications, only parts of the cycle described above – perceiving, concluding,
acting – can be recognised. It turns out that the AI perspective manifested in the
agent metaphor has also produced generalizable principles that are useful for
standard software development (e.g. learning a classifier for photogrammetric
images).

||
18 Hutter, Kotthoff and Vanschoren 2018.
254 | Ralf Möller

Algorithms used to program systems by means of learning techniques are

very popular. Nevertheless in current applications mostly only a part of the
basic idea of artificial intelligence is explicitly reflected.

Example
For example, techniques of signal-level speech processing (perception) are
useful for developing chatbots, which may have hardly any application
knowledge defined in an explicit form and may hardly determine actions in
an optimal way as described above, but which still provide useful services
in web applications.

Audiological signal processing can be used in robots as well as in technical

solutions for new hearing aids.

Techniques for the evaluation of, for instance, photogrammetric image data
(perception) together with application knowledge implicitly integrated into
the software make it possible to highlight critical areas in the image so that
a new application can be set up to provide optimised support in making
decisions (e.g. about whether an area is polluted or not).

It may be that only parts of the perceiving-concluding-acting cycle are mani-

fested in the image-processing software or hardware. Nevertheless one can still
speak of an AI application, i.e. an application of data-processing techniques
developed in AI. This kind of scenario is an example of good old-fashioned AI,
since technicians and computer science experts are still required in this context,
a situation that we should try to overcome in order to make AI more useful to,
e.g. humanities scholars.

2.3 Fears about AI?

Note that, unlike humans, intelligent artificial agents that have achieved high
performance by interacting in a specific environment can be copied and can
continue to learn and improve themselves in a different environment. Increas-
ing the competence of agents by learning through interaction with an environ-
ment is a very interesting principle of application design. Learning at the time of
system development is usually not enough. Whether a system created by means
of learning techniques can be operated in a certain environment without con-
tinuous learning is a question that cannot be answered in general. Indeed, reality
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 255

is evolving, and without continuous adaptation the usability of systems created

by means of learning techniques is certainly limited.
Fears about the results of the science of AI could very well originate from
overestimating the efficiency of the aforementioned chain-letter-like develop-
ment of the intelligence of agents, especially if one considers the inherently
limited rationality of agents. The point at which systems emerge that are more
intelligent than humans (however such intelligence could be measured) is
sometimes called the Singularity.19 The creation of intelligence, especially
through the automatic combination of self-learning subsystems, is not a reality
today, in particular because the rationality of agents is necessarily limited due
to complexity considerations. The spontaneous use of a newly registered con-
tact in an address book by a speech-based assistant, i.e. a functionality that
already exists today, is not very impressive from this perspective. The correct
pronunciation of names is also no witchcraft, due to the large amounts of
speech data that are available today. Continuous learning must be organised,
however, and it must be part of the planning for agent training. Thus, with the
notion of machine learning changed to machine training, there is much more
control about what kind of capabilities an intelligent agent will be able to
achieve, such that misgivings of the kind introduced above can be addressed.
It must be made clear, however, that mass influence on people through in-
telligent agents is already a reality today, and without countermeasures, will
become increasingly subtle so that democracies may even be put at risk. In ad-
dition, one must not confuse intelligence with human-compatible behaviour,20
because the (unexpectedly) fast achievement of goals does not mean that the
goals being set up independently by an agent are reasonable from a human
perspective. If human control over setting targets in automatic systems is lost,
the future might turn into a nightmare. The science of AI must concentrate its
research on not only enabling the creation of systems that are correct in a cer-
tain sense and controllable, but also on creating systems that are provably hu-
man-compatible. It is rightly argued that agents must take into account not their
own goals but the goals or preferences of people so that a positive benefit can be
demonstrably achieved for the people involved in agent interaction. Initially
uncertain about people’s preferences and the goals supplied by humans, agents
reduce this uncertainty through situated interaction. An agent should maintain
permanent uncertainty about human preferences and goals in order to antici-
pate past mistakes and to enable adaptation to changing human preferences.

||
19 Kurzweil 2005.
20 Russell 2019.
256 | Ralf Möller

Expressions such as ‘human-allied AI’, ‘human-aware AI’, ‘human-compatible

AI’ have been coined in order to capture these ideas.21

2.4 The ethics of AI as a field of science

Ethical questions related to research in the humanities play an important role in
AI concerning the training perspective. For example, instead of understanding
ethics simply by giving designers of systems moral guidelines formulated in
natural language, AI offers the possibility of using formal ethics to enable intel-
ligent agents to model moral action so as to estimate and weigh people’s prefer-
ences. This idea represents an enormous gain in comparison with ethical
approaches that are too short-sighted and applied only for system construction.
The idea opens up important perspectives.22 It is not only the designers of AI
systems who must act according to ethical guidelines but also the constructed
systems (agents) themselves,23 and continuously educating those systems
should systematically ensure moral action. Ethical behaviour of intelligent
agents will only emerge if, when developing the mechanism of a system (envi-
ronment and interaction of agents), it is taken into account that acting accord-
ing to ethical guidelines is a profitable (or even dominant) strategy for each
individual agent. To design such a mechanism is not easy, and agent training
also matters. The AI research area ‘algorithmic mechanism design’24 investi-
gates the basics of this design challenge. The area must be extended to take
continuous machine training into account. Note that the approach of following
ethical guidelines when designing systems is not wrong, but such an approach
does not fully meet the needs arising from the potential of AI. Rational actions
of agents must also comply with certain ethical guidelines. Other aspects relate
to fairness, privacy, and security:25 for example, the ability to determine whether
or not particular data (such as the data of a particular person) was part of the
training data, or at least was the basis for answering an enquiry, ought to be
avoided. Techniques such as differential privacy26 are highly relevant to trust-
worthy agent systems27 and should be technically combined with ethical

||
21 See also Kambhampati 2020.
22 Cf. terms such as ‘value alignment’ (Russell 2019).
23 Russell 2019.
24 Nisan and Ronen 2001; Nisan et al. 2007.
25 Kearns and Roth 2020.
26 Li et al. 2016.
27 Marcus and Davis 2019.
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 257

considerations. The consideration of privacy sets new research goals for artifi-
cial intelligence as a science.
An agent’s objectives (goals) may be uncertain, and since objectives are
reflected in the tasks assigned to an agent, its tasks exhibit uncertainties from
the agent’s viewpoint, too (and also from the human’s viewpoint if the human is
conceptualized as an agent). Thus, there is hardly any standard notion of cor-
rectness that is applicable to single agents. What can be analysed, however, is a
system of agents interacting in some environment. Analysing a system of agents
(i.e. a so-called mechanism) and examining whether a desired functionality is
actually realised by such a system of agents is a central issue in the science of
artificial intelligence. Rather than asking for formal correctness, the main ques-
tion is whether a mechanism maximises social welfare understood as a (com-
bined) measurement of global utility for all agents involved (or at least whether
the mechanism provides a decent value for social welfare). A mechanism that
maximises social welfare is called appropriate. Without a determination as to
the appropriateness of a mechanism in a concrete case, intelligent systems
simply might not be applicable in certain areas. It seems that this ethical issue
of AI is sometimes neglected in practical applications. Humanities researchers
should contribute ethical competence to discussions about appropriateness.

2.5 Perspectives
Research in the field of AI aims to identify the methods and techniques of com-
puter science that are necessary for developing and analysing verifiably human-
compatible intelligent agents. In order to produce intelligent agents, computer
scientists have developed novel programming and modelling techniques such
as probabilistic differential programming as a generalised view of deep learn-
ing. Probabilistic-relational fundamentals of modelling real-world systems,
techniques of data analysis (data science, data mining), and optimising deci-
sion making on the basis of large amounts of data (possibly with web scaling)
are just as fundamental for system creation in AI. New approaches such as
imputative learning are intended to, among other things, solve problems related
to acquiring models (= learning) from incomplete data. The results of these
efforts can later be incorporated into, e.g. in-depth language comprehension,
which is important for boosting the learning capabilities of agents. Computer
scientists, however, can only partially contribute to agent learning, namely,
with respect to the technical basis. What is required is a way to let humanities
researchers act as machine trainers. This perspective constitutes a roadmap for
a new view of AI.
258 | Ralf Möller

3 Humanities-centred AI: A roadmap

While technology always evolves, it is important that, on the one hand, Human-
ities-Centred AI (CHAI for short) concentrates on an appropriate training inter-
face such that AI with machine-training capabilities becomes effective for the
humanities. On the other hand, computer scientists must adopt the right per-
spective from which to design trainable systems. In the following paragraphs,
we will first analyse some traps that AI researchers have run into, and then
describe the CHAI roadmap.
Let us assume that someone implements a system that can do something
that humans can also do, e.g. play a shooter game. Further, for the implementa-
tion of the technical system, among other things, method X is applied. Let us
then further assume that the resulting shooter-game system is quite close to
human performance, maybe even better. A human being, here a human player,
is assumed to be intelligent by definition, and therefore the technical shooter-
game system is also called intelligent. Underlying this conclusion is a very old
definition of AI: a system is intelligent if it does something for which a human
(apparently) needs intelligence. Unfortunately, this definition has many pitfalls
and is no longer suitable for defining the subject matter of AI as a science today.

3.1 First trap

In the above definition, method X becomes a so-called AI method if method X
can be successfully used in an application context in which humans solve prob-
lems (e.g. playing shooter games, playing chess, as well as in other application
contexts) in order to generate systems that can simulate, support, or replace
humans. The temptation to talk about AI methods is particularly strong when
one thinks that the technology behind a method is, in whatever vague way,
analogous to the physiological processing of stimuli in humans, or that the
technology can be seen as analogous to the human level of information pro-
cessing (a level assumed to be high), or even that the technical behaviour is in
some way reminiscent of human problem-solving behaviour. An example of the
first analogy is the application of so-called neural networks, which, however, as
a technology have become extremely distant from the physiological original
over time and are actually purely mathematical in nature. But some people also
use the expression ‘AI method’ for other seemingly cognitively analogous meth-
ods, such as the application of rule-chaining systems to the creation of so-called
expert systems. Some people even think that the expression ‘AI method’ refers
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 259

to arbitrary architectures for solving problems for which humans need intelli-
gence. This loose use of the expression ‘AI method’ leads to the second trap.

3.2 Second trap

If a developer applies method X, which she or he calls an AI method, to develop
a system for application problem P, which many humans have never solved,
cannot solve, or can solve only after a great deal of very specific training, then
the developer often draws the erroneous conclusion that she or he is working on
an AI problem, simply because she or he is applying a so-called AI method. The
trap in this case is that a problem is classified by the solution method.

Example
An example is automatically parking automobiles without stopping other
traffic. This is a problem that very few people can solve. Because one can
solve the problem (in a rather poor way) with dedicated technical sensor
devices, for which we do not find analogues in human beings, a researcher
might claim to have solved an AI problem, but even if one of the so-called
AI methods is employed, parking is still far from being an AI problem. A
problem simply cannot be classified according to the solution method.

Let us consider another example. The analysis of multispectral images is an

interesting application problem. The problem can be approached with
methods that are also suitable for the development of intelligent game sys-
tems (such as Asteroids), i.e. with supposed AI methods, here perhaps the
training of so-called convolutional networks (rather deeply cascaded, line-
ar-filter operations, combined with respective nonlinear aggregations). But
taking a method that is useful for an intelligent system and applying that
method to solving a technical, image-interpretation problem does not mean
that image interpretation is an AI problem; it is an (interesting and difficult)
application problem.

3.3 Third trap

The system that is realized via the alleged AI method X, e.g. a function parame-
terized by techniques of algorithmic learning (i.e. a convolutional network in
actual, final use, with all its concretely determined parameter values), is called
artificially intelligent by some people. Oddly enough, some people even call the
260 | Ralf Möller

system ‘an artificial intelligence’, or assert that ‘an AI’ has been created. Unfor-
tunately, this way of thinking would require us to call every function intelligent
(or even ‘an artificial intelligence’) if it was created with method X, called an AI
method, which is absurd.
Traps of this kind can only be mitigated by not defining AI in human terms,
but by focusing on the nature of the problems being solved.
A specific AI problem is actually to find algorithms for evaluating a percept
and for determining actions so that the goals are achieved as completely and as
quickly as possible over a long period of time, with the result that the agent can
act rationally. Machine training, however, should be accomplished not by com-
puter scientists but by domain experts. It should be noted that the laws of com-
puter science apply to any agent (and to humans) no matter how training is
organised: the computation time is not in every case sufficient for computing
optimal actions (bounded rationality). If the agent, however, achieves its goals
with unexpected speed, despite these intrinsic limitations, it is said to be intelli-
gent. Now, a real AI problem is to enable domain experts to construct or gener-
ate such intelligent agents, without computer scientists or dedicated experts in
machine learning being in the loop (the computer scientists or dedicated ex-
perts then deal with good old-fashioned, technical AI methods).
These kinds of real AI problems are studied in CHAI and are solved by
whatever method. It is not the methods, techniques, or algorithms that distin-
guish AI in this context, but the problems solved, namely, real AI problems. The
same consideration applies to other sciences: it is not problem-solving methods
that define the science of physics, e.g. methods for solving differential equa-
tions, but rather the problems being solved (or phenomena studied).

Example
For example, the aforementioned shooter game, seen as an agent, has the
goal of winning 1000 out of 1000 games. The actions selected by the pro-
gram (i.e. where to manoeuvre the spaceship depending on the situation, or
whether to shoot) will contribute to achieving the goal.

If the agent achieves the goal frequently, it will, from the outside, be considered
intelligent, unless it is expected to achieve the goal all the time. However, if the
agent internally uses a function parameterized by evaluating a large set of in-
put-output examples (i.e. an algorithmically learned function) that the develop-
er generated, then it is not the function that is intelligent. The entire agent can
be considered intelligent from the outside only if it exhibits the appropriate
behaviour using the function. A simple set of learned, nested functions that
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 261

implement a convolutional network, for example, cannot be intelligent because

the functions do not compute actions and do not interact with an environment
at all, but are only (externally) applied and then return results. Nevertheless the
functions can certainly make an agent that uses them behave in an intelligent
way, according to the definition given above. The third trap is one that people
fall into who do not distinguish between an internally used function and an
agent. When people talk about creating ‘an AI,’ they usually (unconsciously)
mean creating an intelligent agent. Unfortunately, in such cases no agent is
generated, but only a simple function that cannot be intelligent; this situation
again reflects the absurdity of speaking about generating ‘an AI’.
Thus we see that the developer of an agent, not the agent itself, solves an AI
problem. The agent solves an application problem – unless we build agents that
construct agents. The former agents then also solve an AI problem. But we are
not yet that far. Even so, by emphasizing the notion of machine training by
domain experts via CHAI, we can avoid falling into the aforementioned traps.

Example
Although an agent that analyses multispectral images can be intelligent (it
does its job quickly and really well), we have argued that it solves not an AI
problem, but an application problem. It is not the analysis of a multispec-
tral image that is an AI problem, but the development of the agent that can
analyse these image data (correctly and quickly), by, e.g. quickly achieving
its goal of correctly classifying 1000 out of 1000 multispectral images.

Image classification is just one example. Another task in which the agent can
help is finding multispectral images for a specific research question (recom-
mendation task). Another task could be to combine multiple images and spectra
so that an added value is achieved. Training agents to support researchers in
such tasks is out of reach these days, but would be very powerful. The
knowledge required for such tasks could be gathered by first having the agent
solve information-retrieval problems in the humanities.
The method for building the agent, e.g. a method for training a convolu-
tional network, is therefore not an AI method, but a method for solving applica-
tion problems. If a researcher operates as a computer scientist to train the
network (and specifies the network architecture) but does not develop an agent,
then the researcher in question is not working in AI, but in applied computer
science. Working as a computer scientist in solving application problems is of
course a worthwhile activity, but we should not refer to that activity as solving
AI problems. Computer scientists working in CHAI develop AI technology that
262 | Ralf Möller

allows domain experts (humanities scholars) to be involved in machine training

for problem solving.

3.4 New developments: Abstractions rather than methods

Besides machine training, AI must develop techniques so that users can inform
agents in an appropriate way about goals (or tasks), or even so that the agents
can automatically determine goals in an appropriate way. Task solutions, in
turn, must be communicated to humans by agents in an appropriate way. What
does it mean to communicate in a way that is appropriate for humans? It means
that AI supporting the machine-training perspective (and not only the machine-
learning perspective) must also explore aspects of human information pro-
cessing in order to meet the demands. Here again, a fundamental difference
with statistics or the field of data science becomes clear: it is not only ongoing
learning and (optimal) actions of agents that are added to the overall picture,
but also the anticipation of human information processing and thus also of
human knowledge. If these issues are irrelevant in a particular application con-
text, then it is better to pragmatically speak of data evaluation, statistics, or –
with an industrial twist – data science. From this perspective, the results of
research in the humanities, e.g. in linguistics, philosophy, or cultural studies,
are very relevant for AI.
Developing an agent, however, may very well take place via certain meth-
ods that have been or are being developed in the science of AI. These methods
include the following: methods for correctly setting up learning machinery (e.g.
ensuring independent and identically distributed data as preconditions of
learning); methods for verifying the properties of models used by agents (e.g.
discriminatory power determination); or methods for proving the appropriate-
ness of an agent’s actions in any situation (e.g. addressing ethical concerns).
Such methods might then usefully be called AI methods. With AI methods, one
solves AI problems (see above), not application problems.

Several questions arise:

– Should humanities scholars solve AI problems?
– Should humanities scholars work in applied computer science?

The answer to both questions is no. Humanities scholars are trained to solve
humanities problems, not applied computer-science problems or even specific
AI problems. If humanities scholars become applied computer scientists, the
chances increase that they either cease to be good humanities scholars, or they
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 263

will acquire the necessary computer-science skills very late in their career and
thus could hope to work effectively with their own graduates or even colleagues
who do not have these skills. So overall effectiveness would suffer.
Now, what is the charm of AI anyway? What are the hopes associated with
it? One hopes that humanities scholars will not have to solve applied computer-
science problems in order to solve a humanities problem but will be able to
define, with reasonable effort, agents’ goals that will then solve the humanities
application problems. The important question that this aspiration raises is:
– For which humanities problems can basic agents be provided, so that hu-
manities researchers can define (or refine) the agents’ goals with reasonable
effort and the agents can solve the problem for the humanities researcher or
in interaction with the humanities researcher?

The right question for designing an AI training scenario in the humanities is

therefore:
– What would a humanities researcher need to know in order to be able to
select agents, train them, and then appropriately define the goals for the se-
lected agents?

Some relevant questions for AI research from the CHAI perspective are:
– How can agents be designed so that they can be trained by humanities re-
searchers, such that the training improves solving a certain problem and
progress can be properly evaluated by the trainer?
– Can AI system developers enable humanities researchers to define agent
goals with reasonable effort and thus to solve humanities application prob-
lems themselves without having to become applied computer scientists?
– How can (pre-)trained models be found and exchanged?
– How can models that have been constructed for a certain task by training be
used successfully for related tasks?

The goal of collaboration between AI scientists and humanities scholars should

not only be the immediate solution of humanities application problems. The
interaction of humanities scholars and AI scholars should also generate new
agent types so that the goals of the agents that belong to the newly developed
type are easier for humanities scholars to define and so that application prob-
lems in the humanities can be solved in a truly sustainable way (by humanities
scholars). It is clear that humanities application problems will be used as exam-
ples throughout this work on new agent types. Nevertheless solving these appli-
cation problems alone should not be the primary goal, because if it were, then
264 | Ralf Möller

only short-term success is likely to be achieved. Involving natural scientists

adds even more complexity to the overall picture.
AI as a science has yet to demonstrate that it can provide trainable agent
types whose goals can be set by humanities researchers with reasonable effort,
so that humanities application problems can really be solved by humanities
scholars. The same deficit is even truer for collaboration with natural scientists.
Learning-technology, assumed to be universally applicable, could help to speci-
fy functions used internally in an agent. But if an agent is to act and communi-
cate with a human about achieving certain goals, this is just the beginning.
Other techniques for specifying or aligning goals must be provided in a com-
plementary fashion, keeping in mind that goals are almost always underspeci-
fied and must be specified as appropriate in the interaction. But if goals are to
be communicated, then they can hardly remain implicit in the agent’s design, as
is still almost always the case in simple systems used today (see the comments
on the agent for multispectral-image analysis).

3.5 Adopting a new perspective: From machine learning to

machine training
As discussed at the beginning of this essay, there is potential for a shift from the
technical issues of machine learning to the humanities issues of machine train-
ing (i.e. educating a machine), such that intelligent systems can solve tasks
relevant for humanities research, are trainable by domain experts, solve tasks in
a trustworthy way, and act in an ethical way. For all cases, humanities research
provides the scientific background. A prerequisite is that we move away from
focusing on so-called AI methods for computer scientists to providing abstrac-
tions in the form of intelligent agents and respective mechanisms for coordinat-
ing the agents, while supporting the view of machine training rather than
machine learning.

Example
In our example concerning information retrieval, problem-specific docu-
ments will be carefully collected and then provided to an agent as a refer-
ence library so that domain-specific expertise is provided to the agent in a
useful way in a preparatory training context. The agent can then try to find
additional resources, either from its previous services or from other agents
on the web. Thereafter, the agent can search for relevant publications on
the web that match the query of a human. Based on feedback in the interac-
tion cycle, which will have been anticipated by the agent during planning,
 Humanities-Centred AI as an Emerging Paradigm | 265

the agent can reason about its strategies for inferring the problem-specific
information needed by the human researcher, and the agent can evaluate
and adapt its provision of documents in the reference library, including the
addition of subjective content descriptions to be used for information re-
trieval in that context.

Whether AI is already powerful enough to provide something useful in this

sense is the ultimate question. I conjecture that AI scientists will have to keep
working hard. But they at least understand the true AI problem that they need
to solve, namely, supporting machine training by well-educated humanities
scholars or natural scientists rather than supporting a technical focus on ma-
chine learning controlled by computer scientists only. If humanities as a field is
going to exploit agent technology, and I have argued that it should, then hu-
manities scholars ought to be involved in CHAI as early as possible so that they
can derive a deep understanding of what the agent can actually achieve on the
one hand, and provide important insights for AI researchers on the other; in the
CHAI approach advocated here, these insights will concern a training perspec-
tive rather than a learning perspective.

Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Jost Gippert for insightful comments on a draft of this essay. In
addition, for discussions that helped shape the ideas behind this contribution, I
would like to thank the team of the DFG Research Unit ‘Data Linking’, which is
part of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ at University
of Hamburg, namely, Marcel Gehrke, Sylvia Melzer, Stefan Thiemann, and
Simon Schiff, as well as Tanya Braun from the Institute of Information Systems
at University of Lübeck.

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Stefan Thiemann
How Can Research on Written Artefacts
Benefit from Collaboration with Computer
Science?
Abstract: Research on written artefacts, particularly on manuscripts, was con-
ducted long before digital methods were developed and computer technology
became available for everyone. The use of methods from computer science for
this research, however, adds a completely new level of possibilities. This article
will discuss the various premises of this task and identify specific benefits for
the field of the study of written artefacts.

1 Introduction
Computer science, which is the study of computers and computing, includes
theoretical and mathematical principles, the study of algorithms, data struc-
tures, networks, modelling, and information science. The use of digital methods
in the humanities is often called ‘digital humanities’ (DH) or ‘e-humanities’,
which may refer either to enhanced or electronic humanities. DH is the system-
atic use of digital tools and methods in the research process, from word count-
ing, language and image analysis, to complex databases. DH is often used as a
synonym for humanities research in another form, but today the integration of
computer science should be normal, not a separate part in the research process.
The use of computer science in the humanities is not new; it has a long tra-
dition whose beginning is interesting in the context of the CSMC because it con-
cerns research on texts that were transmitted in manuscript form, from the
works of Thomas Aquinas. In the 1940s and 1950s, Roberto Busa (1913–2011), a
Jesuit scholar, started to build a concordance to the extensive corpus of Thomas
Aquinas, the Dominican monk, philosopher, and priest from Italy who lived in
the thirteenth century.1 To build the concordance, Busa probably used a printed
version of Aquinas’ writings. He searched for help to automate his work and
found a partner in the computer company IBM. Together Busa and IBM started a
long-term project of more than thirty years’ duration, and in the 1970s a set of

||
1 Busa 1980, 83–90.

Open Access. © 2021 Stefan Thiemann, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-014
268 | Stefan Thiemann

fifty-six printed volumes of the Index Thomisticus was finally published with the
help of digital methods. Busa continued to exploit the potential of digital meth-
ods, and the printed version was followed by a CD-ROM version in 1989 and an
internet version in 2005, which is still available.2 A comprehensive account of
Busa’s work can be found in the foreword written by him to the Companion to
Digital Humanities.3
Beside all these developments and early adopters, in the last decades per-
sonal computers, especially since the late 1990s, have found their way into
every researcher’s office, with easy-to-use software and a direct connection to
the growing internet. Scientists now have a lot of tools for their work and can
imagine what might be possible, but they often lack knowledge about how to
use all these things, and with growing opportunities the complexity grows too.
Without the expertise of computer scientists, it is hard to fully exploit the poten-
tial of information technology in the humanities. This was the main reason for
planning a close cooperation with computer sciences and specialists in data
handling since the first considerations about starting research on manuscripts
and written artefacts at the University of Hamburg. To understand what com-
puter science and information technology can do for researchers, it is necessary
to understand some fundamentals, clarify terms, and identify certain problems
that still exist.

2 Research data
Data, or research data in general, are the ‘material’ used by scientists to do re-
search. The type and expression of research data depend on the specific re-
search field. In natural sciences research data are primarily numbers that come
either from measurements taken with scientific instruments or from computer-
model simulations. This type of research data is mostly born-digital, and it is
more or less easy to handle, store, and process, beside the problem posed by
enormous amounts of data.
Research data in the humanities, especially in research on written artefacts,
are completely different. Real-life objects, stored in museums, archives, and
private households or located in the landscape (e.g. inscriptions on rocks, graffiti

||
2 <https://www.corpusthomisticum.org/it/index.age> (all URLs cited in this article were last
accessed on 7 May 2021).
3 Busa 2004.
 How Can Research on Written Artefacts Benefit from Computer Science? | 269

in urban space), are the material used by scientists. From these written arte-
facts, photographs or three-dimensional scans are taken, and in addition de-
scriptive texts and sometimes audio and video recordings are available. Re-
search data in such cases have the function of documenting given objects, either
partially or fully. But it is important to keep in mind that photographs and scans,
as representations, are completely different from the originals themselves. The
representations differ in size and colour, and, what might be more important,
the haptic of the original is completely missing. Especially digital photographs
offer the opportunity to be manipulated. It is possible to tune colours, enhance
or lower the image contrast, zoom in or out, and add to or simply delete some-
thing from the image. All this could be very helpful for research on such objects,
but on the other hand there is a risk of misinterpretation or even forgery.4
For the use of digital methods, digital data are needed. But digital data are
much more sensitive than the originals. The following quote from J. Rothenberg
expresses the problem in a clear and very sharp way: ‘Digital information lasts
forever – or five years, whichever comes first.’5 Many written artefacts are very
old, but their digital representations may only last a few years.
Digital data depend on the longevity of storage media and the obsolescence
of technology, hardware, and software.6 Currently available computers have
mostly no facility to read data from floppy disks, tapes, and CDs; even if it is
possible to read the data, there is quite often no software to interpret them. Most
of these data will be lost if no measures to maintain them are taken. It is possi-
ble to read a fragment of an old manuscript; it is quite often impossible to inter-
pret a fragment of digital data. The Museum of Obsolete Media7 holds a
collection of more than 700 obsolete media formats, from analogue media to
data storage.
The aim is to store digital representations of real objects in a way that al-
lows humans to access the stored information by their senses. The digital repre-
sentations are stored in binary data (0 and 1) and are only marks on a physical
medium such as a hard disk in a computer. To bring this data back to life, soft-
ware is needed to interpret the archived information; the software must be able
to interpret the stored data format, and the data must be completely available.
Binary code uses a two-symbol system, often known as 0 and 1, off and on,
or false and true. Characters can be represented by a sequence of 0 and 1; for

||
4 Dow 2009.
5 Rothenberg 1998.
6 Rosenthal 2010.
7 <https://obsoletemedia.org/>.
270 | Stefan Thiemann

example an upper case ‘A’ is represented as ‘01000001’. On a hard disk or an-

other storage medium, the character ‘A’ is stored as the above string of 0 and 1
via magnetism or patterns in CD-ROMs.8 It is not wrong to compare this system
with engravings on stone.
Well-organized research data management (RDM) is one part of the solu-
tion. In the humanities, RDM is a paradigm shift. Researchers in the humanities
often keep their data for themselves; they are not used to sharing data or to
storing data in central repositories, especially if such a repository is not special-
ized for their research field.
Comparable to collections in archives, digital research data have a lifecycle.
They are
– created, which means measurements, digital photographs, scans etc.;
– processed; e.g. a digital photograph is taken in a special data format de-
pending on the camera manufacturer; such RAW-data are processed into
standard image formats such as TIFF or JPEG;
– analysed, with results that are dependent on the type of data analysis per-
formed;
– archived, that is, the data are stored on a storage medium, or in a repository
on the internet;
– accessible and reusable for new research projects.

Archives of physical objects have been well known for hundreds of years, and
they are a resource for research in the humanities; digital archives are viewed
more critically.9 The enormous amount of stored data and the obsolescence of
storage media and file formats remain challenges Professional archiving of
digital research data is necessary, and the development of standards and regu-
lations for the question ‘What has to be kept for the future?’ is still a desideratum.

3 Metadata
Digital research data alone are more or less worthless. They need some addi-
tional information called metadata.10 Metadata are data about data. In other
words, there are original data and there are data describing the original data.

||
8 Binz and Schempp 2002, 85–103.
9 Milligan 2019.
10 Hare 2016.
 How Can Research on Written Artefacts Benefit from Computer Science? | 271

Metadata are comparable to real objects with sheets of paper attached contain-
ing information about the objects.
But, avoiding any quicksand here, a distinction must be made between
technical and descriptive metadata. Technical metadata are information about
the file format, the file size, the encoding, etc. In general, this is what a comput-
er scientist understands by the term ‘metadata’.
Descriptive metadata are additional information about the data, such as
content type, place of origin, date and time of production, persons involved,
related events, dimensions, production methods, material, etc. Metadata of this
type must be provided by humanities researchers themselves.
Both types of metadata are absolutely necessary. Some might know the
meaning of ‘10.5, 11.1, 12.2’ or ‘A13-17/2’, but nobody else in the world probably
will. To understand these data, definitions such as ‘temperature in degrees
Celsius’ in the first and ‘shelf mark’ in the second example are necessary. An-
other simple example in the context of manuscript research concerns the
dimensions of an artefact. If only the information ‘10×2×3’ is provided, it is
impossible to know whether the numbers are given in millimetres or centime-
tres and which numbers refer to height, depth, or length; even if a photograph
is available, it is in some cases hard to decide.
Providing well-formulated, adequate, and consistently structured metadata
is quite important for long-term documentation as well as for analysis with digi-
tal methods.

4 Fuzziness and vagueness

For computer and software alike, fuzziness and vagueness remain real prob-
lems. Dates and calendar systems from all over the world and especially from
former times provide one common example. If no information about the calen-
dar system is provided in the metadata, it is impossible to compare dates across
different calendar systems and perform comprehensive searches. The best prac-
tise here is to provide, in addition to the original date and calendar system, a
normalized date. Terms such as ‘approx.’, ‘before’, ‘later than’, etc., as well as
abbreviations in general, cause problems for using information technology, as
do different spellings of names.
The computer or software does not know what a specialist in a research
field knows and especially what is really meant by a particular notation. In the
case of very specialized software for a limited research field, many problems
might be avoided if only be one calendar system and one set of abbreviations
272 | Stefan Thiemann

are used, but this is not always possible. To overcome this mess of fuzziness and
vagueness, descriptive metadata must follow clear rules or standards.

5 Standards
Standards are the best way to keep each and every piece of information clear
and comprehensible. As the computer scientist A.S. Tanenbaum has said: ‘The
nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.’11
This statement makes the important point that every scientific community has
its own requirements for metadata and standards. The use of a standard can
facilitate employing the methods of information science and interacting with
other data providers.
On a more general level, the international DataCite Metadata Scheme12 pro-
vides a minimum of metadata fields such as identifier, creator, title, author,
year, etc. to describe research data, and this scheme follows the FAIR data prin-
ciples (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).13
Before creating a new and very specific metadata model for a project, exist-
ing models and standards should be reviewed and tested. Each standard in-
cludes a commentary field, and in most cases it is a good solution to use an
existing standard and add all individual items of data that are not specifically
accounted for in the standard to the commentary field instead of developing a
new standard.
Especially projects combining cultures with different writing systems and
letters need a common, basic standard for defining characters and text elements
in an interoperable way. The world-wide standard for this purpose is Unicode.14
Beside all the criticism about the problems Unicode has with Chinese, Japanese,
and Thai script, it still seems to be the best standard we have. Using Unicode
avoids problems with different fonts and display problems in documents and on
webpages. A character is only a number or a combination of numbers (e.g. dia-
critical marks) in this system, and a word is a sequence of numbers. Searches in
such a system are only performed on the sequence of numbers; the search en-
gine does not understand the meaning of the word or the complete text. The

||
11 Tanenbaum 1988, 254.
12 <https://schema.datacite.org/>.
13 <https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/>.
14 <https://home.unicode.org/>.
 How Can Research on Written Artefacts Benefit from Computer Science? | 273

character ä (Unicode: U+00E4) may be represented either as one character or as

a combination of a + ◌̈ (Unicode: U+0061 + U+0308).

6 Artificial intelligence the problem solver?

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be a problem solver, and the acronym AI is
widely used. In the research field of written artefacts, e.g. optical character
recognition (OCR) and pattern recognition are used in combination with ma-
chine learning (ML). With some limitations, it is possible to use machine learn-
ing to simulate understanding a text. It is possible to train such a machine with
a text corpus and then ask questions; the machine gives feedback, and a re-
searcher marks the correct answer and so on. Pattern search after training the
machine works very well, and it is quite helpful in dealing with large volumes of
data. However, the combination of ‘man and machine’ can lead to sustainable
performance improvements in research. The use of AI methods requires a solid
expertise in this area, and the results need to be interpreted carefully.15

7 Legal problems and ethics

Working with the storage and presentation of digital data on the internet may
lead to legal problems and questions of ethics. Using a photograph of a written
artefact in a museum or archive, or even in a private house, requires permission
or consent, and special permission is required to use it on the internet.
Today research funders expect research data to be as open as possible, e.g.
in a repository accessible on the internet. Research data should be FAIR, as
mentioned before. If the necessary permissions have not been granted, it is not
allowed to store such photographs as open data in a research-data repository. In
most cases even storing them as closed data is not allowed, given the complex
copyright regulations. Even local regulations can cause problems. In more than
one country, for example, it is not allowed to take photographs of cultural herit-
age or even buildings. The so-called freedom of panorama (FOP) is an often-
neglected problem. A professional researcher has to take this in account.16

||
15 The challenges with AI are extensively described in the article of Ralf Möller in this book.
16 Dulong de Rosnay and Langlais 2017.
274 | Stefan Thiemann

Another more ethical problem is that providing information about valuable

objects on the internet might carry the risk of theft. This is a problem with cul-
tural heritage as well as with endangered plants and animals.
It is important to think about such problems and to think about the conse-
quences for the use of digital methods; hidden data are not accessible for
searches or any software operation on data in such repositories. This might
result in conflicting goals because researchers want to combine information in a
local repository with information from the internet.

8 Conclusion
The benefits of using computer science in research on written artefacts include:
– analysing more data at the same time;
– experimenting with variants and parameters;
– comparing images, patterns (e.g. by same writer);
– searching for patterns;
– automatic linking of data;
– providing data on the internet by means of virtual reality, computer vision;
– combining digital methods with measurements from laboratories;
– modelling data.

Everything said so far applies more or less to every research field and is not
specific to research on written artefacts. The methods and tools are generic,
sometimes with special adaptions.
Examples that combine scientific measurements and computer science in-
clude the multispectral imaging of a fragment of musical notation17 and the
virtual merging of two parts of a cuneiform tablet stored in different places.18 In
both examples all the research data are available as open data for further re-
search, and visualization methods were used; via three-dimensional data, the
two parts of the cuneiform tablet were printed as real objects again.
Specific software tools simplify and accelerate the work on large corpora of
digitized written artefacts. The ‘Visual Pattern Detection Tool’19 can automatical-
ly recognize and allocate visual patterns such as words, drawings, and seals in a

||
17 Shevchuk and Janke 2018.
18 Michel and Beyer 2020.
19 Mohammed 2021.
 How Can Research on Written Artefacts Benefit from Computer Science? | 275

written artefact. The interesting question of whether different manuscripts were

written by the same hand can be answered by the use of the ‘Handwriting Anal-
ysis Tool’.20 Both software tools support researchers with their work by giving
indications; the final decision, however, lies with the researcher.
But there is more than one challenge in the interaction between humanities
and computer science. Humanities research needs a kind of service (e.g. soft-
ware development), but this is not the focus of computer science, and no re-
search question deals with this area. Humanities scholars are in most cases not
experts in computer science, and computer scientists rarely have any
knowledge of the humanities. This leads to one of the biggest challenges, name-
ly, communication between the two groups. For any success, both sides must
precisely describe their needs and what is obviously possible; a clear research
question is needed for a joint project. Then the use or development of a specific
method from computer science makes sense and could be taken into considera-
tion. The use of computer science should not be an end in itself or taken into
consideration merely because it is common these days.
The problem of timing should also be mentioned. Both groups start their
work at the same time because of the funding. But humanities researchers ex-
pect help and even results early in the project. The development of the computer
science part comes often too late.
To conclude, let us return to the beginning. Busa decided to step into the
use of computer methods because of the sheer quantity of documents. Without
any computer support, he would not have been able to bring his project to a
successful end. For IBM at that time, Busa’s project was an opportunity to try
out procedures and show the possibilities offered by computers outside the
normal accounting departments. IBM and Busa both had a clear idea of what
they need.
Despite all the progress and sometimes astonishing applications, especially
on the internet, it must not be forgotten that software and the computer do not
yet (and may never) understand the interpretation of words and texts. A very
simple thought experiment can illustrate the situation. A person is confronted
with a one-word question; the person will most likely ask what is meant be-
cause the question is not clear. Such a question, without sufficient information
about the context or some additional metadata, is quite hard to answer in most
cases. Entering a one-word question in the search slot of a search engine on the
internet will provide many hits. The search engine does not ask questions; by
using probabilities and extensive lists of synonyms, it will show documents in

||
20 Mohammed 2018.
276 | Stefan Thiemann

which synonyms are used instead of the exact search term. This looks like an
intelligent machine, but in fact statistics, big data, and the ongoing process of
human work are all operating in the background. On platforms such as Amazon
Mechanical Turk,21 people earn money by categorizing images, words, and ob-
jects and by building lists of synonyms. A specially programmed database,
however, will not behave like internet search engines; such a database will only
search for the exact search term and not for synonyms or variants.
This simple example demonstrates once more that one has to have realistic
expectations about the use of computer science. So, do not shame a computer
science expert who is unable to simulate the giants of information technology
on the internet. In most cases the problem is not a lack of expertise but limita-
tions of technology or resources.
The internet giants have ten thousand experts and nearly unlimited data in
the background. In the last decade, Alphabet Inc., the mother of Google, has
invested more than 6 billion US dollars in research and development. If we keep
all this in mind, collaboration between the humanities and computer science is
beneficial for both sides.

References
Binz, Ernst and Walter Schempp (2002), ‘Information technology: The Lie groups defining the
filter banks of the compact disc’, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 144:
85–103 <doi.org/10.1016/S0377-0427(01)00552-0>.
Busa, Robert (1980), ‘The Annals of Humanities Computing: The Index Thomasticus’, Computer
and the Humanities, 14: 83–90.
Busa, Robert (2004), ‘Foreword: Perspectives on the Digital Humanities’, in Susan Schreibman,
Ray Siemens, John Unsworth (eds), A Companion to Digital Humanities, Oxford: Blackwell
<http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/>.
Dow, Elizabeth H. (2009), Electronic Records in the Manuscript Repository, Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow Press.
Dulong de Rosnay, M. and P.-C. Langlais (2017), ‘Public artworks and the freedom of panorama
controversy: a case of Wikimedia influence’, Internet Policy Review, 6:1
<doi.org/10.14763/2017.1.447>.
Hare, Jason (2016), ‘What is Metadata and Why Is It as Important as the Data Itself?’
<https://www.opendatasoft.com/blog/2016/08/25/what-is-metadata-and-why-is-it-
important-data>.

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21 <https://www.mturk.com/>.
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Michel, Cécile and Wiebke Beyer (2020), ‘Almost a Happy End for a Broken Clay Tablet’, in
Wiebke Beyer and Karin Becker (eds), Artefact of the Month 1, Hamburg: CSMC
<https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/aom/001-en.html>.
Milligan, Ian (2019), ‘Historians’ archival research looks quite different in the digital age’
<https://theconversation.com/historians-archival-research-looks-quite-different-in-the-
digital-age-121096>.
Mohammed, Hussein (2018), ‘Handwriting Analysis Tool’ <doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.900>.
Mohammed, Hussein (2021), ‘Visual-Pattern Detector’ <doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.8832>.
Rosenthal, David S. H. (2010), ‘Format Obsolescence: Assessing the Threat and the Defenses’
<https://web.stanford.edu/group/lockss/resources/2010-06_Format_Obsolescence.pdf>.
Rothenberg, Jeff (1998), ‘Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Information’, International Journal of
Legal Information, 26: 1–22 <doi.org/10.1017/S0731126500000469>.
Shevchuk, Ivan and Andreas Janke (2018), ‘Multispectral Imaging of Manuscript Atri, Archivio
Capitolare, Museo della Basilica Cattedrale, C4-II, Framento 17’
<doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.1472>.
Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1988), Computer Networks, 2nd edn, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall.
Camillo A. Formigatti
Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early
Sanskrit Printed Books
Abstract: The present article deals with liminal material belonging to both the
realm of manuscript as well as print culture. Early Sanskrit printed books pro-
vide scarce and ambiguous bibliographical information. The Sanskrit terminol-
ogy used in their imprints is often obscure at best, if not unintelligible without
having previous knowledge of the roles of the persons involved in the printing
process. Conversely, a correct understanding of the Sanskrit terminology for
print is necessary to assess the roles of the people involved in the printing activ-
ity. This article examines the Sanskrit terminology for print occurring in the
earliest Sanskrit incunabula and lithographs, in order to shed some light on the
publication process of early Sanskrit prints.

1 Introduction
Terminology for print in early Sanskrit printed books is seemingly a trivial sub-
ject, but in reality it might prove to be an important tool in the reconstruction of
the cultural, social, and technological history of nineteenth-century South Asia.
As is well known, in South Asia the production of manuscripts continued to
thrive well into the twentieth century, alongside the diffusion of print. Printing
presses were already known in South India in the second half of the sixteenth
century, however the first Sanskrit book was printed in Kolkata in 1792. The
diffusion of typography in nineteenth-century India is paralleled by the wide-
spread diffusion of lithography as a means of reproduction of texts in a large
number of scripts. So far little attention has been devoted, for instance, to San-
skrit lithographic material as compared to lithographed books in vernacular
languages. Yet, as I will try to demonstrate, intriguing questions arise when we
devote our attention to this type of material. Were the scribes active in the pro-
duction of manuscripts for the manuscript market and readership different from
the scribes who worked for lithographic printing presses or were they the same
persons? Were the roles of those involved in these printing presses always neat-
ly distinguishable or did they sometime overlap and for instance scribe, editor,
and printer were one and the same? Where is the information provided in man-
uscript colophons found in lithographed and typographed books? Is it provided

Open Access. © 2021 Camillo A. Formigatti, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-015
282 | Camillo A. Formigatti

in the same form or not, and why? The answers to these and other questions can
be found only if we set out to fulfil the tedious task of reading the primary
sources, i.e. the title pages, colophons, and other paratexts of early Sanskrit
prints from South Asia1.
After this short introduction, I provide the description of the primary
sources analysed. In the third section I discuss the terminology for print as ex-
emplified in the selected Sanskrit lithographs and incunabula described in the
previous section, comparing it to the terminology found in colophons of South
Asian manuscripts from different periods and areas. Finally, the fourth part of
the article is devoted to some preliminary thoughts and conclusions based on
the material examined.

2 Primary Sources
The material is presented here in chronological order starting with typography,
the first printing technique introduced in South Asia by the colonial powers in
the sixteenth century. Each entry consists of four parts: a short bibliographical
note, the Sanskrit text, its English translation, and if needed, a short commen-
tary. In the latter, only specific points related to the Sanskrit text or the English
translation are dealt with, while more general issues related to print terminolo-
gy and culture are discussed in § 3. The selection of volumes presented here is
necessarily limited due to space constraints and access to the material itself.
The worldwide situation caused by the pandemic greatly limited access to pri-
mary sources, forcing me to limit the selection to material I had already exam-
ined or that is available in the Bodleian Libraries. It is for this reason that some
bibliographical information is less detailed than other, since I was able to con-
sult some books only in electronic format. I beg the readers for forgiveness.

||
1 The material considered in the present study corresponds to the following definition of
Sanskrit print: ‘any print containing a complete Sanskrit work, regardless of other features (such
as the presence of a translation in another language), and printed in South Asia’ (Formigatti
2016, 76).
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 283

2.1 Incunabula
2.1.1 Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana, Trikaṇḍaśeṣa, Hārāvalī, Nānārthaśabdakośa

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: Sansk. 4.160 (Bābūrāma 1807b).

Published in Kolkata at the Sanskrit Press in 1807. Format: codex.

[Title page]
śrīmadamarakṛtakoṣaḥ (!) puruṣottamakṛtatrikaṇḍaśeṣañ ca |
hārāvalyabhidhānam medinīkarasya nānārthaḥ || 1 ||
nagare kalikattākhye kolabrūkˎsāhabājñayā |
śrīvidyākaramiśreṇa kṛtasūcīsamanvitaḥ || 2 ||
vedarttvaṣṭakalānāthasaṃmite vikramābdake |
mudrākṣareṇa vipreṇa bābūrāmeṇa lekhitaḥ || 3 ||

1. The Dictionary composed by the Venerable Amara and the Supplement in Three Chap-
ters composed by Puruṣottama, The Pearl Necklace, Medinī’s Homonymyc [Dictionary].
2–3. In the city called Kolkata, at Mr Colebrooke’s behest, [this book was] provided with
indices by the venerable Vidyākaramiśra; published with movable type by the brahmin
Bābūrāma in the year Vikrama calculated as Vedas (4) – Seasons (6) – Eight – Moon (1)
(1864).

Is the singular mudrākṣareṇa instead of plural mudrākṣarair employed metri

causa? This usage occurs also in § 2.1.2 and § 2.1.5. The English ‘published’ ren-
ders the Sanskrit term lekhita, as discussed in § 4 below.

2.1.2 Hemacandra’s Abhidhānacintāmaṇi with Anekārthasaṅgraha

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: Sansk. 4.159 (Bābūrāma 1807a).

Published in Kolkata at the Sanskrit Press in 1807. Format: codex.

[Title page]
sānekārthanāmamālātmakaḥ koṣa(!)varaḥ śubhaḥ |
candrapraṇītābhidhānacintāmaṇir maṇiḥ || 1 ||
nagare kalikattākhye kolabrūkˎsāhabājñayā |
śrīvidyākaramiśreṇa kṛtasūcīsamanvitaḥ || 2 ||
vedarttvaṣṭakalānāthasaṃmite vikramābdake |
mudrākṣareṇa vipreṇa bābūrāmeṇa lekhitaḥ || 3 ||

1. The Abhidhānacintāmaṇi written by [Hema]candra, a pure jewel, best among dictionar-

ies, together with the homonymic dictionary Anekārtha[saṅgraha].
2–3. In the city called Kolkata, at Mr Colebrooke’s behest, [this book was] provided with
indices by the venerable Vidyākaramiśra; published with movable type by the brahmin
284 | Camillo A. Formigatti

Bābūrāma in the year Vikrama calculated as Vedas (4) – Seasons (6) – Eight – Moon (1)
(1864).

In stanza 3, the type for mu was not set and the printed text thus wrongly reads
drākṣareṇa.

2.1.3 New Testament

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: N.T. Sansk. d.1; 7 E 27; 45 F 18 (Carey 1808).

Published in Serampore at the Missionary Press in 1808.
Format: codex.

All three Bodleian copies of this printed volume are different. In N.T. Sansk. d.1,
sent to the Bodleian in 1817, the gathering with the signature kha is in Hindi, not
Sanskrit. 45 F 18 is an incomplete copy, lacking the title page in English, and is
printed on a different type of paper with different dimensions than the other two
copies; moreover, a note pasted on the inner side of the front cover states that
the copy is bound in the original boards.

[English title page]

The / New Testament / of our Lord and Saviour / Jesus Christ / translated into the / Sung-
skrit language, / from the / Original Greek. / By the missionaries at Serampore. /
Serampore, / 1808.

[Sanskrit title page]

īśvarasya sarvvavākyāni / yan manuṣyāṇāṃ trāṇāya kāryyasādhanāya ca prakāśitaṃ ||
/ tad eva / dharmmapustakaṃ || / tasyāntabhāgaḥ | arthād asmatprabhutārakayiśukhrīṣṭa-
viṣayakaḥ / maṅgalasamācāraḥ / yāvanikabhāṣāt ākṛṣya saṃskṛtabhāṣayā likhitaḥ ||
/ śrīrāmapure mudritaḥ || / 1808 ||

Every Sermon of the Lord. This is the Book of the Divine Law which was announced for the
protection of the human beings and the betterment of their actions. The New Testament,
i.e. The Gospel concerning our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Translated from the Greek
language and published in the Sanskrit language. Printed in Serampore. 1808.

Note the reduplication of consonants after repha, an orthographic feature pecu-

liar of manuscripts. English ‘Divine Law’ renders ad sensum the Sanskrit term
dharma. Moreover, the Sanskrit phrase tasyāntabhāgaḥ (lit. ‘Its final section’)
corresponds to ‘The New Testament’ in the English title page, while ‘i.e.’ renders
Skt. arthād in the sense of ‘that is to say, namely’. Finally, ‘Gospel’ is the render-
ing of the Sanskrit term maṅgalasamācāra, which in its turn is a calque from the
Greek εὐαγγέλιον, where the Sanskrit maṅgala corresponds to the prefix εὐ-
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 285

(‘good’), while samācāra to -αγγελιον (‘tale, message’). This rendering is a pecu-

liar choice, since the translators could have easily chosen a rendering more
etymologically akin to the Greek original, using the Sanskrit prefix su- for Greek
εὐ- and a Sanskrit term semantically closer to Greek -αγγελιον (< ἄγγελος), such
as śāsana, sandeśa or dūta. (In fact, the 1845 Bengali translation of the Gospels
is entitled Susamācāra, pointing to a more etymological rendering [Yates et al.
1845]). Interestingly, neither in the PW nor the pw the meaning ‘news’ is provid-
ed for samācāra; however, it is provided both in Wilson’s (1832) and Apte’s
(1965) dictionaries. This fact is particularly relevant in the case of Horace
Hayman Wilson’s dictionary, for he was active as a scholar roughly in the same
period when the Bible translations were made and his Sanskrit-English diction-
ary was first published in 1819. Unfortunately, in the lemmata of his dictionary
Wilson does not provide the textual occurrences of Sanskrit terms. Nevertheless,
it is tempting to assume that this meaning for samācāra might derive precisely
from these translations.

2.1.4 Pentateuch

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: N.T. Sansk. d.1; 7 E 27; 45 F 18 (Carey 1811).

Published in Serampore at the Missionary Press in 1811. Format: codex.

The Bodleian copy consulted lacks the added English title page, which in the
Bodleian Libraries’ online catalogue (SOLO) reads as follows: ‘Pentateuch,
translated into the Sungskrit language, from the original Greek [sic]. By the
missionaries at Serampore.’ (transcribed from the copies kept at Regent’s Park
College Library: Angus Library, Bib.18 and Baptist Missionary Society collec-
tion, Sanskrit 6).

[Sanskrit title page]

īśvarasya sarvvavākyāni / yanmanuṣyāṇāṃ trāṇāya kāryyasādhanāya ca prakāśitaṃ ||
/ tad eva / ādyantabhāgātmakaṃ dharmmapustakaṃ || / tasyādibhāgaḥ / mośahā
prakāśitavyavasthā | yiśaraelarājyavivaraṇa | gītādipustakāni | ācāryyaiḥ prakāśitavākyāni
| / etac catuṣṭayātmakaḥ || / tasyāntargatā mośahā prakāśitavyavasthā / ebaribhāṣāt
ākṛṣya saṃskṛtabhāṣayā / likhitā || / śrīrāmapure mudritaḥ || / 1811 ||

Every Sermon of the Lord. This is the Book of the Divine Law which was announced for the
protection of the human beings and the betterment of their actions, comprising the Old
and New Testament. Its Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers; to this
Tetrateuch, the Deuteronomy is added. Translated from the Hebrew language and pub-
lished in the Sanskrit language. Printed in Serampore. 1811.
286 | Camillo A. Formigatti

The interpretation of the Sanskrit translation of the titles of the five books in the
Pentateuch poses several issues. The expression catuṣṭayātmakaḥ (‘having a
fourfold structure; Tetrateuch’) implies that we have to individuate four books
between it and the term ādibhāga (‘Old Testament’).2 However, since one of
these books must be represented by the title mośahā prakāśitavyavasthā, its
repetition after catuṣṭayātmakaḥ is rather puzzling, since it would mean that the
books of Genesis and Deuteronomy were rendered with the same title. Moreo-
ver, even considering the fact that the translators were rendering the Hebrew
Torah and not the Greek Septuaginta, it is difficult to explain the discrepancy
between the Sanskrit translation and the original Hebrew titles of the books.
Traditionally, the Hebrew titles of the books in the Pentateuch consist of the
first significant words of each book and the beginning of Genesis is surely not
‘the Rule announced by Moses’ (Skt. mośahā prakāśitavyavasthā). The only
Sanskrit rendering which is immediately understandable is yiśaraelarājya-
vivaraṇa (‘Exposition of the People of Israel’) for Exodus, but the rationale be-
hind all other Sanskrit titles remains a mystery to me.

2.1.5 Bhāravi’s Kirātārjunīya with Mallinātha’s Commentary (Gaṇṭāpatha)

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: 5 Bharavi 2; Sansk. 2.35.

Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen: Gretil e-library
copy <http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl/?gr_elib-98> (Bābūrāma 1814).
Published in Khidirapore (Kolkata) at the Sanskrit Press in 1814. Format: codex.

[Title page, all elements centred]

|| kāvyanāma || / || kirātārjjunīya || / || kavināma || / || bhāravi || / ❈ / || ṭīkānāma || / ||
gaṇṭāpatha || / [puṣpikā] / || ṭīkākāranāma || / || mallinātha || / / ❈

Title of the poem: Kirātārjjunīya. Name of the poet: Bhāravi. Title of the commentary:
Gaṇṭāpatha. Name of the commentator: Mallinātha.

[Flyleaf 1r, imprint, all elements centred]

|| atra kāvye sargasaṃkhyā || / aṣṭādaśa 18 || / ❈ / || atra kāvye
mūlaślokasaṃkhyā || / ekapañcāśadadhikasahasraṃ 1052 || / ❈ / || atrārjjunasya
kāvyanāyakasya pāśupatāsvalābhaḥ phalamˎ || 1 || / ❈

||
2 On the various hypotheses of the existence of an independent Tetrateuch, see the introduc-
tory essay by Ska and Dominique (2006, 4–5).
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 287

Number of chapters in this poem: eighteen 18. Number of verses in this poem: one-
thousand-fifty-two 1052. Resolution [of the story]: Arjuna, the protagonist of the poem, ob-
tains Śiva’s weapon.

[Flyleaf 1v, imprint, all elements centred]

|| śāke ṣaḍagnisaptendusammite vatsare śubhe || || śāke 1736 || / || candrādrivasubhūmāne
vikramādityavatsare || / || saṃvat 1871 || / || bhūyugmadṛṣṭidharaṇīsaṃmite yavanābdake ||
/ || san 1221 sāla || / || vedabhūmivasucandramāsana īsavīpramāna || / || māhajūna-kevā
isācchapyogranthaparadhāna || / || sanˎ 1814 īsavī | tāḥ 22 jūna || /

In the Śāka year calculated as Six – Fire (3) – Seven – Moon (1), an auspicious year. In the
Śāka year 1736. In the Vikrama year calculated as – Moon (1) – Mountains (7) – Vasu gods
(8) – Earth (1). Vikrama year 1871. In the Islamic year calculated as Earth (1) – Pair (2) –
Eyes (2) – Earth (1). Year 1221 (?).Gregorian year calculated as Vedas (4) – Earth (1) – Vasu
gods (8) – Moon (1). Gregorian year 1814. Day 22 June.

[Flyleaf 2r, imprint, all elements centred]

nagare kalikattākhye śrīmallāṭanṛpājñayā |
śrīvidyākaramiśreṇa bāburāmeṇa dhīmatā || 1 ||
sambhūya śodhayitvātha kāvyaṃ ṭīkāsamanvitamˎ |
mudrākṣareṇa yatnena nyāsitaṃ sudhiyām mude || 2 ||
vinā pariśramaṃ dhīrāḥ pāṭhayantu paṭhantu ca |
tadartham aṅkitañ caitat saṭīkaṅ kāvyam uttamamˎ || 3 ||
|| saṃskṛtayantre khidirapure śrīmadanapālenāṅkitamˎ ||

1–2. In the city called Kolkata, at the order of the governor-general, [this] excellent poem
with a commentary was corrected by the venerable Vidyākaramiśra together with
Bābūrāma, then sent to be carefully typeset with movable type for the delight of clever
persons.
3. Disciplined persons should cause to recite and recite [it] without trouble; this supreme
poem with its commentary was printed for this purpose.
Printed by the venerable Madanapāla at the Sanskrit Press in Khidirapore.

The Islamic date 1221 is wrong, since it corresponds to 1806 and not 1814
(= 1229 AH).

2.1.6 Tattvas from Raghunandana Bhaṭṭācārya’s Smṛtitattva

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: Sansk. 1.9–11 (R. Bhaṭṭācārya [1830s]).

Edited by Bhabānīcaraṇa Bandyopādhyāya (1787–1848) and printed in Bengali
script in Kolkata in the 1830s at the Samācāracandrikā Press. Format: pothī.
288 | Camillo A. Formigatti

[Colophon]
mahāmahopādhyāyavandyaghaṭīyasmārtta śrīraghunandanabhaṭṭācāryakṛtam
ekādaśītattvam idaṃ śrībhabānīcaraṇabandyopādhyāyena prayatnataḥ saṃśodhanapū-
rvvakaṃ kalikātānagare samācāracandrikāyantreṇa mudrāṅkitaṃ

The Ekādaśītattva composed by the venerable Raghunandana Bhaṭṭācārya, mahāmaho-

pādhyāya and revered expert on law; this [book] was revised/edited by the venerable
Bhabānīcaraṇa Bandyopādhyāya with care and then printed in the city of Kolkata at the
Samācāracandrikā Press.

2.1.7 Bhāgavatapurāṇa with Śrīdharasvāmin’s Bhāgavatabhāvārthadīpikā

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: 4.5.3. Bhag. 35 ([Bhāgavatam with Śrīdhara’s com-

mentary] 1830).
Edited by Bhabānīcaraṇa Bandyopādhyāya (1787–1848) and printed in Bengali
script in Kolkata in Śāka 1752 (1830 CE) at the Samācāracandrikā Press. Format:
2 volumes, pothī.

[Colophon]
śrīmadṛṣivedavyāsaproktaṃ śrīmadbhāgavataṃ śrībhabānīcaraṇabandyopādhyāyena
prayatnato bahubudhaśodhitaṃ pakṣaśaradharādharadharāśākīyavaiśākhasyaikatriṃ-
śadvāsare kalikātānagare samācāndrikāyantreṇāṅkitaṃ |

The venerable Bhāgavata[purāṇa] told by the venerable seer Vedavyāsa, very cleverly
edited by the venerable Bhabānīcaraṇa Bandyopādhyāya with care, printed in the city of
Kolkata at the Samācāracandrikā Press in the thirty-first day of the month Vaiśākha of the
Śāka year Wings (2) – Arrows (5) – Mountains (7) – Earth (1) [i.e. 1752].

2.1.8 Bhāgavatapurāṇa with Śrīdharasvāmin’s Bhāgavatabhāvārthadīpikā

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: 4.5.3. Bhag. 4 (Bhāgavatapurāṇa 1860).

Printed in Mumbaī by Gaṇapata Kṛṣṇājī in 1860. Format: pothī, 13 original tomes
bound in 4 volumes.

[Colophon]
yathādhvanīnaḥ sthapuṭaṃ prayān pathaṃ cirāya naijaṃ pratipadyate kliśan ||
tathā viśuddhaṃ pratipadya pustakaṃ budho ’dhigacchaty adhigamyam āspadaṃ || 1 ||
ato budhaiḥ sūkṣmadṛśā vidheyā sā paustakī śodhanikātiyatnāt ||
sāhāyyakṛddattavivekadṛgvaco manobhirāmākṣaramālikāṃcitā || 2 ||
tat prastutaṃ bhāgavatīyapustakaṃ nirīkṣamāṇau kṛtalakṣaṇān stuvaḥ ||
kṣetraṃkaropābhidhanāśikasthagoviṃdasadvaidyatanūbhavo ’nyaḥ || 3 ||
revadaṃḍāpurīvṛttilabdhadharmādhikāravān ||
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 289

harijotramahādevaḥ śodhaṃ cakre yathāmati || 4 ||

kṛṣṇabhūgaṇapatyākhyamudrāyaṃtrālaye ’male ||
tattanūbhavakānhobābhidhena viduṣāṃ mude || [5]
dvidiggajādrikumite raudrābde śālivāhake ||
mārge puṇye ’grahāyaṇyāṃ mudritaṃ mudrikākṣaraiḥ || [6]

1. Like a traveller walking on a rugged path after long reaches his own [path] experiencing
affliction, so a clever man reaches the aspired authority after having studied a correct
book.
2. Therefore intelligent men ought to use this slender-looking booklet – a curled little gar-
land pleasing the sight, speech, and mind thanks to the discernment provided by those
who helped – in the serious effort of correcting it.
3. Beholding its excellent characteristics, the two of us praise the aforementioned little
book on the Bhāgavata: Kṣetraṅkara, another son of the venerable teacher Govinda who
resides in Nāśika.
4. Harijotramahādeva, who obtained authority on dharma [i.e law?] etc. through service in
the village of Revdanda corrected [this book] to the best of his knowledge.
5–6. His son Kānhoba printed [this book] with movable types in the spotless typographical
house Kṛṣṇabhūgaṇapati for the pleasure of the learned, in the Śaka year Two – Elephants
of the Quarters (8) – Mountains (7) – Earth (1) [i.e. 1782], the Jovian year Raudra, in the
auspicious month Mārga.

This colophon consists of stanzas in different metres: stanza 1 is in the

Vaṃśastha metre, stanzas 4–6 are in the Anuṣṭubh metre, while stanzas 2 and
3 consists of a peculiar mixture of different metres (verse 2a is in the Upendra-
vajrā, verse 2b and 3cd in the Indravajrā, 2c and 3a in the Indravaṃśa, 2d and 3b
in the Vaṃśastha).

2.2 Lithographs
2.2.1 Bhojarāja’s Campūrāmāyaṇa with Lakṣmanasūri’s Sixth Chapter

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: 5 Bhoja. Campu. 3 (Campūrāmāyaṇa 1848).

Printed in Pune in 1848. Format: pothī.
Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: 5 Bhoja. Campu. 2 and Sansk. 2.25 (Campūrāmāyaṇa
1852).
Printed in Pune in 1852. Format: pothī.

[Colophon]
kāvyālaṃkāraśālāsthadvitīyaguruṇā svayaṃ ||
bhojīyacaṃpu(!)ṣaṭkāṃḍī śodhiteyaṃ yathāmati || 1 ||
khasaptasapteṃdumite* śāke puṇyākhyapattane ||
yatnataḥ pāṭhaśālāyām aṃkiteyaṃ śilākṣaraiḥ || 1 ||
290 | Camillo A. Formigatti

*khasaptasapteṃdumite] 5 Bhoja. Campu. 3; vedāśvasapteṃdumite Bhoja. Campu. 2

and Sansk. 2.25

1. The second guru in residence of the Society of Poetical Research edited himself Bhoja’s
Campū[Rāmāyaṇa] in Six Chapters to the best of his knowledge.
1. Carefully lithographed in the Vedic School (pāṭhaśālā) in the city of Pune in the Śāka
year calculated as Sky (0) – Seven – Seven – Moon (1) [i.e. 1770] / Vedas (4) – Horses (7) –
Seven – Moon (1) [i.e. 1774].

These three copies were all printed in the same place, however the manuscript
for 5 Bhoja. Campu. 3 was written by a different scribe four years before the
manuscript for the other two copies. The colophon of 5 Bhoja. Campu. 3 begins
on fol. 74r2, while the colophon of 5 Bhoja. Campu. 2 and Sansk. 2.25 on fol. 73v7.

2.2.2 Śrīmadbhāgavatacūrṇikā

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: 4.5.3. Bhag. 5a (Śrīmadbhāgavatacūrṇikā 1850).

Published in Mumbaī by Viṭṭhala Sakhārāma Agnihotrī in 1850. Twelve fasci-
cules, each containing one chapter (adhyāya), bound in one volume; each fasci-
cule foliated separately, colophon in the last fascicule. Format: pothī.

[fol. 9v15]
muṃbākhyapure dvijavaryasakhārāmasūnunā sudhiyā ||
svīyaśilāyaṃtro[16]pari viṭṭhalanāmnāgnihotriṇā tvarayā || 1 ||
dvikaturagasaptabhūmitaśāke sādhāraṇābdakāśvayuji ||
graṃtho <’>yaṃ vidvajjanasahāyataḥ pūrṇatāṃ nītaḥ || 2

In the city of Mumbaī, the learned Viṭṭhala Agnihotrī, son of the eminent Brahmin
Sakhārāma, brought quickly to completion this book in the Śāka year calculated as Dou-
blet (2) – Horses (7) – Seven – Earth (1) [i.e. 1772], in the month Āśvin of the Jovian year
Sādhāraṇa, thanks to the support of knowledgeable individuals.

2.2.3 Jaiminī’s Aśvamedhaprākṛta

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: (IND) 11 F 1 (Jaiminī Aśvamedha prākṛta 1850)

Probably printed in Mumbaī in the 1850s, unidentified publisher. Format: pothī
(various foliations).

[chapter 96, fol. 4r12]

|| śake satrāṃśe ekūṇahāttarīṃ || plavaṃganāmasaṃvatsarīṃ || graṃtha chāpilā
śiḷāyaṃtrīṃ || viśvavāthasuteṃ gaṇeśeṃ [13] || 1 || yādṛśaṃ pustakaṃ dṛṣṭvā tādṛśaṃ
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 291

likhitaṃ mayā || yadi śuddham aśuddhaṃ vā mama doṣo na vidyate || 1 || [14] || cha || || cha
|| || cha || || cha ||

Lithographed in the Śaka year seventeen sixty-nine, in the Jovian year called Plavaṅga, by
Gaṇeśa, son of Viśvanātha. In the same form as I saw the manuscript, I have written [a
copy]; if something is correct or incorrect, it is not my fault.

2.2.4 Jaiminī’s Aśvamedha

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: 4.3.2. 43 (Bāpūsadāśivaśeṭha 1850).

Printed in Mumbaī by Bapu Sadashiv Shet Hegiste in 1850. Format: pothī.

[fol. 125r4]
sadāśivasuto bāpur hegiṣṭhety upanāmakaḥ aśvamedhaṃ mohamayyām ujjahāra śilāmaye
1 svīye yaṃtre śucau śukle ravau kāmatithau [5] tathā śāke netrādrimunibhūmite \1772/
saṃpūrnatām agāt 2 śubhaṃ bhavatu cha cha cha cha

Bapu son of Sadashiv, nicknamed Hegisthe, removed the delusion (?), brought to comple-
tion the Aśvamedha in his own lithographic press in the hot month [i.e. Āṣāḍha or
Jyeṣṭha], in the bright half, on Sunday, in the lunar day of Kāma, in the Śaka year Eyes (2)
– Mountains (7) – Sages (7) – Earth (1), i.e. 1772. Let there be bliss!

2.2.5 Bhāgavadgītā with Śrīdharasvāmin’s commentary Subodhinī

Cambridge University Library 834:1.a.85.54 (Bāpūsadāśivaśeṭha 1861).

Printed in Mumbaī by Bapu Sadashiv Shet Hegiste in 1861. Format: pothī.

[fol. 105r12]
samāpto <’>yaṃ graṃthaḥ śrīkṛṣṇārpaṇam astu [13] heṃ pustaka bāpusadāśivaśeṭha
hegiṣṭe yāṇī āpalyā śiḷāchāpakhānyāṃta chāpaloṃ muṃbaī ṭhikāṇa hanumānˎ gallī śāke
1783 durmanināmasaṃvatsare

This volume is completed. Let [it] be an offer to the Venerable Kṛṣṇa! This book was print-
ed by Bapu Sadashiv Shet Hegiste [= Bapu, the son of Sadashiv] in his lithographic press,
Mumbaī, Hanuman Lane, in the Śāka year 1783, in the Jovian year named Durmati.

2.2.6 Kamalākarabhaṭṭa’s Śūdrakamalākara

Cambridge University Library 834:1.a.85.44; Bodleian Libraries, Oxford:

Sansk. 1.47 (Kamalākarabhaṭṭa 1861).
Printed in Mumbaī in 1861. Format: pothī.
292 | Camillo A. Formigatti

[fol. 94r6]
heṃ pustaka, vedaśāstrasaṃpanna rājamānya gaṇeśabāpūjīśāstrī mālavaṇakara āṇi
rājaśrī kailāsavāsī viṣṇubāpūjīśāstrī vāpaṭayā [7] ubhayatāṃnīṃ bhāgīteṃ chāpaleṃ ase ||
śake 1783 durmatināmasaṃvatsare || mārgaśīrṣe māsikṛṣṇapakṣe ravivāsare idaṃ
pustakaṃ samāptamˎ|| || [8] trināgasapteṃdumite śake muṃbākhyapaṭṭaṇe || yatnataś ca
gaṇeśena aṃkito <’>yaṃ śilākṣaraiḥ || 1 || || cha || cha

This book was published by Ganeshbapuji Shastri Malvankar and Late Vishnubapuji
Shastri Bapat. This book was finished in the Śaka year 1783, in the Jovian year named
Durmati, in [the month] Mārgaśīrṣa, in the dark half of the month, on Sunday. In the Śaka
year calculated as Three – Serpents (8) – Seven – Moon (1), Gaṇeśa carefully lithographed
this [volume].

2.2.7 Rāmakiśora Śarmā Bhaṭṭācārya’s Mudrāprakāśa

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: 45 F 27 (R. Ś. Bhaṭṭācārya 1867).

Printed in Vārāṇasī at the Siddhavināyaka press in the Ḍhuṇḍhirāja Gaṇeśa
temple in Vikrama 1924 / Śāka 1789 [1867 CE]. Format: pothī.

[Title Page]
|| śrīkāśīviśvanāthapurī me ḍhuṃḍhirājagaṇeśa ke pāśa dāū agniho | [1r2] trī ke yahāṃ
siddhavināyakayaṃtra me mudrāprakāśa chāpāgayā dhuravin chāpa[1r3]nevāle se
likhāviśeśara upādhyā saṃ. 1893 pha.sū. 10 śukravāsare.

The Mudrāprakāśa was printed at the Siddhavināyaka press at the place of Dau Agnihotrī
near the Ḍhuṇḍhirāja Gaṇeśa temple in Vārāṇasī, the city of Śiva, by the printer Dhurvin,
[after] it was written by the scribe Viś[v]eśara Upādhyāya in the [Vikrama] year 1923, in the
bright half of the month Phalguna, on Friday.

[Colophon, 20v7]
saṃvat 1924 || śāke 1789 || caitrakṛṣṇa 5 caṃdravāsare || śubham bhūyāt ||
maṇibaṃdhayutau kṛtvā prasṛtāṃgulikau karau kaniṣṭhāṃguṣṭhayugale | militvāṃtapra-
sārite jvālinīnāma mudreyaṃ vaiśvānarapriyaṃkarī 1 || samāptaś cāsau graṃthaḥ || śrīr
astu śubham

In the Vikrama year 1924; in the Śāka year 1789; in the dark half of the month of Caitra, on
Monday. Let there be bliss! If the wrists are joined, the hands with fingers stretched, the
couple of little finger and thumb is conjoined and stretched to the end, this is the mudrā
named Jvālinī, producing joy for all mankind. And this volume is completed. Let there be
prosperity, bliss!

The Bodleian copy belonged to Monier-Williams, as attested by his ex libris

pasted on the internal front cover and a note in pencil on fol. 1r (‘Most respect-
fully presented to Professor Monier Williams Esq. by his most obedient Panḍit(!)
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 293

Bihárí Chaulie of the Benares College 19/1/76 Benares’). The Wellcome Library
copy (shelfmark: Sanskrit litho 112) was printed in the month Pauśa; moreover,
according to the bibliographical description on the Wellcome Library catalogue,
its title page/imprint is identical to the Bodleian copy only up to the words
mudrāprakāśa chāpāgayā, while the text that follows differ considerably:
vaṃsīdhara miśra chāpanevālā māna jisai lenā hoya usai ḍhuṃḍhirājagaṇeśa ke
pāśa dāū agnihotrī ke dukāna para milaigā.

2.2.8 Yogivaryyavipra Rājendra’s Aṣṭāṅgaśuddhi

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: Sansk. 3.151 (Rājendra 1860).

Place and publisher not identified, publication date between 1860 and 1880.
Format: pothī.

[Colophon]
vidyodayo nirākuryād avidyātimiraṃ sadā ||
sahasrāṃśur ivāśeṣaṃ mudrākiraṇarājibhiḥ || 1 ||

1. May the rise of knowledge completely dispel the darkness of ignorance, as if it was the
sun with his thousand rays, thanks to the beaming lines (kiraṇarāji) of print (mudrā)!

3 Terminology
The glossary lists the terms in Roman alphabetical order; each term is followed
by the references to its occurrence in the texts presented in § 2. I have checked
the meanings of each term as provided in the following Sanskrit dictionaries
(see Abbreviations below):
– Wilson 1832.
– Böhtlingk and von Roth 1855.
– Böhtlingk 1879.
– Monier-Williams 1899.
– Schmidt 1928.
– Apte 1965.
– Mayrhofer 1986.
– Nachtrags-Wörterbuch des Sanskrit.

Wilson’s dictionary is particularly important for our purpose insofar it was

prepared and published in the same period and cultural environment of the
294 | Camillo A. Formigatti

typographies in which the earliest Sanskrit books were printed. As a methodo-

logical rule, I consider the meanings provided in the PW, the pw, Schmidt, and
the NWS as last instances, since they all provide the occurrences of a term (with
the only exception of the pw), while Wilson, the MW, and Apte do not.3

3.1 Printing
aṅkita
[2.1.5–7, 2.2.1, 2.2.6] ‘Printed’. The past participle passive of the verb aṅkay-
(denominative from aṅka) denotes something curved or bent (for instance, a
hook or any curved part of the human body), thus including any type of written
sign. Occasionally it is used as a synonym of mudrita, however it mostly denotes
any type of printed text, regardless of the kind of technology employed. Accord-
ingly, it is often further defined, as in the compound mudrāṅkita, ‘printed typo-
graphically’, or in the expression aṃkito ’yaṃ [scil. granthaḥ] śilākṣaraiḥ, ‘this
[book] was lithographed’ (lit. ‘this [book] was printed by means of lithographic
characters’).

mudrā (mudrita)
[2.1.1–6, 2.1.8, 2.2.8] ‘(Typographic) print’. The term mudrā and its derivatives
are the standard terms used in Sanskrit to denote print and print technology in
general. As in the case of most Sanskrit terms related to writing, the etymology
points to a Persian origin (Mayrhofer 1986, s.v.).4 A comprehensive discussion of
the various meanings of mudrā related to writing technology is provided by Falk
(1993, 299–301). Its primary meaning related to print technology is ‘seal’ or
‘stamp’, extending also to any kind of sign or symbol created by means of the
seal or stamp itself (in particular, mudrā is closely connected with the sphere of
coinage). The shift towards the specific meaning of ‘typographic print’ is ex-
plained in detail in § 4.

mudrākṣara (mudrikākṣara)
[2.1.1–2, 2.1.5, 2.1.8] ‘Type, movable type’. The compounds mudrākṣara and
mudrikākṣara, lit. ‘stamp-character’, is used in opposition to śilākṣara, ‘stone-

||
3 Since the MW is the most used Sanskrit-English dictionary, and the glossary in this article is
Sanskrit-English too, this choice might seem counter-intuitive to non-Indologists; the rationale
behind it rests on the considerations Roland Steiner put forward in a recent article (Steiner
2020).
4 On the foreign origin of Sanskrit terms pertaining to writing technology see Falk (2009).
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 295

character’, and can thus be safely understood and translated as ‘movable type’.
See also § 4.

mudrāṅkita
[2.1.6] See s.v. aṅkita.

nyāsita
[2.1.5] ‘(tasked to be) typeset (?)’. In the material examined here, this term oc-
curs only in the imprint of the 1814 edition of Bhāravi’s Kirātārjunīya. In this
context its meaning is dubious and rests ultimately on the interpretation of
other terms occurring in the same imprint. It is a past passive participle from the
causative form of the verb ni-as, meaning ‘cause to lay or put down’, and if our
understanding of the other terms is correct, then the most probable meaning of
nyāsita must relate to the typesetting process, as explained in § 4.

yantra (mudrāyantra, mudrāyantrālaya, śilāyantra)

[2.1.5, 2.1.6, 2.1.7, 2.1.8, 2.2.2, 2.2.3, 2.2.4, 2.2.7] ‘Printing press’. The Sanskrit term
yantra denotes any mechanical device, therefore it is often further defined,
occurring in expressions such as mudrāyantra, ‘typographic press’, śilāyantra,
‘lithographic press’, and other similar compounds.

śilākṣara
[2.2.1, 2.2.6] ‘Lithographic character’ and, by extension, ‘lithography’. See also
s.v. aṅkita.

3.2 Editing and publishing

ākṛṣya
[2.1.3, 2.1.4] ‘To translate’. This term occurs only in translations of the Bible and
might be considered a calque from the English ‘translate’ (or even directly from
the Latin transferre, where ā- = trans- and kṛṣ- = ferre). However, since Apte
provides the meaning ‘to supply a word or words from another rule or sentence’
(albeit without listing any occurrence), it could be that ākṛṣ- in Sanskrit could
already have meant ‘to translate’. It is worth noting that any form or derivative
of the verb anu-vad (such as the causative gerund anuvādya or the substantive
anuvāda) would have been more straightforward Sanskrit renderings of the
English “translation”, and probably also more intelligible for Bengali (and Hin-
di) native speakers.
296 | Camillo A. Formigatti

likhita / lekhita
[2.1.1–4, 2.2.3, 2.2.7] ‘Composed / commissioned for composition’. The verb likh-
means ‘to scratch’ (Mayrhofer 1986, 3.58, s.v. rikháti) and by extension ‘to en-
grave, inscribe, write, paint’. It occurs in colophons of manuscripts invariably
denoting the scribe as opposed to the author of the text. If author and scribe
coincide, as in the case of autographs, usually the two aspects of creating the
text and writing the manuscript are clearly distinguished in the colophon, with
a form of verbs such as kṛ- or vi-rac- describing the act of composing the text,
while likh- the material act of writing the manuscript.5 On the other hand, it
seems that likh- was occasionally used also with the meaning ‘to compose’, as
explained in detail in § 4.

śudh-
[2.1.5–8, 2.2.1, 2.2.3] ‘To correct, emend’. Already in the manuscript tradition
derivatives of this verbal root are used as standard terms to denote correcting,
emending, and similar activities. In the material examined here the following
forms occur: śuddha, viśuddha, śodha, śodhita, śodhanikā, śodhayitvā, saṃśo-
dhana. The term śodhanikā is a curious hapax which occurs alongside another
hapax, paustakī; both terms are simply diminutives, respectively from śodhana
and pustaka, and their meaning is clear from the context.

3.3 Terminology for dates

īsavī
[2.1.5] In the imprint of the 1814 edition of Bhāravi’s Kirātārjunīya the date is
provided in four different calendars: Śāka, Vikrama, Islamic, and Gregorian.
The term used to indicate the Gregorian is Hindi īsavī, not attested in Sanskrit
dictionaries. It is the adjective derived from Hindi Īsava, ‘Jesus’.

°mite / °saṃmite / °māne

[2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.5, 2.1.8, 2.2.1, 2.2.4, 2.2.6] ‘Calculated; measuring’. The past parti-
ciple passive of the verbal root mā (with or without a preverb) often occurs at
the end of compounds expressing the year with chronograms (bhūtasaṅkhyā).
They are used in the sense of ‘measured, calculated as; measuring (°māne)’.
Similar expressions occur rarely in colophons of Sanskrit manuscripts written

||
5 See for instance Formigatti (forthcoming).
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 297

before the eighteenth or nineteenth century,6 but are very common in both type-
set and lithographed printed books.

4 A few preliminary conclusions

Albeit limited in scope, the material examined above allows us to make a first
important observation: in order to understand the correct purport of terms hav-
ing an apparently well-known meaning, we have to be alert to the cultural con-
text in which they were employed. The most striking example is mudrā, the
Sanskrit term for print par excellence. Among other meanings, the PW provides
also ‘type, wooden type’ (‘Type, Holztype’), pointing to a passage from the
Khaḍgamālātantra as quoted in the Śabdakalpadruma, in which the term mudrā
occurs alongside other terms denoting different types of writing technologies.
Moreover, under mudrālipi the PW points to a similar passage from the
Vārāhītantra, quoted again in the Śabdakalpadruma. In the latter, the two pas-
sages are quoted one after another:

pañcadhālipyantargatalipiviśeṣaḥ | chāpāra akṣara iti bhāṣā | yathā, —

‘mudrālipiḥ śilpalipir lipir lekhanisambhavā |
guṇḍikā ghuṇasambhūtā lipayaḥ pañcadhā smṛtāḥ |
etābhir lipibhir vyāptā dharitrī śubhadā hara ! ||’
iti vārāhītantram ||
‘lekhanyā likhitaṃ viprair mudrābhir aṅkitañ ca yat |
śilpādinirmmitaṃ yac ca pāṭhyaṃ dhāryyañ ca sarvvadā ||’
iti khaḍgamālātantram ||

[Mudrā] A kind of script included in the fivefold scripts; ‘printed character’ in vernacular;
like [in the following passages]:
‘Five kinds of scripts are traditionally recognised: script by means of a seal/stamp, script
by means of a stylus, script originating from a reed-pen, script in the sand, script made by
woodworms. The prosperous Earth is covered with these scripts, o Śiva!’
(Vārāhītantra)
‘What is written by Brahmins with a reed-pen and printed by means of a seal/stamp, as
well as formed with a stylus and so on, should always be recited and worn!’
(Khaḍgamālātantra)

||
6 A notable exception is for instance Cambridge University Library MS Add. 2318, a Jaina
manuscript of the Śabdānuśāsanalaghuvṛttyavacūri written in 1472 Vikrama, i.e. 1415 CE
(<https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-02318/32>).
298 | Camillo A. Formigatti

The NWS provides two meanings for mudrālipi, ‘incised letter; impressed letter’
and simply ‘a kind of script’. The first meaning refers to the glossary in Murthy’s
Introduction to Manuscriptology (Murthy 1996), while the second meaning refers
to Edgerton’s Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary, which provides a reference to
the Mahāvastu, where the term occurs in a passage listing a series of scripts
(Senart 1882, vol. I, 135). In this list, in many cases the names of the scripts are
rather obscure and it is not immediately clear according to which criteria they
are grouped (or even if they are meaningfully grouped at all). Mudrālipi occurs
between the terms lekhālipi and ukaramadhuradaradacīṇahūṇāpīrā. As Senart
notices, the first part of the latter compound is corrupt, and the French scholar
suggests to read either uttarakurudarada° or uttarakurumagadhadarada° in-
stead, pointing to the parallel well-known list of scripts in the Lalitavistara.7
Unfortunately, mudrālipi is not included in the latter list, therefore even accept-
ing Senart’s emendation, we cannot establish with certainty with which scripts
mudrālipi might be grouped in the Mahāvastu. Senart suggests to translate it as
‘l’écriture des sceaux’ (‘the script of seals’), however noting that mudrālipi
seems to denote a particular use or form of a script, like in the case of lekhālipi,
which he translates as ‘l’écriture épistolaire’ or “l’écriture cursive” (‘the script of
letters’, i.e. ‘the cursive script’).8 I believe we might understand the purport of
the rather elusive term mudrālipi if we go back to the passages quoted in the
Śabdakalpadruma. As we have seen, Senart understands lekhālipi as a defini-
tion of the informal cursive script employed for letters, and consequently under
mudrālipi he probably understands a specific style of script used for seals and
stamps. However, the passages from the Vārāhītantra and the Khaḍgamālātantra
clearly mention different writing instruments rather than different script styles.
Most probably, guṇḍikālipi and ghuṇalipi refer respectively to the practice of writ-
ing ephemeral texts in the sand and to the meaningless forms created by insects
when eating into palm leaves and wood.9 As to the first three types of scripts

||
7 ‘Les noms ukara madhura varada sont sûrement corrompus; il paraît permis de les corriger,
d’après l’analogie du Lal. Vist., en uttarakurudarada ou peut-être en uttarakurumagadhadarada’
(Senart 1882, vol. I, 483).
8 ‘Une autre [catégorie] est celle des épithètes qui paraissent désigner des emplois ou des
formes particulières de l’écriture lekhālipi “l’écriture épistolaire”, c’est-à-dire “l’écriture cur-
sive”, mudrālipi “l’écriture des sceaux”’ (Senart 1882, vol. I, 484).
9 The term ghuṇalipi in the Vārāhītantra refers to a well-known anonymous Sanskrit proverb,
quoted for instance in Yaśodhara’s commentary to the Kāmasūtra: yad avijñātaśāstreṇa kadācit
sādhitaṃ bhavet | na caitad bahumantavyaṃ ghuṇotkirṇam ivākṣaram || (Dvivedī 1891, 2); ‘If a
person ignorant of scientific treatises sometimes accomplishes something, this should not be
extolled, for it is like a character perforated by a bookworm [in a manuscript]’.
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 299

mentioned, lekhanilipi and śilpalipi refer to characters created by means of the

two most common instruments used to write on different types of palm-leaf,
while it is safe to assume that mudrālipi refers to characters stamped on any
kind of surface by means of a seal or stamp, not exclusively for reading purpos-
es, but also for ritual or even merely decorative purposes. In the light of these
considerations, the meaning ‘type, wooden type’ provided in the PW is too nar-
row and, above all, anachronistic for the occurrences quoted. In fact, mudrā
could hardly refer to movable types (regardless if made of metal or wood), for
even though the Portuguese introduced typography on the Indian subcontinent
as early as the sixteenth century, initially this technology was employed almost
exclusively by Westerners. The first printing presses run by Indians date to the
beginning of the nineteenth century (Ross 1999, 118; Rocher and Rocher 2012,
73–75) and most probably it is only during this period that mudrā first starts to
denote specifically typographic print and movable types. This observation is
underpinned by the use of mudrākṣara in opposition to śilākṣara to distinguish
books printed typographically from lithographed books.
The terms likhita/lekhita represent another case in which a careful consid-
eration of the cultural context is fundamental for the correct understanding of
the term itself. Occasionally, in printed books the verb likh-, lit. ‘to write’, is
seemingly used in the sense ‘to compose’, a meaning not listed in the dictionar-
ies. In the first stanza of the Kāvyaśikṣā by the the thirteenth-century Jaina au-
thor Vinayacandrasūri, the verb form likhāmi (‘I write’) is clearly used as a
synonym of vi-rac- or kṛ-. Since this form occurs in a stanza, we must first rule
out the possibility that the author chose likh- only due to metrical reasons. In-
deed, he could not have used the unmetrical form viracayāmi, but he could have
easily used karomi, metrically equivalent to likhāmi. Hence, we can suppose
that the author purportedly chose to use likh- in the sense of ‘to compose’
(Shastri 1964, 1).10 The shift towards this meaning is clear in later texts and
manuscripts, for instance in the Śikṣāpatrī, a sacred text of the Svāminārāyaṇa
Sampradāya, consisting of a series of moral precepts composed by Sahajānanda
Svāmī, the sampradāya’s founder. The Bodleian Libraries hosts a particularly
important manuscript of this text, MS. Ind. Inst. Sansk. 72, venerated as a relic

||
10 natvā śrībhāratīṃ devīṃ bappabhaṭṭiguror gira(ā) | kāvyaśikṣāṃ pravakṣyāmi nānāśāstra-
nirīkṣaṇāt || 1 || vidvanmānitayā naiva [naiva] kīrti[pralobhanāt] | kin tu bālāvabodhāya śāstrād
enāṃ likhāmy aham || 2 || (‘Bowing before the Venerable Goddess Bhāratī, at the instance of the
teacher Bappa I teach the Instruction about Poetry, based on the examination of various
treatises. With respect for the learned and not out of the allurement of fame, but for the
instruction of the beginners according to the science [of rhetorics], I write (i.e. compose) this
[Instruction about Poetry].’)
300 | Camillo A. Formigatti

by the Svāminārāyaṇa community ‘for it is said to have been presented to Sir

John Malcolm, the governor of the Bombay Presidency from 1827 to 1830, by
Sahajānanda Svāmī, the Svāminārāyaṇa Sampradāya’s founder who is also
venerated as the iṣṭadeva, or chosen deity’ (Chag 2016, 170). MS. Ind. Inst.
Sansk. 72 is a composite and multi-text manuscript, containing the Śikṣāpatrī
with the Gujarati commentary (ṭīkā) by the author’s pupil Nityānanda Muni, as
well as Dīnanātha’s Nārāyaṇamunistotra, Śatānanda’s Rādhākṛṣṇāṣṭaka, and a
Gujarati hymn by Muktānanda Muni. Interestingly, in the final rubrics and in
one of the two colophons of this manuscript we notice an oscillation between
the two meanings in the use of likh-. For the sake of clarity, I provide here only
the parts of the final rubrics and of the colophon which are relevant to the pre-
sent discussion.11

First codicological unit, final rubric of the Śikṣāpatrī:

iti śrīsahajānaṃdasvāmilikhitā śikṣāpattrī samāptā.

The Śikṣāpattrī, composed (likhita) by the Venerable Sahajānandasvāmi is concluded.

Final rubric of the commentary and colophon:

iti śrīsahajānaṃdasvāmiśiṣyanityānaṃdamunilikhitā śikṣāpattrīṭīkā samāptā || [...]

śikṣāpattrīṭīkā saṃpūrṇā || lekhakanīkaṃṭhānaṃdamuni || śubhaṃ bhavatu ||
The commentary on the Śikṣāpattrī, composed by Nityānanda Muni, disciple of the Ven-
erable Sahajānaṃdasvāmi, is concluded. […] the commentary on the Śikṣāpattrī is com-
pleted. Scribe: Nīkaṇṭhānandamuni. Let there be bliss!

Second codicological unit, final rubrics of Dīnanātha’s, Śatānanda’s, and

Muktānandamuni’s hymns:

iti dīnānāthabhaṭṭaviracītam (!) śrīnārāyaṇamunistotraṃ saṃpūrṇamˎ ||

iti śrīśatānaṃdaviracitaṃ śrīrādhākṛṇṣāṣṭakam saṃpūrṇaṃ ||
iti muktānaṃdamuniviracitaprārthanāṣṭakasaṃpūrṇasamāptaṃ (!) ||

The Hymn to the Venerable Nārāyaṇamuni, composed by Dīnānātha Bhaṭṭa, is completed.

The Eightfold [Hymn] to the Venerable Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, composed by the Venerable
Śatānanda, is completed.
The Eightfold Prayer, composed by Muktānanda Muni, is completed and concluded.

||
11 Full transcriptions are provided in Chag (2016, 206–8).
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 301

As expected, the verb form used in the final rubrics to denote the composition of
the hymns is viracita. On the other hand, the form likhita is used in the case of
the Śikṣāpatrī and its Gujarati commentary, without distinguishing the role of
the authors, Sahajānanda Svāmī and Nityānanda Muni, from that of the scribe,
Nīkaṇṭhānanda Muni. Both codicological units were written in the 1820s, so we
have to consider the possibility that the use of likhita as a synonym for kṛta or
viracita is due to the influence of the English language expression ‘written,
i.e. composed’. On the other hand, the term likhita in the meaning ‘composed’ is
attested also in Bengali.12 Notably, the Bengali translation of the four Gospels
mentioned in § 2.1.3 is titled Mathi, Mārka, Lūka, Yohana likhita Susamācāra,
‘The Gospels written (i.e. composed) by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John’ (Yates et al.
1845). Turning our attention to the books printed in Bengal, a further source of
confusion – or maybe of confirmation – comes from the imprint of the 1807
edition of the Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana and other lexica in which, according to
C. Vogel, the causative form lekhita (lit. ‘caused to be written’) means ‘typeset’13.
However, this translation of lekhita does not take into account Bābūrāma’s role
in the publication. This term occurs also in the imprint of the 1814 edition of
Bhāravi’s Kirātārjunīya, where however the term denoting the typesetting pro-
cess is most probably nyāsita. Moreover, in this book the imprint clearly states
that the printer was a certain Madanapāla, therefore Bābūrāma could hardly
have been the typesetter. In the task of correctly understanding terms such as
lekhita, in my opinion we face two related issues. The first one is that in the
period examined, English technical terminology for printing and publishing
was translated with Sanskrit terms related to manuscript production. The sec-
ond issue is that publishing as practised nowadays implies the separation of
publishing house and printing press, while Bābūrāma’s Sanskrit Press fulfilled
both tasks. These two facts render our understanding of lekhita (and other
terms) more difficult, since we have to know more about Bābūrāma’s role in
order to be able to settle for a translation.14 As we have seen above, likhita might
mean ‘written’ in the sense of ‘composed’, therefore I suggest that in this con-
text lekhita does not merely suggests that Bābūrāma had the book typeset, but
that he supervised the whole composition – or if we prefer, preparation – of this

||
12 ‘likhita a. written [...]; composed; not verbal or oral’ (Biswas et al. 1980, s.v.).
13 ‘Its [i.e. Trikāṇḍaśeṣa’s] editio princeps is contained in a collection of four Koṣas
(Amarasimha’s Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana, Puruṣottamadeva’s Trikāṇḍaśeṣa and Hārāvalī, Medinī-
kara’s Nānārthaśabdakośa) prepared at the instance of H.T. Colebrooke, provided with indices
by V. Miśra, and type-set by B. Rāma in Kalikatta, s. 1864 [1807/08]’ (Vogel 2015, 54, n. 116).
14 On Bābūrāma and his role in the Sanskrit Press see Formigatti 2016, 103–104, Rocher and
Rocher 2012, 41, 74–75, 124, 139, 167, and Kopf 1969, 115, 118, 120, 147.
302 | Camillo A. Formigatti

specific edition. In other words, he oversaw the whole publication process, his
role being rather that of today’s publishers.15 Accordingly, I would argue that in
this context the closest approximation for lekhita in English is ‘published’.
Finally, the Sanskrit translations of the Bible represent the most conspicu-
ous case of the influence of the publishers’ cultural background on the publica-
tion process. Apart from the use of likhita once again in the meaning of
‘composed’ or ‘published’, it is maybe the Sanskrit term chosen to render the
concept of translation that ironically reveals the most how deeply the mission-
aries’ classical cultural heritage influenced their translation choices, as ex-
plained in § 3.2, s.v. ākṛṣya.
Let us now go back to the questions asked in the introduction and see if
we can give an answer to at least some of them, obviously bearing in mind that
the limited sample of printed material examined here cannot possibly allow us
to provide any conclusive answer. In most cases, it is possible to distinguish the
roles of those involved in the printing activity. Interestingly, it seems that roles
were more neatly distributed between different individuals in typographic
presses than in lithographic presses (cf. §§ 2.1.5 and 2.1.8). Apparently, in the
latter the same person occasionally fulfilled more than one role. For instance,
although the colophon of the 1850 edition of the Jaiminyaśvamedhaprākṛta is
admittedly ambiguous, it seems that the printer Gaṇeśa might also have written
the template manuscript – unless the last stanza was inserted by an anonymous
scribe, after all it is a traditional scribal formula found in countless manuscripts
(cf. § 2.2.3). Unfortunately, as in the case of manuscripts, the lithographs exam-
ined often provide only partial information in their colophons and do not allow
to draw any positive conclusion about lithographic book production. Moreover,
much like in manuscripts (and unlike in typographically printed books), such
information is often provided not in Sanskrit, but in a vernacular language. All
this is not surprising, since lithography is a printing technique so close to
manuscript culture that some scholars have dubbed it a means for mass man-
uscript production. On the other hand, the first typographic presses were run by

||
15 ‘I searched an earlier version of the book [i.e. Rocher and Rocher 2012], which I was forced
drastically to abridge, but I did not find anything on Madanapāla. I took him to be the printer.
Bābūrāma was the owner of the press, thus the “publisher”. Vidyākaramiśra and some others
were pandit commentators and, I guess, [bad] “editors” [...] After Colebrooke came to Calcutta,
he used him [i.e. Bābūrāma] to catalog and manage his large and still growing library of copied
manuscripts. His management talents must have impressed Colebrooke enough that
Colebrooke put him in charge of the printing press I am convinced Colebrooke financed,
though there is no document to attest to it.’ (Rosane Rocher, personal communication, emails
of 11/11/2020 and 17/01/2021).
 Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books | 303

Westerners and Indian pandits together, printing for a readership consisting

mostly of British civil servants, accustomed to Western printed books. More
interesting is perhaps to notice that sometime lithographs shift to the title page
elements which in manuscripts are usually found in the colophon, as in the
1867 edition of the Mudrāprakāśa (§ 2.2.7). This lithograph is interesting also
because of the discrepancy of the printing date between the copy held in the
Bodleian Libraries and the copy held in the Wellcome Library. Regrettably, an
explanation of the reason behind this discrepancy – as well as several other
aspects of Sanskrit print culture – can be explained only with a more thorough
study, which goes beyond the scope of this small contribution.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all colleagues and friends who helped me by sharing their
knowledge with me: Imre Bangha, Daniela Bevilacqua, Daniele Cuneo, Madhav
Deshpande, César Merchan-Hamann, Emma Mathieson, Cristina Pecchia,
Rosane Rocher. Needless to say, all remaining blunders are due to the author’s
nescience.

Abbreviations
Apte Vaman Shivaram Apte, The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 1965.
PW Otto von Böhtlingk and Rudolf von Roth, Sanskrit-Wörterbuch, 1855.
pw Otto von Böhtlingk, Sanskrit-Wörterbuch in kürzerer Fassung, 1879.
Mayrhofer Manfred Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, 1986.
MW Monier Monier-Williams, Ernst Leumann and Carl Cappeller. A Sanskrit-English
Dictionary, 1899.
NWS Nachtrags-Wörterbuch des Sanskrit.
Schmidt Richard Schmidt and Otto von Böhtlingk, Nachträge zum Sanskrit-Wörterbuch
in kürzerer Fassung von Otto Böhtlingk, 1928.
Wilson H. H. Wilson, A Dictionary in Sanskrit and English, 1832.
304 | Camillo A. Formigatti

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Abingdon: Routledge.
Ross, Fiona G. E. (1999), The Printed Bengali Character and Its Evolution, Richmond: Curzon.
Śāstrī, Hariprasāda Gaṅgāśaṅkara (1964), Kāvyaśikṣā (Lālabhāī Dalapatabhāī Granthamālā, 3),
Amadāvāda: Lālabhāī Dalapatabhāī Bhāratīya Saṃskr̥ ti Vidyāmandira.
Senart, E. (1882), Mahāvastu avadānaṃ. Le Mahâvastu, texte sanscrit publié pour la première
fois et accompagné d’introductions et d’un commentaire, Paris: L’Imprimerie nationale.
306 | Camillo A. Formigatti

Ska, Jean Louis and Pascale Dominique (2006), Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch,
Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns.
Steiner, Roland (2020), ‘Woher hat er das? Zum Charakter des Sanskrit-English Dictionary von
Monier-Williams’, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 170 (1): 107–
118.
Vogel, Claus (2015) Indian Lexicography, revised and enlarged edn (Indologica Marpurgensia,
6), Munich: P. Kirchheim Verlag.
Yates, William and John Wenger (1845), Mathi, Mārka, Lūka, Yohana Likhita Susamācāra, Ebaṃ
Preritadera Kriẏāra Bibaraṇa, Yunānīẏa Bhāshāhaite Bhāshānurīkṛta = The Four Gospels
with the Acts of the Apostles, in Bengálí, Calcutta: Printed at the Baptist Mission Press for
the Bible Translation Society and the American Foreign Bible Society.
Marco Heiles
Media Systems and Genre Conventions in
Transition: A German Priamel Booklet from
Nuremberg, c. 1490
Abstract: The manuscript Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 of the Badische Landes-
bibliothek Karlsruhe is a very thin booklet of six leafs in quarto format. It was
written by a professional scribe in Nuremberg around 1490. The booklet is titled
Priamel red (‘Priamel speech’) and contains a collection of gnomic texts in Early
New High German. The materiality and content of the manuscript reveal it as a
special product of a book market that was increasingly dominated by print and
in which handmade books became niche products. The later entries and dele-
tions in the manuscript make it clear that the sexually explicit texts in the col-
lection experienced a distinctive reception and provoked reactions. The dele-
tions of the sexually explicit passages could indicate that the texts were initially
created for a specific, presumably purely male, readership, and that this reader-
ship was to be expanded.

1 The manuscript Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19

as a material object
The manuscript Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 of the Badische Landesbibliothek
Karlsruhe is a very thin booklet of six leaves of 18.8 × 13.7 cm.1 It is made of three
sheets of paper without watermarks.2 Although its contemporary version con-
tains entries from six different hands, the manuscript was originally made by a
single scribe (‘hand A’). The outer double leaf of the booklet was originally

||
1 Digital images of the manuscript are provided by the Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe:
<https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:31-37635>. A detailed description of the manuscript
by Nicole Eichenberger is published in Manuscripta Mediaevalia, <manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/
dokumente/html/obj31577229>.
2 The chain lines of the paper run horizontally. The original sheets must have had a size of at
least 27.4 × 37.6 cm and therefore had most probably chancery format (32 × 45 cm). Cf. Needham
1994 and Needham 2017 or use the Needham Calculator, <needhamcalculator.net>, provided by
the Schönberg Institute for Manuscript Studies.

Open Access. © 2021 Marco Heiles, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-016
308 | Marco Heiles

blank except for a title indication ‘Priamel red’ (‘Priamel speech’)3 on fol. 1r. This
leaf was used as a cover with a title page. The four inner leaves were written by
‘hand A’ with 19 gnomic poems. The individual texts consist of 4 to 14 rhymed
verses and are separated only by blank lines. There are no initials, rubrics,
headings or other book decorations. ‘Hand A’’s script is a Bastarda, a cursive
late Gothic book script without calligraphic ambition. The writing is clearly
legible, but a crossed-out verse on fol. 2v (Fig. 1), which was written down twice,
and a misplaced word in text no. 4,4 show that the scribe did not work very care-
fully.

Fig. 1: Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Donaueschingen A III 19, fols 2v–3r. CC-BY Badische
Landesbibliothek.

The booklet was donated in 1868 together with another one (Cod. Donaue-
schingen A III 20) to the Fürstlich Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen

||
3 All translations in this article are by the author (Marco Heiles). All sites mentioned in this
article were last accessed on 24 November 2020.
4 The end of this Priamel reads: der ist außwendig gern milt vnd karck / vnd in seim haus allweg
faul vnd karck. The first karck must be emendated to starck. Cf. Kiepe 1984, 77.
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 309

by the Augsburg antiquarian bookseller Albert Fidelis Butsch. The codex

Donaueschingen A III 20 was written by the same scribe and has the same
format.5 It contains a Fastnachtsspiel (carnival play) ‘Das Fest des Königs von
England’ (‘The Feast of the King of England’) by Hans Rosenplüt (c. 1400–1460).
The traces of the old binding show that both booklets were temporarily bound
together in one codex. However, these two booklets are not the only ones we
know by this scribe.6 In the Codex Germ. 13 of the Staats- und Universitäts-
bibliothek Hamburg, ten of these booklets are bound together, all of which
have survived with their covers and title pages.7 Two of these title pages even
have price indications: iij creutzer (‘3 kreuzer’).8 So, these booklets were obvi-
ously produced on stock and for sale. They have been preserved only because
they were subsequently bound into codices. In three other composite codices,
the covers and titlepages were either removed or overwritten.9 Altogether 31 book-
lets are preserved. Those that show watermarks can be dated to c. 1472–1490.10
All contain texts created in Nuremberg: Priamel, Fastnachtsspiele (carnival
plays), Mären (verse narratives) and Minnereden (discursive verse texts on love),
mostly by Hans Rosenplüt. Since the manuscripts were also written in a North
Bavarian / East Franconian writing idiom, we can assume that they were pro-
duced in Nuremberg.
During the active time of our scribe, Nuremberg was one of the largest and
economically most important German-speaking cities and a European centre of
long distance trade, banking and metal and weapons production.11 In the sec-
ond half of the fifteenth century, its population grew from c. 20,000 (1450) to

||
5 Digital images: <digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/urn/urn:nbn:de:bsz:31-37656>. Description by Nicole
Eichenberger in Manuscripta Mediaevalia <manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/dokumente/html/
obj31577242>.
6 Cf. Simon 1970, 15–17; Kiepe 1984, 176; Horváth and Stork 2002, 122–123.
7 Digital images: <resolver.sub.uni-hamburg.de/kitodo/PPN1665269499>.
8 Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. germ. 13, p. 69 and p. 153.
9 Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 5339a (c. 1472); Vienna, Nationabibliothek,
Cod. 13711 (c. 1487/1489); Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. 18.12 Aug. 4°
(c. 1487/1489). Cf. Kiepe 1984, 175–177.
10 Cf. Kiepe 1984, 175–177. These dates should be checked again. Kiepe’s palaeographic dating
and his interpretation of the development of the writer’s writing as a linear process partly
contradicts the watermark dating (as he even remarks himself, Kiepe 1984, 334), which is
methodologically more secure and reliable. In the older studies (Simon 1970, 15–17), however,
not all watermarks of the manuscripts were accurately identified. With our current resources,
this would certainly be possible. On the method cf. Schmitz 2018, 76–83.
11 On Nuremberg in the fifteenth century: Diefenbacher and Beyerstedt 2012; Williams-Krapp
2020, 34–194; Adams and Nichols 2004.
310 | Marco Heiles

c. 28,000 inhabitants (1497).12 The town was dominated by a small patrician

upper class, who obstructed the political participation of the mass of craftsmen
and also attempted to control the cultural life of the city. The literacy rate in
Nuremberg was high and a broad middle class was able to send its children to
German and Latin schools. In the 1470s and 1480s, Nuremberg developed into
the most important publishing centre for German prints after Augsburg (Fig. 2).13

Fig. 2: Production of prints in Germany between 1481 and 1490 per city, number of editions in
percent of total production. CC-BY-SA Marco Heiles.

||
12 Cf. Stadtlexikon Nürnberg, Bevölkerungsentwicklung: http://online-service2.nuernberg.de/
stadtarchiv/objekt_start.fau?prj=verzeichnungen&dm=Stadtlexikon&ref=1348.
13 Cf. Heiles, Marco (2011), Topography of German Humanism 1470–1550, https://topography-
german-humanism.artesliteratur.de/Topography%20of%20German%20humanism%201550-
1470%20-%20maps%20-%201.html; Heiles 2010.
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 311

During this period, at least three and up to nine different printing workshops
were simultaneously in operation in the city.14 In addition, at least two
workshops printed xylographic block books in the 1470s.15 Apart from Anton
Koberger’s huge manufactory business specializing in long-distance trade,16 the
Nuremberg book commerce was characterized by small printing shops that were
often active for only a few years. At the same time, the importance of scribes for
book production decreased. The registers of new citizens show that the number
of new scribes moving to the city rose continuously until c. 1470, only to fall
rapidly in the following three decades.17
Compared with other surviving German manuscripts of the late fifteenth
century, the manuscript Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 is an exceptional object
for three reasons:
(1) Manuscripts of such brevity (6 leaves) are only very rarely handed down.
We must assume that the loss rate of these small unbound booklets was much
higher than that of bound codices. According to the figures we know for the
survival of fifteenth-century prints, we can expect a loss rate of 99% or higher.18

||
14 Cf. Typenrepertorium der Wigendrucke: <tw.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/queries/officequery.
xql?place=N%C3%BCrnberg>; Diefenbach 2003.
15 Hans Sporer and Friedrich Creussner, cf. Merk 2018, 141–144; Kremer 2003.
16 Cf. Bangert 2019, 91–94; Sauer 2017.
17 While 23 scribes became citizens of Nuremberg in the 1460s, there were only 14 in the
1470s, nine in the 1480s and finally only two in the 1490s. Cf. Kiepe 1984, 149–154 with Table 1.
18 The loss rates of fifteenth-century books cannot be reliably calculated and (due to the
contingency of transmission) from the calculated loss rates should not be deduced to the origi-
nally existing number of books of individual places, periods or even persons. Information is
provided by the known run numbers of individual incunabula prints (European prints with
movable type published up to 1500). However, loss rates of incunabula prints vary greatly
depending on genre, language and format. For individual editions the values are between 50%
and 100%. The German calendar of Johannes Regiomontanus printed in Nuremberg in 1474
(GW M37472), for example, was printed 1,000 times and only 25 copies have been preserved,
which corresponds to a loss rate of 97.5% (numbers according to Eric White’s database of
fifteenth-century print runs, <www.cerl.org/resources/incunabula/main#e_white_researching_
print_runs> and the Gesamtkatalog Wiegendrucke <gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/docs/
M37472.htm>). Neddermeyer 1996, 27–28 calculates a loss rate of 95% for the entire incunabula
production in Europe and estimates a loss rate of 93% for European manuscripts of the
fifteenth century. For prints of small format (octavo) or with a small number of sheets (< 80
leaves) he calculates a survival rate of 1,2% respectively 1,3%, and for vernacular prints of all
formats a survival rate of 1,1% (Neddermeyer 1998, I, 75–78; II, diagram 5). However,
Neddermeyer does not even include completely lost print editions in his calculations. Exam-
ples for completely lost editions of small format prints are mentioned by Dondi 2020, 587–589.
Cf. Trovato 2014, 104–108.
312 | Marco Heiles

The fifteenth-century booklets known to us are, with a few exceptions,19 pre-

served only because they (like Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19) were at some
point bound into a codex and preserved as such by an institution.
(2) Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 was produced by a professional scribe on
stock for the book market and not on behalf of a client. We also know the ap-
proximate prize of the booklet. This is a extraordinary setting of manuscript
production20 in the German-speaking countries of the fifteenth century and
there are rarely any known comparable cases. Diebold Lauber’s workshop, ac-
tive in Alsace between c. 1420 and c. 1470, is a prominent exception. The so-
called Lauber workshop, however, consisted of many different actors, writers
and illuminators, who worked mainly together in the production of large illus-
trated codices.21 While Lauber’s handwritten book advertisements also suggest
the production of small manuscripts comprising of only one quire, these have
not survived.22 But, the capital required and the entrepreneurial risk of a coop-
erative business model for the production and distribution of large codices (be it
in manuscript or in print) must have been much higher than in the one-man
business of our anonymous scribe. His business model is rather comparable to
that of block book printers, whose products are of a similar format (but different
in genre),23 or that of the Nuremberg craftsman poet Hans Folz, who (in his main
profession a barber) self-published his works from 1479 to 1488 with his own
typographic printing press with woodcut illustrations.24 Folz’s prints contain the
same text genres as the booklets of the anonymous Nuremberg writer. With
their products in the lower price range, both Folz and our writer must have
aimed at the same group of buyers. As figures from Venice show, where the
transmission situation was much better than in Nuremberg, book prices fell
enormously as a result of the spread of letterpress printing in the 1470s and

||
19 See for example: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Hs. 384a–384i (<handschriftencensus.de/3311>)
or Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Historisches Archiv, Bestand Deutsches Reich,
Fragen und Antworten über das Freigericht (Wilshörst) 1408/1428 (<ha.gnm.de/
objekt_start.fau?prj=HA-ifaust&dm=Historisches+Archiv&ref=31518>). These notebooks also
only survived as part of a larger collection. Cf. Heiles 2018, 453–455; Schwob 2004, 51.
20 My use of terminology (‘setting of manuscript production’, ‘patterns of visual organisation’)
is strongly influenced by the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg. See
Wimmer et al. 2015.
21 A list of manuscripts is provided by the project ‘Diebold Lauber digital’: <wirote.informatik.
uni-leipzig.de/mediavistik/handschrift/uebersicht>. On Laubers workshop see Fasbender 2012.
22 On Lauber’s production of smaller books without illumination see Achnitz 2012.
23 On the genres of blockbook printing see Merk 2018, 15–22.
24 Cf. Klingner 2010, 47–65; Huey 2012, 1–32; Rautenberg 1999.
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 313

continued to fall in the 1480s and 1490s.25 Smaller prints, such as primers for
first-time readers (containing the alphabet, the most important prayers and
some psalms), could already be purchased in the 1480s for the equivalent of
everyday goods such as ‘a chicken, or “an excellent eel”, or a packet of sugar’.26
The price of three kreuzer (= 12 pfennig), as stated in Hamburg Cod. germ. 13, is
also an affordable one. In 1480–1494 Nuremberg, three kreuzer was the prize of
1,5 litres of wine or c. 1,6 kg beef.27 If we compare the prize for one booklet with
the daily wages of building craftsmen for 1480–1494, which in summer was two
meals and c. 24 pfennig (equivalent to 6 kreuzer), we can see that our scribe had
to sell at least three booklets a day to have a comparable income, after subtract-
ing the cost of paper and ink.
(3) The Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 and the booklets handed down in the
Hamburg Cod. germ. 13 make use of a pattern of visual organisation of books
whose development is closely connected to the development of early book print-
ing and which we usually know from prints only: the title page. Initially printed
books always began on the first page of the first quire, as it was also the case in
manuscripts. From the 1470s onwards, however, printers began to increasingly
leave the first page or first folio of the print blank (Fig. 3).28 By the end of the
1480s, the pattern of the title page had fully evolved: a page separated from the
text contained information for the identification of the text, often supplemented
by illustrations and less often by information about the production (printer,
place, date).29 Of the prints produced in German-speaking countries between
1486 and 1490, 73% already had a title page, while additional 13.5% started with
one or more blank pages.30 The development in Nuremberg, where Hans Folz
first printed title pages in 1482, runs parallel to that in Germany as a whole.31
The fact that our scribe adapted that new developed pattern of printed books for
his manuscript booklets in c. 1490 shows, how strongly this type of manuscript
production was influenced by printing.

||
25 Cf. Dondi 2020.
26 Dondi 2020, 587.
27 For prizes and wages in Nuremberg see Dirmeier 1984, 212, Table 35.
28 Cf. Rautenberg 2008, 34–38; Rautenberg 2004, 12–14.
29 Rautenberg 2004.
30 Cf. Herz 2008, Fig 1.
31 Cf. Herz 2008.
314 | Marco Heiles

Fig. 3: Patterns of the beginning of books printed in Germany, 1460–1500, total numbers of
prints (Source: Rautenberg 2008, Fig. 6). Frau Rautenberg hat der Veröffentlichung in diesem
Beitrag (und unter CC BY NC ND) zugestimmt.

2 Manuscript content and social context

The Codex Donaueschingen A III 19 belongs to a very rarely transmitted manu-
script type of the fifteenth century. It is a single-quire codex with secular popu-
lar literature in German and was produced by a professional scribe for the
Nuremberg book market, c. 1490. This scribe produced this kind of unpreten-
tious and undecorated manuscripts on stock. He found himself in competition
with typographic printing and its mass production, which influenced both his
price design and the layout of the books. However, his products are distin-
guished from the print production of his time by content and by diversity. Only
a fraction of the handwritten preserved Mären, Minnereden, Priamel and carni-
val plays were printed (or preserved in prints) at all. While Mären were printed
in the fifteenth century by at least 13 printers in six cities,32 Minnereden are only
preserved in six editions before 1500, three of which alone were printed by Hans

||
32 Cf. Fischer 1983, 241–242. The database Brevitas-Wiki gives a list of 21 Mären printed before
1500: <wiki.brevitas.org/index.php?search=gw+%2B+M%C3%A4re%2FVersnovelle>. The study
of the printing tradition of Mären is still a research desideratum.
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 315

Folz in Nuremberg.33 Out of the Fastnachstspiele only three are preserved in prints
from this time.34 All three were composed by Hans Folz, two were also printed by
him. The oldest surviving printed collection of Priamel was printed by Johann
Schöffer in Mainz as late as 1508.35 From the time before, only four or five xylo-
graphic single-sheet prints with one or two Priamel or Priamel-like texts preserved
(Fig. 4).36 This means that the anonymous Nuremberg copyist supplied his custom-
ers with literature that did not exist in print and never became popular in printing.
The manuscript Donaueschingen A III 19 is titled ‘Priamel red’ (‘Priamel
speech’).37 A Priamel is a poem, usually in rhymed couplets, in which different
circumstances are described in parallel linked sub-phrases, which in the last
concluding part of the poem are connected in such a way that the common
ground (tertium comperationis) of the sequence becomes pointedly recogniza-
ble.38 This structure can easily be detected in an example like text no. 5 in the
collection copied by ‘hand A’ (see Fig. 1):

Weißheit von tru̇ncken leüten The wisdom of drunkards,

vnd wider geben nach peüten and the returning after the exchange,
vnd alter weiber schön and the beauty of old women,
vnd zu̇ prochner glocken dön and the sound of broken bells,
vnd junger frauen synn and the intelligence of young women,
vnd alter mann mÿnn and the sex of old men,
vnd treger pferdt lauffen and the running of sluggish horses,
die sol nÿemant theür kauffen. should nobody buy dearly.
(Fol. 3r, no. 5)

||
33 Klingner and Lieb 2013, vol. 2, 149–162; Klingner 2010.
34 Ridder, Przybilski and Schuler 2005, 243.
35 Hierin in disem büchleyn. Findt mañ vil gůter reymen feyn. Manchẽ seltzam gůtẽ schwanck.
Lustig zuhoeren bey dem weinßtranck, Mainz: Johann Schöffer, 1508 [VD16 V 1004; USTC
662698]. See Kiepe 1984, 376–378.
36 No. 1: Wer sůcht jn eym kvttrolff glas genß, Nuremberg?, c. 1460–1470, c. 280 × 200 mm.
Exemplar: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Xylogr. 88. Digital images: <mdz-nbn-
resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00083140-5> (see Pfister 1986; Griese 2000, 179). No. 2:
Sälig ist der man den sein hand nert, Upper Germany, 1475 (?),256 × 390 mm (see Schreiber 1928,
54, no. 2895; Kiepe 1984, 110, 392, no. 25). No. 3: Wer eehalten dinget vmb grossen lon,
Nuremberg (?) 1480–1490, 390 × 283 mm (see Schreiber 1927, 125, no. 1990; Kiepe 1984, 19–20,
Fig. 3, 397, no. *82). No. 4: Dis sein die zehen eygenschafft des alter, Augsburg or Lake
Constance 1482, 240 × 347 mm (see Schreiber 1927, 57, no. 1881, Kiepe 1984, 405, 423). No. 5: O
Mensch bedenckh allzeit dein noth, Nuremberg (?), sixteenth century (?), 280 × 385 mm (see
Schreiber 1928, 54, no. 2895; Kiepe 1984, 35 and 414).
37 Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19, fol. 1r.
38 Cf. Dicke 2007. On the genre characteristic, see Williams-Krapp 2020, 63–66; Gerhardt
2007, 7–30.
316 | Marco Heiles

From Middle High German times (c. 1150–1350), only Priamel-like quartrains
(Priamel-Vierzeiler) are known, especially from Freidank (d. 1233) and in Hugo
von Trimberg’s Renner (between 1296 and 1313). Longer Priamel-like construc-
tions without rhyme have first been circulating since the beginning of the fif-
teenth century, inter alia in student’s manuscripts.39 However, the Priamel did
not develop into a genre until the middle of the fifteenth century in Nuremberg.
Although the tradition is mainly anonymous, the majority of Priamel and their
development are today attributed to Hans Rosenplüt.40 The Priamel appeared in
diverse media. The Priamel in Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 obviously present
themselves as reading texts. However, the inclusion of Priamel in carnival plays
shows that they can also be used as recitation texts.41 Further, Priamel are also
epigraphically used for house inscriptions,42 and the large format and type of
script of most xylographic Priamel broadside prints also indicate that they could
be presented as wall posters.43 The Priamel is, however, as Christoph Gerhard
puts it: ‘usually literature from existing literature and not a testimony of spon-
taneous orality’.44
From the 19 texts written by ‘hand A’ in Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19, 13
follow the Priamel structure described above (nos 1–6, 14–19). According to
Kiepe, six of them belong to the oeuvre of Hans Rosenplüt (no. 1–6).45 The other
texts in the collection are also characterised by enumerations and sequences,
and are therefore Priamel-like. Three of them are orations of the revue-like car-
nival play Wettstreit in der Liebe46 (‘Competition of Love’) (nos 8, 9, 11), spoken
there by different characters. No. 10 could be an otherwise not transmitted vari-
ant of the same or a similar play. No. 12 is a Reimpaarspruch, a gnomic poem in
four verses. The title of the booklet, ‘Priamel speech’, tells us that the contempo-
rary concept of Priamel was broader than our modern scholarly definition.

||
39 The unrhymed Priamel Alder an weyßheit is for example transmitted in the student or aca-
demic manuscripts Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 671, fol. 117v; Munich, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Clm 641, fol. 72r; and Lübeck, Stadtbibliothek, Ms. hist. 8° 1a, fol. 238r. See
Heiles forthcoming.
40 See Kiepe 1984, 45–53.
41 Cf. Gerhardt 2007, 29.
42 Cf. Hohenbühel-Heufler 1883.
43 Cf. the measurements of the prints nos 2–5 listed above in n. 36. Cf. Griese 2000, 179–184.
44 Gerhardt 2007, 12: ‘[…] in aller Regel Literatur aus bereits bestehender Literatur […] und
kein Zeugnis einer spontanen Mündlichkeit’. See also Gerhardt 2007, 12–30.
45 Cf. Kiepe 1984, 348–349.
46 Edition in Keller 1853, 132–137 (no. 16).
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 317

Table 1: Texts written by ‘hand A’

no. 1 Ein schreiber, der lieber tanczt vnd Priamel 12 verses

springt
no. 2 Wer gern spillt vnd vngern gillt Priamel 8 verses
no. 3 Ein vater, der sein kindt gern lern wollt Priamel 14 verses
no. 4 Welch man seim eelichen weib ist veindt Priamel 8 verses
no. 5 Weißheit von trúncken leüten Priamel 8 verses
no. 6 Ein jünge magt on lieb Priamel 8 verses
no. 7 Die geÿer vnd die hüner arn Priamel 6 verses
no. 8 Mein lieb liebt mir so fast verses from carnival play 8 verses
no. 9 Mein fraw liebet mir so ser verses from carnival play 8 verses
no. 10 Ewer lieb ist meiner nit gleich verses from carnival play (?) 8 verses
no. 11 Mein lieb liebet mir für schnecken verses from carnival play 4 verses
no. 12 Es ist ein gemeiner sit Reimpaarspruch 4 verses
no. 13 Kein grösser narr mag nit werden Priamel (with diverging 10 verses
structur)
no. 14 Ein schweigender schüler Priamel 6 verses,
no rhyme
no. 15 Poßheit vnd grindig pader Priamel 4 verses
no. 16 Wenn man ein einfeltigen betreügt Priamel 4 verses
no. 17 Wann das ein weiser eins narren spott Priamel 4 verses
no. 18 Ein man, dem er vnd güt zú fleüst Priamel 4 verses
no. 19 Wenn ein reÿcher ein armen Priamel 4 verses
verschmecht

‘Hand A’ did not write the texts of Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 down in a ran-
dom order, but followed a (conscious or unconscious) scheme. This can firstly
be seen in the form of the texts (Table 1). The booklet begins with seven elabo-
rate Priamel of 8 to 14 verses, followed by excerpts from the carnival play and
ends with five Priamel of 4 verses. But there is also a thematic order. The booklet
begins with a Priamel about the behaviour of priest candidates. A list of nega-
tive examples tells the reader how a good priest would act:

Ein Schreiber der lieber tanczt vnd springt A scribe who would rather dance and hop
dann das er in der kirchen singt than sing in the church,
vnd lieber vor der metzen hoffirt and rather flirt with the town whore
dann das er eim priester zü altar ministrirt than serve a priest at the altar,
vnd lieber in heimlich winckel schlüff and rather slink in hidden corners
318 | Marco Heiles

dann das er gen predig lüff than run to sermon,

vnd lieber dry tag pulenbrief schrib and rather write love letters for three days
dann das er ein stünd zü vesper blib than spend one hour at vespers,
vnd lieber auf der gassen schwantzirt and rather stroll in the streets
dann das er in den püchern stüdirt than study in books,
wann auß eim solchen ein frommer priester if such a person becomes a good priest,
würt
so hat in got mit grossem glück angerürt. then god has touched him with great
(Fol. 2r, no. 1) blessing.

The following texts deal with morally correct and socially compliant behaviour
in a similar way. In no. 2 negative habits are listed that prevent one from becom-
ing a good Carthusian monk (der taug zu̇ keim cartheüser wol),47 and in no. 3
positive habits are listed that one should consider if one does not want to be
rejected by God on Judgment Day. Priamel no. 4 deals with the husband’s be-
haviour towards his wife:

Welch man sein eelich weib ist veindt The man who is hostile to his wife,
vnd allweg mit ir zant vnd greint and always fights and yells with her,
vnd selten gütlich mit ir redt and seldom speaks well with her,
vnd sie verschmecht zu̇ tisch vnd pedt and despises her at the table and in bed,
vnd auswendig zu̇ andern weibern geet and goes nibbling away at other women,
nasch[en]
vnd mit in spillt in der vntern taschen and plays with them in the lower pocket,
der ist außwendig gern milt vnd karck this man likes to be generous and mean
[emendate: stark 48] [strong] away from home,
vnd in seim haus allweg faul vnd karck. but is always lazy and mean in his house.
(Fols 2v–3r, no. 3)

Less focused on morality, the following texts warn against foolish behaviour.
They foster a mutual understanding of social judgements and communicate
everyday knowledge in the form of stereotypes. Priamel no. 5, already quoted
above, shows this clearly: drunken people lie, old women are ugly, young wom-
en are stupid and old men impotent. No. 6 adds: Young women have lovers, big
fairs are full of thieves, Jews are rich, young men are brave, etc. Using examples
from the animal world (in old barns there are mice, in old furs there are lice, and
old billy goats have beards), these characteristics are given as part of the

||
47 Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19, fol. 2v.
48 Cf. Kiepe 1984, 77.
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 319

natural order (naturlich art).49 In this way, the Priamel are expressing an
essentialist world view in which one’s ‘nature’ determines one’s behaviour.
Whereas couple relationships and love were previously one topic among
others, no. 7 now deals with sex, specifically the (naturally determined) sexual
lust of women and prostitutes.

Die geyer vnd die hüner arn The vulture and the red kite,
die sperber die nach wilpret farn and the sparrowhawk hunting wild game,
vnd der wolff auf wildem gefert and the wolf on wild scent,
vnd hüngerig votzen auf ersen hart and hungry pussies on hard asses,
gemein weiber in ainer rayß and prostitutes in an army train,
die essen nichts liebers dann fleisch. they all like nothing better than meat.
(Fol. 3v, no. 7)

Thematically, the statements from the Fastnachstspiel follow on from this.

These thematise the language of love. The texts parody love confessions by
presenting social misconduct (the extreme libido of a woman in no. 8, or the
extravagance of a man in no. 9) or by using distorted rhetorical figures (no. 11).
A sexual joke (no. 12)50 and a Priamel about fools who are so addicted to their
wives that they do not notice their adultery (no. 13) close this group of texts
about love and sexuality.
The last five Priamel give again negative examples of social misconduct.
Key words in this section are teufel (devil) and weißheit (wisdom). The devil
marks the sin. Human behaviour is judged here in Christian moral categories.
The didactic aim of these texts is the avoidance of sin and the attainment of
eternal salvation.

Poßheit vnd grindig pader Malice and scruffy barbers,

spiler vnd grosse lieger gamblers and great liars,
wucherer vnd geitig pfaffen usurers and greedy priests,
die sechs hat der teufel beschaffen. this six were created by the devil.
(Fol. 5r, no. 15)

The wisdom and its counterpart foolishness represent a second, pragmatic val-
ue system. The didactic aim here is to avoid stupidity and errors that lead to the
loss of social prestige or energy.

||
49 Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19, fol. 3v.
50 Es ist ein gemeiner sit / das der zers vnd der schmidt / Allwegen müsen stan / So sie zu̇ der
arbeit süllen gan ‘It is a common custom that the blacksmith and the dick always have to stand
while working’.
320 | Marco Heiles

Wann das ein weiser eins narren spott When a wise man mocks fools,
vnd ein frommer sich gesellt zu̇ pöser rott and a pious man gets into bad company,
wer das den zweien wol an legt he who thinks well of the two
derselb kein weißheit in im tregt. carries no wisdom in himself.
(Fol. 5v, no. 17)

Wenn ein Reycher ein armen verschmecht When a rich man rejects a poor one,
vnd wenn ein greiff ein mu̇ cken vecht and a griffin catches a gnat,
vnd wenn ein keyser pöse müntz schlecht and an emperor strikes bad coins,
die drey haben sich selbs geschwecht. the three have weakened themselves.
(Fol. 5v, no. 19)

In the collection of Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19, the Priamel is presented as a

jocular didactic genre, which takes up discourses on the role of the clergy, on
the behaviour of man and woman (especially in couple relationships), and on
sin and stupidity. The range of social roles mentioned in the texts reveals that
they were written in and for an urban society: peasants and nobles, village life
or life at court play no role. The Priamel is instead situated in the city: we en-
counter scribes (no. 1), priests (no. 1, 2, 15), Jews (no. 2, 6), Carthusian monks
(no. 2), preachers (no. 3), confessors (no. 3), drinkers (no. 3), prostitutes (no. 7,
14), smiths (no. 12), students (no. 14), judges (no. 14), chefs (no. 14), barbers
(no. 15), gamblers (no. 15) and usurers (no. 15); the settings are streets (no. 1),
churches (no. 1–3) and fairs (no. 5); people read books (no. 1) and write love
letters (no. 1).
The texts of the Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 function as a source of self-
understanding to a middle-class urban audience. They convey a simple morality
of conformism and are used to set the readers apart from the lower clergy and
the socially marginalised and deviant (gamblers, drinkers and adulterers). The
texts are written from a male perspective and also address solely a male audi-
ence. Women get devaluated and portrayed as sexually demanding, and per-
missive, and as objects of male control.
The texts contained in Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 fit into Werner
Williams-Krapp’s description of the literature composed in Nuremberg by Hans
Rosenplüt and his successors as ‘Literatur der Mittelschicht’ (middle class litera-
ture). Hans Rosenplüt (c. 1400–1460) can indeed be credited as the author of
most of the texts in that manuscript.51 Rosenpüt’s oeuvre is extraordinarily ex-
tensive: due to the circumstances of transmission, his authorship is often not

||
51 On Hans Rosenplüt see Griese 2019; Williams-Krapp 2020, 49–66; Simon 2004; Glier 1992a
and 1992b.
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 321

explicitly documented, but at least 25 poems and songs, seven Mären, 140
Priamel and 55 carnival plays can be ascribed to him or his close circle.
Rosenplüt acted as a poet only in addition to his daily artisan work, as he was a
professional metalworker.
The buyers of the manuscript booklets of the scribe of Cod. Donaueschingen
A III 19 can also be assumed to be mainly from the same middle class. However,
the circle of buyers and recipients went also beyond the Nuremberg craftsmen.
We know for example that Claus Spaun, the first owner of manuscript Wolfen-
büttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. 18.12 Aug. 4°, was a wealthy merchant in
Augsburg.52

3 Additions and deletions: the life of

Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19
After ‘hand A’ produced the Priamel booklet Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19, at
least five more persons worked on the manuscript and left traces (see Fig. 5
below).53 These can be divided into two basic categories: (1) entries with and (2)
entries without a recognizable connection to the rest of the text. Group (1) can be
further differentiated into (1.1) additions of entire texts, (1.2) comments, (1.3) repe-
titions and (1.4) deletions. All entries in this first category indicate that the text of
the manuscript has been read and engaged with. They can provide information on
the purposes for which the manuscript was used and on the understanding of
the texts. The entries in the second category, such as library stamps, page
numbers, shelf marks and unconnected texts and notes can also be used to
draw conclusions about the history of the object and the milieu and mindset of
past owners.
The later entries in the manuscript are more numerous at the beginning and
the end of the manuscript. Their chronological order can only be approximated.
All additions are palaeographically dated to the first half of the sixteenth centu-
ry.54 The oldest additions are probably those of ‘hand E’. These were written on

||
52 According to Augsburg’s tax lists, he was wealthy around 1500, before he became financial-
ly impoverished, probably as a result of bankruptcy in 1505. Cf. Fischer 1983, 189–190; Ott
2010.
53 Fig. 5 is available online in full resolution: http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/v6y5-2770 (accessed
on 04 December 2020).
54 See the description by Nicole Eichenberger <www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/dokumente/
html/obj31577229>.
322 | Marco Heiles

fols 2r and 5v on the lower margin and supplement the text of ‘hand A’ with sty-
listically and thematically similar texts, short Sprüche of few verses. The first
Spruch refers to the topic of the good priest from no. 1 and no. 2.

An dye füeß getretten Stepping on the feet

ist auch gepetten. is also praying.
(Fol. 2r)

The sexually explicit Sprüche on fol. 5v supplement no. 7, 8 and 12 and convey
an equally misogynous image of women as sexual objects.

Dorfft der jung vnd mocht der allt If the young man was allowed and the old
man could,
So het kain fraw jrer fúdt gewallt. no woman would have control over her
(Fol. 5v) vagina.

Wer herein get, Whoever goes in

vnd jm sein maúl offen stet and has his mouth open,
Der kaúff ein pfembert pirnen should buy pears for a penny
Vnd stoß den czers in di diernen etc. and push the penis into the girl.
(Fol. 5v)

‘Hand F’ comments twice on the last Spruch. Only one of the comments is still
readable. It can be understood as affirmation: thue im (‘do him’).
The entries by ‘hand B’ on fol. 6r, probably made a little later, are also sup-
plements with stylistically similar Sprüche. This is most obvious in the case of
the last entry, a Priamel-Vierzeiler:

Der teufel vnnd vnglickh The devil, and misfortune,

vnnd alter weiber tückh and the guile of old women
Reitten offt manichen man often ride many a man
das er nit für sich khomen khan. so that he cannot make progress.
(Fol. 6r)

Further entries by ‘hand B’ are found on fols 1r and 1v. The entries on fol. 1r may
be probationes pennae. One repeats the title (‘Priamel red’), another one breaks
off after a few words.55 The Spruch on fol. 1v is an antipapistic statement.
Fol. 2v was otherwise only used for probationes pennae. These repeat the
text by ‘hand B’ and the beginning of Priamel no. 1. The hands of the proba-
tiones pennae cannot be distinguished with certainty: it is possible that it was

||
55 Der hund der lag jnn der … (‘The dog lay in the …’).
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 323

only one hand, although four different styles of writing can be distinguished
(‘hands D1–D4’).
Today, the largest part of the title page is filled with addenda by ‘hand C’.
These were probably already added before those by ‘hand B’.56 ‘Hand C’ wrote
extracts from Ovid’s Ars amatoria in a humanistic script. The choice of the text
passages and of the captions by the writer reveals an interest in the concept of
authorship.57 A connection between this piece of humanist scholarship and the
anonymous German texts of the other hands is not evident.
However, the most interesting subsequent ‘entries’ are deletions. These can
also be understood as a kind of commentary. The person who crossed out the
texts has read them and did not agree with their messages or wording. This
‘editor’ did not want others to read these texts. His or her aim was to prevent the
further distribution of these passages. However, since a red pen was used for
this purpose, reading is not physically prevented. It is only clearly marked
which parts should not be read.
The deletions follow, as in many other manuscripts, two different patterns:
theologically questionable and sexually explicit texts were deleted.58 The first
pattern leads to the deletion of the text that devaluates prayer on fol. 2r, which
had been added by ‘hand E’. All other deletions follow the second pattern. This
applies to the two other entries of ‘hand E’ on fol. 5v, as well as to the texts no. 5,
7, 8 and 12 of ‘hand A’. Passages in which zers (‘penis’), votze / fudt (‘vagina’) or
minn (‘sex’) directly name the genitals and the sexual act are deleted. Also,
those passages that use similes or metaphors to do so (no. 7, 8). Only the meta-
phor ‘playing in the lower pocket’ (no. 3) has not been deleted. It may not have
been understood as a sexual innuendo or might have been overlooked.
The direct, explicit speaking about sexuality is, however, an essential fea-
ture of the Priamel genre. We encounter it in late medieval German literature as
well in Märe, Minnerede, Fastnachtspiel and in many short poems (Sprüche).59

||
56 This is indicated by the position of the text Der hund...
57 Excerpts from Ovid, Ars amatoria, Book III, under the following headings: Famam Poëtæ
appetunt (‘The poets desire fame’) (v. 403-414), Poëtica ars facit ad bonos mores (v. 539-542)
(‘The art of poetry gives good customs’), Aliud (‘another’) (v. 545–546), Poetæ diuino afflati
spiritu.) (‘Poets inspired by the divine spirit’) (v. 549–550). Verse numbers according to
Albrecht 2003.
58 Examples are given in Heiles 2018b, Heiles 2018a, 194–203; Heiles 2014; Gerhardt 2007, 21
n. 43; Kruse 2000; Kruse 1996, 74-75.
59 Cf. Heiland 2015; Grafetstätter 2013, 35–37; Classen and Dinzelbacher 2008; Gerhardt 2007,
12–21; Erb 1998; Müller 1988.
324 | Marco Heiles

Research literature consistently describes this type of speaking as obscene.60

However, this prevents a real analysis and historic deconstruction of the phe-
nomenon. As a scholarly category, the term ‘obscenity’ is useless. The use of the
term obscene either only expresses that the scholar is disturbed by this kind of
speaking, or only assumes a speaking taboo and a disturbed audience; in most
cases without being able to prove that.61 The scribe of Cod. Donaueschingen A
III 19 however, was obviously not disturbed by the sexually explicit language of
the Priamel, nor was the buyer or the later hands ‘E’ and ‘F’, for whom particu-
larly these texts were interesting and provoked affirmative reactions. Only at a
certain point in time, the manuscript must have come to a reader who no longer
appreciated the genre conventions. Remarkably, such censorship also affected
the oldest known Priamel print (see Fig. 4 below). There two verses were delet-
ed, in which the words fotzen (‘vaginas’), ersen (‘arses’), hoden (‘testicles’) and
zersen (‘penises’) are mentioned. This phenomenon could not be explained
solely by a (possible) long time distance of reception and an altered general
zeitgeist, but also by a concrete alteration in the circle of recipients at a time
when the genre conventions were still quite unchanged. It is possible that sex-
ually explicit speaking and writing was only normal and possible in a certain
social milieu. But the decisive factor was probably less an aspect of class or
economic wealth than an aspect of gender. Our reading of the texts copied by
‘Hand A’ has already shown that they were written by and for men, who distin-
guish themselves through devaluation not only from socially marginalized
groups, but also from women and clerics. In this context, the clerics who live as
celibates can certainly be understood as belonging to a separate gender identity.
A change of ownership to a person from one of these two groups could have
been the reason for the deletions. In one of the few meta-expressions made at
the beginning of the sixteenth century about the censorship of sexually explicit
language, women and clerics are mentioned as the very groups of recipients for
whom texts were edited in this respect. In his 1512 edition of the writings of
Heinrich Seuse (1295/1297–1366), the printer Johann Otmar explains that the
word Mynn, which has undergone a change of meaning from ‘love’ to ‘sex’,62 is
replaced by Lieb (‘love’) in his edition:

||
60 Descriptions of Rosenplüt’s texts as obscene are for example given by Williams-Krapp 2020,
60, 63 and Glier 1992b, 230–231. Minnereden with sexually explicit language and topics are
regularly labelled as obscene by Klingner and Lieb 2013, vol. 1, 30, 186,1008, 1019, 1097.
61 Marcuse 1984, 55; Gerhardt 2007, 88; Fährmann 2002; Erb 1998, 403; Müller 1988, 23;
Janota 1982.
62 Cf. Heiles 2018a, 200–202 with no. 701, 703; Schnell 2007.
 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 325

Naͤmlich das wort ‚Mynn‘ vnd des geleichen, das da yetz zuͤdisen zeitten nit togenlich noch
zymlich, sonder schampar vnnd ergerlich ist zuͦnennen oder zuͦlesen (vor auß den frawen
vnnd gaistlichen rainen personen), hab ich gewendt in das wort ‚Lieb‘, das da allen men-
schen, frauwen vnnd mannen vnerschrockenlich on ergernuß zuͦlesen ist.63

I have changed the word Mynn and suchlike, which at this time is not to be spoken or read
as virtuous or decent, but as shameful and annoying (especially to women and spiritually
pure persons), into the word Lieb which is readable to everybody, women and men, with-
out fright or annoyance.

This does not mean that explicit speaking about sexuality among women or
clerics was not possible or customary at all, but rather testifies to a male discourse
that did not allow them to use explicit language and edited texts accordingly.
The hypothesis of the non-clerical male readership being able to speak ex-
plicitly about sexual matters should be further examined. This also raises the
question of why especially the genres in which explicit speaking about sexuality
is possible (Priamel, Märe, Minnerede, Fastnachtspiel) are printed so little, and
whether there is a connection between these two phenomena. If we want to
understand more precisely how zeitgeist, media use, genre conventions and
user circles change in the transition from the late Middle Ages and Early Modern
Age, between the manuscript culture of the fifteenth and the printing culture of
the sixteenth century, more studies on written artefacts (manuscripts, prints
and epigraphs) are still needed.

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 Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition | 331

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Shamil Jeppie
About a Manuscript on Tea Found in
Timbuktu, Mali: Mamma Haidara Collection,
MS 125, Tārīkh al-shāy fī ’l-Maghrib
Abstract: This article reflects on the simultaneity of manuscript and print cul-
tures in Northwest Africa and the relationship between them, challenging the
conventional idea of progress from one form of textual reproduction to another.
In particular, the article examines the movement between print and manuscript
worlds as reflected in a text, which was discovered in a Timbuktu collection,
about the subject of tea. In addition to appealing to this particular text as an
invitation to future work on the relationship between the two processes of stor-
ing the written word, the article illustrates the possibility of using the collec-
tions in Timbuktu to write about the history of consumable goods.

1 Introduction
Tea is now widely consumed in the Maghrib and large parts of West Africa, and
one thinks especially of Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, and Niger in this regard. The
extensive daily consumption of tea might seem like a thousand-year-old tradi-
tion with local roots. As historical research has shown, however, tea arrived
relatively recently – sometime during the eighteenth century – with the expan-
sion of European merchant capitalism and the increasing incorporation of
Northwest Africa into this commerce. In some parts of urban West Africa, the
widespread use of tea began only in the post-Independence period and has
increased since the turn of this century, when tea began to arrive directly
through an expansive network of small traders from mainland China.
On one of my exploratory trips to Timbuktu in the early 2000s, I was told
about a text that had the terms ‘history’ and ‘tea’ in its title. Our project was
allowed to make images of this manuscript, which was quite a rarity at the time,
and the digital copy made then is the basis for this article.1 This manuscript,
Timbuktu, Mamma Haidara Collection, MS 125 (1,71), Tārīkh al-shāy fī ’l-Maghrib

||
1 It does reflect some confidence in me, my team, and our work on the materials at Timbuktu
that we were allowed to make a digital copy of the manuscript.

Open Access. © 2021 Shamil Jeppie, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-017
334 | Shamil Jeppie

‫ﺗﺎﺭﻳﺦ ﺍﻟﺸﺎﻱ ﻓﻲ ﺍﻟﻤﻐﺮﺏ‬, has seven folios. The cover page gives the item number
and the title (reproduced in the title of this essay) and reports the dimensions of
the paper without indicating the units of measurement (13.5 × 20.9 for the cover
and 9.9 × 18.3 for the manuscript itself). I did not encounter the catalogue entry
for this work until much later. It conforms to the details on the cover page and
as part of the text, right at the end, reports the name of the author as Ibn ‘Iṣām
al-Ribātī and the number of folios (al-awrāq) as four (04).2
In many of the manuscripts in the field, or in the catalogues of the Timbuktu
collections, no composition or copying dates are recorded. It is often impossible
to determine when a text was first written or when it was copied. The paper is,
of course, revealing, and this particular text is on paper that was once lined but
is now faded, which indicates that the paper is modern, a twentieth century
product. But the date of the paper might just tell us when a copy of the work was
made; the work itself might have been written at an earlier date. A copy could
have been a means of conserving a work whose paper was disintegrating or
whose text was becoming illegible, but there could be, of course, multiple other
reasons why a copy of this work was made. So this manuscript on fading, facto-
ry-made, lined paper probably from a French mass-market paper manufacturer,
could have reached Timbuktu anytime during the twentieth century. The appar-
ent absence of a date or author’s name initially led me to believe that the manu-
script was copied from another source, rather than being an original
composition. I shall return to the dating of the manuscript and the work later in
the article.
As indicated above, I was eventually able to identify this item in the Mamma
Haidara catalogue, which had then recently been published.3 This manuscript is
unusual in the existing catalogues of Timbuktu collections, which list large
numbers of works that deal with law and grammar, poetry and legal opinions,
and other normative subjects. These catalogues do not, I believe, reflect the
actual holdings of the collections. The coverage of the catalogues is rather due
to a decision made by their sponsor-publisher and by others who were involved
in the publication of the catalogues. Some limit had to be set on what could be
included, so a version of the classical Islamic corpus in the local iteration of
Timbuktu was decided upon.4 Based on numerous visits to many different
family collections there, which into recent times were and probably still remain
uncatalogued and unstudied, I have the impression that such collections

||
2 Mammā Ḥaydara 2000, vol. 1, 71 (item no. 125).
3 Mammā Ḥaydara 2000.
4 Hall and Stewart 2011; Jeppie 2017.
 About a Manuscript on Tea Found in Timbuktu, Mali | 335

contain a greater variety of materials than is reflected in their listings, especially

the published ones.5
Such were the limitations of the tools at the beginning of this century. The
intervening decades have seen continuing efforts to improve the apparatuses
for working with the manuscripts, albeit in highly unpredictable circumstances.
Long periods of optimism, such as from the time when military rule ended in
1991 to the insurgency of 2011, have been followed by intense outbursts of in-
stability, and we are still living through such a moment. So one has to work with
what is available in such circumstances and subject to the limitations of time
and funding. But even the ‘normative Islamic’ texts can, of course, be read for
other kinds of information, such as social or gender history.6 However, to have
found a manuscript that so explicitly falls into the field of social history is
unique, especially when histories of consumption were coming into vogue.7

2 Overview of the manuscript’s contents

What follows is not a translation of the text but a précis:
The inhabitants of the Maghrib are tea drinkers whether they live in cities or
are nomads. They drink at all times of the day and also on special occasions.
While tea is enjoyed in the Maghrib, it is in fact far from its place of origin in the
East, that is, in China, India, and Russia, where there are millions more people.
According to the author, tea arrived in the Maghrib about a century and a
half before his time. It first appeared in 1208 AH (1789 CE), during the reign of
Sultan Sīdī Muḥammad bin ‘Abdallāh. In Gibraltar there lived an English medi-
cal doctor, William Lempriere (in the manuscript written as follows: ‫)ﻭﻟﻴﻢ ﻟﻤﺒﺮﻳﻴﺮ‬,
who was well known for his expertise.8 The author cites a book by one
Dr Bernard Louis (‫)ﺑﺮﻧﺎﺭ ﻟﻮﻳﺰ‬, but this is a rather generic name, and my searches
have yielded no author who wrote anything of relevance to the Maghrib or
about the history of tea.

||
5 The CSMC initiative in Bamako, currently still underway, might change this picture by show-
ing that there are more works than simply what is required for a good Islamic education.
6 See, for instance, Mathee 2011.
7 Krieger 2009; Schivelbusch 1992.
8 William Lempriere (d. 1834) was the author of, among other works, A Tour from Gibraltar to
Tangier (1791 and subsequent editions) in which he described his activity as a medical doctor to
the Moroccan Sultan and his household. Lempriere encountered tea-drinking there and did not
himself introduce it.
336 | Shamil Jeppie

When the Sultan, who had a sick son, was in Marrakesh, he invited William
Lempriere to come and look at the state of his son’s health. The doctor had a
supply of tea with him which gave him the energy to work tirelessly. The Sultan
was initially hesitant about the legality of this drink but allowed its use as a
medication. ‘Ulamā’ were also consulted about the drink’s permissibility. When
the son’s health improved, a celebration was held and tea was served. Since
that time tea became famous, first inside the court and then outside among all
classes.
The English, Portuguese, and Dutch merchants who had long-established
trade relations with China and India supplied tea to the Maghrib. Sugar was
supplied by traders from Germany, Austria, and France.
In conclusion, the author asks, did the Maghrib know the mint plant before
the arrival of tea? Nowhere else is mint mixed with tea, which has tremendous
health benefits. This is where the manuscript comes to an end.
There is no point in attempting to correct any of the information in this
work. There was indeed such a visitor as William Lempriere who wrote a trave-
logue and met the Sultan and his family and acted as their medical doctor dur-
ing his visit. Lempriere encountered tea-drinking there, but he did not himself
introduce tea to his hosts. In the travelogue, Lempriere gives some impression
of the ritual of taking tea – sitting for at least two hours when taking it, for in-
stance – and he briefly describes the arrangement of the teacups on a little table
during the ritual. According to Lempriere, tea was always taken with mint and
plenty of sugar. Being served tea is ‘the highest compliment that can be offered
by a Moor; for tea is a very expensive and scarce article in Barbary, and it is only
drank by the rich and luxurious.’9 The author of the work transmitted in our
manuscript, however, could not have read the book of Lempriere. Instead our
author probably heard about Lempriere and his book through an oral tradition
that gave such a version of the English doctor’s sojourn.

3 From manuscript to print and back again

When I returned to the tea manuscript much later, I realised that there was a
missing folio; once I found it among our collection of images, I read what
amounted to a colophon that was probably added later:

||
9 Lempriere 1804, 212.
 About a Manuscript on Tea Found in Timbuktu, Mali | 337

This history of the first appearance of tea in the Maghrib was taken from the newspaper
Al-Sa‘āda, which was published in Ribāt al-fātih (Rabat), as no. 8.096; Saturday Jumādā
al-akhīra 1370, corresponding to 10 March 1951; and the newspaper is 48 years old.10

In this reproduction of the title, the word ‘tea’ is spelled al-tāy not al-shāy,
reflecting the local pronunciation.
This manuscript was therefore copied from a newspaper. A Moroccan
broadsheet (four sheets in total) arrived in Timbuktu, and at least this article
was reproduced from it. The article covers less than half of page two. The title
page is devoted to reportage on Moroccan and world politics; then follow two
pages of cultural topics, including this article on tea. Beside the article on tea is
an article on poetry and a short story by the Egyptian writer ‘Abd al-Qādir
al-Māzinī. The piece on tea was not ‘plagiarized’, inasmuch as the article bears
the name of its presumably Rabat-based author (al-Ribātī). Although the manu-
script gives full details about its source, this information is not reproduced in
the catalogue. Unfortunately, the copyist left no signature, and we do not know
if the copy was commissioned or why it was undertaken, apart from the seem-
ingly interesting narrative about a significant item of daily consumption.
Whether the person responsible for this manuscript copied the newspaper arti-
cle within the same month or year that it appeared, or did so many years later,
remains unanswerable.
Instead of dismissing the manuscript because of its sheer lack of originality,
we ought to consider that as a handwritten, that is, manual (not mechanical)
reproduction the manuscript points to the significance of the article’s subject.
But the manuscript has larger implications too. Walter Benjamin’s insight, to
summarise all too briefly here, that with mechanical reproduction (such as
lithography and printing) an art object loses an aura that it had when and
where it was created, is pertinent. His famous essay deals mainly with the rising
prevalence of photography and especially film as media, but it opens with a
more general discussion of ‘mechanical reproduction’. In our example, however,
an aura was possibly bestowed precisely through manual reproduction; in a
way, the reproduction became an ‘original’. If not at the time then certainly in
the years to come, as this and other manuscripts were re-encountered and
rediscovered, there was an emanation of a kind of mystery around them.11 A

||
10 Al-Sa‘āda: jarīda yawmiyya ’akhbāriyya ‫ ﺟﺮﻳﺪﺓ ﻳﻮﻣﻴﺔ ﺃﺧﺒﺎﺭﻳﺔ‬:‫ﺍﻟﺴﻌﺎﺩﺓ‬, 10 Māris 1951 (1 Jumādā
ʼl-akhīra 1370).
11 ‘Man kann diese Merkmale im Begriff der Aura zusammenfassen und sagen: Was im Zeital-
ter der technischen Reproduzierbarkeit des Kunstwerks verkümmert, das ist seine Aura’
(Benjamin 1989, 353).
338 | Shamil Jeppie

further and equally important implication is that this move from print to
manuscript goes against the grain of the standard narratives about the
inevitability of texts moving from the handwritten to the printed word. Was it a
unique case, or can we find other examples from the region of published
materials being turned into manuscripts?
Printing arrived in Morocco during the 1860s amidst some ambivalence
about it from the Sultan. There is evidence that there was even outright objec-
tion to it from the rulers.12 But when materials began to be produced and print-
ing became legal, its acceptance quickly spread. The earliest newspapers
appeared in the early nineteenth century and were issued by Spanish and
French interests; Arabic newspapers began to appear only in the late 1880s. By
the 1950s, Morocco had a range of newspapers in French and Arabic, with na-
tionalist parties having their own newspapers despite the protectorate officials’
attempts at limiting their production and circulation. Al-Sa‘āda, however, was
an Arabic broadsheet positioned against the nationalist movement; it had start-
ed in Tangiers in 1904 with official funding from the French and with a pro-
French editorial policy, and it ran until the end of 1956.13 It is worth noting that
this French-backed newspaper is the source for the article that was copied in
Timbuktu. Could it be that no other newspaper was allowed into the French-
controlled territories even into the 1950s? The protectorate authorities did at-
tempt to censor publications and monitor the circulation of printed materials by
intercepting the mail and by other means. Printed materials arrived in Timbuktu
soon after they began to be produced in Morocco. Materials that left the Moroc-
can protectorate for the neighbouring colonies to the south (Afrique-Occidentale
française) were in all probability monitored by the colonial administration and
its military and postal outposts in the territories, including at Timbuktu. Publi-
cations that entered French-controlled territory, especially works written in
Arabic and directed at Muslims, were regularly recorded, along with descriptions
of the works’ assumed ideological orientation, and published in lists for the
purpose of official monitoring.14 The colonial postal service conveyed newspa-
pers, manuscripts, and books throughout the colonial and protectorate territo-

||
12 ‘Abd al-Razzāq 1990; for an Arabic version based on this thesis, see ‘Abd al-Razzāq 1996.
13 Al-Sa‘āda ran from 1904 until 1956 as a pro-French mouthpiece, often with expatriate Leb-
anese editors. As such, it was probably allowed to circulate much more freely than other, inde-
pendent newspapers which were critical of French rule.
14 See Aix-en-Provence, France, Archives nationale d’outre-mer, 19 G 24 & 25, Contrôle des
livres en Arabe. This is a list of Arabic newspapers and periodicals that came into Dakar and
Bamako etc. between April and June of 1922.
 About a Manuscript on Tea Found in Timbuktu, Mali | 339

ries, which enabled it to keep an eye on the movement of materials through the
postal system.15

4 How tea reached Timbuktu, the Maghrib, and

West Africa
Tea consumption in the Maghrib, Sahara, and Sahel seems genuinely embedded
in the habits and practices of town-dwellers such as those who lived in Timbuk-
tu. That a manuscript such as this one should turn-up in a Timbuktu collection
is thus a testimony to the acceptance, consumption, and value of tea. The histo-
ry of tea-drinking in the region has been examined by various scholars, and
they in turn have drawn on European travellers who observed the custom.16
While in the interior and amongst certain groups – such as the semi-nomadic
‘Moors’ mentioned by Lempriere – there is a long history of tea-drinking, else-
where it is a recent practice. There was an opinion that tea travelled to the inte-
rior from the Atlantic coast, but there is little evidence in support of this theory.
It is far more likely that the leaf came to Timbuktu from what is today Morocco.17
It remains to be seen how early we ought to date the arrival of tea; a thorough
search through the Timbuktu collections might yield some clues. For instance,
did somebody in Timbuktu or the surrounding region ask for a fatwa on the
legality of tea from a scholar there? At this point we can only report that by the
1820s the French explorer René Caillié had already encountered tea-drinking,
since he heads a section of a chapter relating to his reception in the town of
Jenné as follows: ‘Usage du thé, du sucre et de la porcelaine’.18
For the broader region, we can rely on the essay by Diawara and
Röschenthaler, which covers the literature in European languages on the histo-
ry of tea or tea varieties throughout the larger region, from Tangier to Timbuk-
tu.19 The authors begin with an observation about the recent arrival of green tea
in the Malian capital, Bamako, and in other towns in the country, though it had
been used for far longer by the ‘Moors’ of the hinterlands, in the Sahara, and in

||
15 See, for instance, Dakar (Senegal), Direction des Archives du Sénégal, Série J, Postes et
Télécommunications; versement no. 3 1911/1950. Serie O covers the period to 1911.
16 In the 1950s, there was an exchange among researchers on this subject; the literature is
well covered in Diawara and Röschenthaler 2012.
17 Leriche 1951.
18 Caillié 1830, vol. 2, 223–224.
19 Diawara and Röschenthaler 2012.
340 | Shamil Jeppie

areas such as Timbuktu. Green tea became ‘a common drink only in the last
couple of decades’, and this is partly due to the growth in direct imports from
China. The authors allude to the cultivation of tea in Mali during the 1960s, but
the product of this effort is seen as inferior to what is imported. The essay is
intended as an ethnographic study of the consumption of a commodity and
broadly supports the argument for a ‘diffusion gradient’ in which tea is first
used by the aristocracy then filters down to other classes. For example, in the
Maghrib tea was first used as a medicine, then as luxury, and then as a drink
taken by virtually everyone. Sugar was also a luxury, used first in a large cone-
shaped form, then, when tea consumption spread, it was added to tea as gran-
ules or small cubes. Generally speaking, tea-drinking spread from city to coun-
tryside, but in this case the path led from the nomads through the countryside
to city. The essay is a useful overview of the historical literature, and it sketches
the outlines of the commercial networks that probably brought tea to the region.
In addition, the article reports the words for ‘tea’ in the languages spoken there;
the local words are all largely versions of the Chinese word for ‘tea’ transmitted
through Arabic or French.
Any writing on the subject of tea in the Maghrib and adjoining territories
cannot afford to ignore one work which is still only in Arabic; its title in trans-
lation would be From tea [shāy] to atāy: Custom and history. The title (‫ﻣﻦ ﺍﻟﺸﺎﻱ‬
‫ )ﺍﻟﻰ ﺍﻷﺗﺎﻱ‬refers to the two different ways of saying ‘tea’: one with the letter shīn
and the other, more local and widespread in the region of Northwest Africa,
with the letter tā’ (al-atāy), which is used, for example, in works written in the
Berber language of Amazigh. This work, edited by two Moroccan scholars, ‘Abd
al-Aḥad al-Sabtī and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Lakhṣāṣī,20 is a major anthology that
brings together a variety of genres of writing, including oral and song texts as
well as a selection of images. The two scholars have compiled an impressive
range of Arabic texts about tea from its earliest mention. Around 130 extracts of
varying length are presented with brief introductions to each and full details on
the sources. An extensive interpretive essay preceding the collection of sources
periodises tea’s presence in the Maghrib, its place in popular culture, and its
relation to other beverages, particularly in more recent decades with the expan-
sion of cold soft drinks.
The vast majority of the documentation pertains to the Maghrib and comes
from the late eighteenth to end of the nineteenth centuries – since this is the
period when tea consumption really spread.

||
20 Al-Sabtī and Lakhṣāṣī 2012.
 About a Manuscript on Tea Found in Timbuktu, Mali | 341

The anthology opens with the oldest-known Arabic text about tea, dating to
851 CE, by an unknown author. The first known Arabic author is al-Birūnī, who
mentions tea in a work that dates to 1025 CE. Following the introduction, the
anthology is organized in four sections: witnesses and reports, ornaments and
accompaniments, benefits and harms, poetry and songs dealing with tea, with
each section adopting a more or less chronological order. The sections contain
extracts from traditional histories, chronicles, memoirs, travellers’ reports by
Europeans or Maghribis, archival sources, correspondence, and legal opinions
(fatāwā) on the subject of tea.
Poetry in praise of tea is presented throughout, with numerous poems com-
ing from various regions; some of the poems are quite short, such as a two-line
poem against tea, while others are quite long, such as the early court poem
written in 1746 by the physician of Sultan Ismail. Three extracts of poems from
Mauritania are included. Poetry in Amazigh (‘Berber’) is translated into Arabic,
and in such cases the original is given in the Appendix.
The Appendix also contains a series of documents the provide information
about the importation of tea during the late nineteenth century; while the fig-
ures are revealing, even more so is the extensive list of tea merchants.
The indefatigable scholars who produced this trove of research did not
include newspaper coverage of tea except for the odd advertisement and other
images of tea-drinking from the press; so neither the al-Sa‘āda article nor, of
course, its manuscript copy made in Timbuktu at an unknown date are included
in the anthology.
Last but not least, there are manuscripts, mainly poetry, about tea in Tim-
buktu collections. According the catalogues of CEDRAB (Centre de documenta-
tion et de recherches Aḥmad Bābā, since renamed by the acronym Iheri-Ab),
there were at least fifteen such poems in its holdings at the time of the publica-
tion of the relevant catalogues. For a fuller treatment of the subject, it will be
necessary to examine all those manuscripts, bearing in mind some of the issues
raised here.21

||
21 Catalogue of Ibn ‘Āli et al. 1995-1998: Qaṣīda fī madḥ al-atāy (al-shāy) by Mawlūd b. Ahmādī;
no. 934, vol. 1, 277; Manẓūma fī madḥ al-atāy (al-shāy) – unknown; no. 922, vol. 2, 162; Man-
ẓūma fī madḥ al-atāy (al-shāy) – unknown; no. 2053, vol. 2, 208; Manẓūma fī dhamm al-atāy
(al-shāy) – Muḥammad Ayyūb; no. 2267, vol. 2, 284; Manẓūma fī madḥ al-atāy (al-shāy) –
‘Uthmān b. al-Ḥājj b. Bello al-Anūkandrī; no. 2327, vol. 2, 304; Manẓūma fī madḥ al-atāy
(al-shāy) – Abūbakr b. Ḥammād al-Anūkandrī; no. 2332, vol. 2, 306; Manẓūma fī madḥ al-atāy
(al-shāy) – ‘Abdullāh b. Aḥmad al-Sūqī; no. 2678, vol. 2, 425; Manẓūma fī madḥ al-atāy
(al-shāy) – Maḥfūẓ b. Bay; no. 2762, vol. 2, 456; Qaṣīda fī madḥ al-atāy (al-shāy) wa sharḥuhā –
unknown; no. 3017, vol. 3, 17; Qaṣīda fī madḥ al-atāy (al-shāy) – ‘Īsa b. Muḥammad b. al-Mawlūd
342 | Shamil Jeppie

5 Conclusion
Making copies was an integral part of the activities in a manuscript culture be-
cause there was no other way of material reproduction. Memorization was pos-
sible, but that was intangible and highly individual. A copy of a text could be
shared and read and re-read and copied again. So a manuscript was produced
by an author, and then there was the prospect of one or more copies – all hand-
written and each reflecting an attempt at faithful representation of the original
text as well as having its own idiosyncrasies. With the coming of print technolo-
gies to the places which had long and rich handwriting traditions, there was
very often a struggle over the reception and use of this technology. In general
the trend was that works moved from manuscript to print. Apart from the de-
lightful subject of tea as a topic of writing, this essay raises the question of an-
other possibility, the movement from print to manuscript. Is this a unique and
rare case or was the practice more widespread in the region? More cases of this
kind would be worth looking for.22
One approach to such material would be to dismiss print-to-manuscript
texts as unoriginal and derivative. But this approach ignores a range of ques-
tions that might illumine attitudes towards print culture, and towards attempts
to conserve the craft of manuscript copying, even as the seeming inevitability of
print blows like Saharan sand through a tradition buries it in the past. There is
no evidence of a Luddite reaction to the presence of printed works in Timbuktu
and similar settings in the Sahara. Indeed there is evidence that print was ac-
cepted, at least among some involved in the manuscript world. Yet the manual
production and reproduction of works persisted, and there are still a handful of
practitioners of the craft; of course others can simply take the fruits of these
practitioners’ labour to the photocopier, and now anyone can just scan them
with the ubiquitous cell phone.

||
b. Muḥammad b. Abībakr b. al-Ṭālib; no. 3130, vol. 3, 65; Qaṣīda fī madḥ al-atāy (al-shāy) –
unknown; no. 3206, vol. 3, 99; Qaṣīda fī ḥilya al-qahwa – unknown; no. 3208, vol. 3, 100;
Qaṣīda fī ḥilya al-atāy (al-shāy) – unknown; no. 3210, vol. 3, 101; Qaṣīda fī madḥ al-atāy
(al-shāy) wa sharḥuhā – ‘Īsa b. Muḥammad b. al-Mawlūd b. Muḥammad b. Abībakr b. al-Ṭālib;
no. 3784, vol. 3, 341. With thanks to Ebrahim Moos for confirming items in the catalogues when
I did not have access to them.
22 I would like to thank Mauro Nobili for reminding me of texts he has encountered that went
from print to manuscript, including versions of the chronicle Tārīkh al-fattash.
 About a Manuscript on Tea Found in Timbuktu, Mali | 343

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‫ﻭﺍﻟﺒﺤﻮﺙ ﺍﻟﺘﺎﺭﻳﺨﻴﺔ ﺑﺘﻨﺒﻜﺘﻮ‬, 5 vols, London: Al-Furqan Islamic heritage foundation.
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Intoxicants, New York: Vintage Books.
Sabine Kienitz
From Mouth to Ear to Hand: Literacy as
Recorded Orality in Nineteenth- and Early
Twentieth-Century German Courts
Abstract: This research is situated in the legal context of contentious jurisdic-
tion in Germany during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By explor-
ing the transcription of court proceedings (Gerichtsprotokolle), the article
addresses the relationship between orality and literacy. Research on the produc-
tion and use of court records shows that these two modes of communication
were co-constitutive; the written word had to be retranslated into the spoken
word in order to effect the agency of written artefacts as legal documents. The
article reflects on the performativity of writing and the legal status of shorthand
as part of rationalisation and modernisation of legal procedure, and deals with
the obstacles which orality posed to literacy in the simultaneous acts of speak-
ing, listening, and writing.

The relationship between orality and literacy is still crucial for the study of
manuscript cultures. Researchers have tended to assume a fundamental change
to this relationship that resulted in a shift of authority from the spoken to the
written word.1 Yet the voices favouring a concept of reciprocity are increasing.2
In historical research on legal systems, the thesis that writing was the key ele-
ment of social and cultural development seems to remain unchallenged. Ac-
cording to Jack Goody, writing was a prerequisite for both the codification of
law and the record keeping of jurisprudence. Hence, he argues, ‘written evi-
dence in courts is characteristically given greater truth-value than oral testimo-
ny. This was so from the beginning’.3 According to Goody, a fundamental shift
took place from the mouth to the hand, and beyond that from the ear to the eye.
In his view, ‘reading permits a greater distancing between individual, language
and reference than speech, a greater objectification which increases the analytic
potential of the human mind’.4

||
1 Ong 1987; Benne 2015, 27, 581; Vismann 2011, 98–111.
2 Benne 2015; Gardey 2019, 36–37.
3 Goody 1986, 152.
4 Goody 1986, 142.

Open Access. © 2021 Sabine Kienitz, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-018
346 | Sabine Kienitz

It is uncontroversial that literacy is an essential component of bureaucratic

technique in governance and regimes of power. A problem arises, however,
when Goody primarily addresses the genre of Gerichtsprotokoll (‘transcription of
court proceedings’) under the aspect of writing. This approach neglects the
impact that orality actually had in the legal setting, and continues to have to the
present today. Therefore, I would like to pursue the thesis that the judiciary is
one of the few contexts in which orality and literacy have been systematically
interconnected.5 It was the legal system where these two modes of communica-
tion existed in a largely interdependent and co-constitutive form. One could
even assert, more precisely, that it is in the courtrooms of contentious jurisdic-
tion that orality has remained a mandatory precondition for literacy. At the
same time, this very literacy is retranslated into orality again in order to effect
the agency of written artefacts as legal documents. This process raises questions
about how manuscripts created by legal courts were produced and used in con-
crete terms. How was the process of writing those transcripts organised? Who
wrote and under what conditions? What is the legal status of these court
records? What changes took place, when, for example, shorthand was
implemented in court? Beyond these questions about the performativity of
writing and the practices involved in the writing process, we ought to consider
the role of orality more closely by taking into account the objectives, conditions,
and obstacles which orality poses and the respective practices that intertwined
the spoken and the written word, namely, the simultaneous acts of speaking,
listening, and writing.
In order to address these questions from a historical perspective, and to un-
derstand the characteristics of written artefacts as an outcome of the aforemen-
tioned practises, I will first look at the formal legal requirements. A larger
framework, examining the connection between orality and literacy by compar-
ing the differences between national legal systems, both within Europe and
beyond, would be desirable.6 However, the topic proves to be considerably
complex. Therefore, as a first step I will roughly outline the German conditions
in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Second, I will address orality and
the specific modes of speaking and their institutional setting in German courts:

||
5 Gensler 1821, 12–18.
6 Mittermaier 1845 provides a valuable overview of the importance of oral and written legal
evidence and the national peculiarities in certain areas, including some of the German states
(Baden, Bavaria, Holstein, Prussia, Saxony, Schleswig, Württemberg), some European coun-
tries (Belgium, England, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Scotland, Switzer-
land), North America, and Brazil.
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 347

How was orality practised? What were the specific conditions and problems?
And to what extent is orality accessible in the written record at all? As a third
point, and instead of a linear reconstruction of history, I will illustrate the pecu-
liarity or even the interdependence of the written and spoken word at court by
referring to the vigorous debate about the introduction of stenography into
German courtrooms of contentious jurisdiction. These conflicts in the nine-
teenth century allow us, on the one hand, to gain insight into earlier practices at
court, which served as arguments for modernisation at the time. On the other
hand, and this is the fourth point, these conflicts also deal with the legal issues
of writing in court, that is, with changes in organisation and argumentation.
One of the main questions refers to the status of shorthand records as fully valid
and reliable documents, or, more precisely, to their agency as originals that
provided legal certainty.

1 Recording orality at court: The German legal

framework
Research dealing with the production and use of manuscripts in justice, juris-
prudence, and legal practice is obviously important because the legal system as
a whole is of great social and cultural significance. Moreover, this is a key area
in which scholars have assumed that the written word took and even main-
tained precedence at a very early stage.7 Accordingly, they argue that the spo-
ken word lost its significance in view of the predominance of a specific mode of
juridical literacy concerning law and written testimony. This argument assumes
that a legal system dependent on inquisitorial trials8 was fundamentally based
on the exclusive use of written evidence. A closer look at the conditions in the
German states beginning in the early nineteenth century, however, reveals that

||
7 Goody 1986, 127–170; Gardey 2019, 54–58; Vismann 2000.
8 In the German context, the term Inquisitionsprozess (inquisitorial trial), and the concept
underlying it, date back to Roman law and were based on the following principle: quod non est
in actis, non est in mundo (‘What is not recorded does not exist’). Here the position of the prose-
cutor and the judge were identical. The files were produced in a non-public proceeding only by
the judge-cum-prosecutor, and the documents then had to be passed on to legal academic
scholars outside the court or to a competent tribunal for decision-making (Zopfs 2018). See also
Bennecke, Beling 1900, 258; Eser 2014; Kienitz 2005. The Inquisitionsprozess is not to be con-
fused with the historical institution of the Inquisitional trial, which was introduced above all by
the church to fight against heresy.
348 | Sabine Kienitz

a major change had taken place. The legal system was now grounded primarily
on the principle of orality. Court proceedings from the Kingdom of Württemberg
prove that even the inquisitorial trials relied on verbal protocols. The statements
of the participants ‘so weit es seyn kann, mit den eigenen Worten der Zeugen,
und zwar in der ersten Person, zu Protokoll gebracht werden sollten’ (‘were to
be put on record as far as possible in the witnesses’ own words, and in the first
person’).9 Since at least the middle of the nineteenth century, the official obliga-
tion of immediacy in oral presentations and thus the ‘Gleichzeitigkeit des
gegenseitigen Vorbringens’ (‘simultaneity of adversarial pleadings’)10 was at the
centre of the German legal system. Consequently, the German Strafprozess-
ordnung (Code of Criminal Procedure) established the orality of legal proceed-
ings as a precondition in accordance with the ‘Prinzip der Unmittelbarkeit in
mündlichen Anhörungen’ (‘principle of immediacy in oral proceedings’).11
When we talk about legal enquiries in proceedings of contentious jurisdic-
tion, then we are primarily concerned with the taking of evidence, the interroga-
tion of the accused, and the examination of witnesses and their testimonies
during the main trial. The requirements stated,

dass alle Verhandlungen, welche der Entscheidung zur Grundlage dienen sollen, also An-
griff, Vertheidigung, Beweisführung und Rechtsbegründung vor den Richtern, welche das
Urtheil fällen sollen, selbst und zwar mündlich geführt werden.12

that all proceedings which are to serve as a basis for the decision, i.e. the prosecution, de-
fence, presentation of evidence, and legal reasoning, will be conducted in person, that is,
orally before the judges who are to render a verdict.

All of those communicative but ephemeral acts were mandatory parts of a trial.
Only the oral performance could guarantee that the judge in charge of the ver-
dict would hear the unfiltered truth of all participants under the compulsion of
his questioning.13 Another important aspect was that the testimony took place in
the presence of the accused and his or her lawyer. This involved the ‘Möglichkeit,
sich über jede entgegenstehende Aussage zu erklären, sie zu berichtigen und
Fragen an die Aussagenden zu stellen’ (‘the opportunity to explain themselves
with regard to any contradictory testimony, to correct it and to ask questions of

||
9 Reyscher 1839, 721.
10 Gerau 1850, 417; Mittermaier 1845.
11 Mittermaier 1856, 305–316; Gerau 1850; Vismann 2011, 112–129.
12 Gerau 1850, 419–420. Unless otherwise stated, all translations in this article are mine.
13 Bennecke, Beling 1900, 258.
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 349

those giving evidence’).14 Prefabricated texts and written statements had no

legal validity whatsoever. Their use was explicitly prohibited.15
Nevertheless, due to the limited capacity of the human memory, records of
the proceedings had to be written down. They would render all statements
comprehensible and replicable word for word.16 This requirement meant in turn
that the spoken word was at the same time transcribed into regular Kurrent-
schrift (German cursive script) by a professional scribe, a process which trans-
formed the spoken word into a legally effective court file. In this process,
ephemeral speech not only became a document, but it also gained tangible
materiality. The oral statements were documented by handwriting, mainly ver-
batim:

Die Aussagen des zu Vernehmenden sind nicht im erzählenden Style, sondern in der
ersten Person, und, soweit es möglich ist, in denselben Ausdrücken, worin sie geschehen,
nöthigenfalls mit den eigenen Erläuterungen des Redenden, im Protokolle niederzu-
schreiben.17

The statements of the interrogated are not to be recorded in the narrative style, but in the
first person, and, as far as possible, in the same terms in which they are made, if necessary
with the speaker’s own explanations.

The spoken word should be transcribed ‘in möglichster Treue und Vollstän-
digkeit’ (‘with the greatest possible fidelity and completeness’)18 to serve as
evidence of what the people under interrogation had put on record. Because it
ensured a certain degree of control about what was said both for the defence
and for the prosecution, the transcript could be used later to appeal the case.
Likewise, the legal officers and judges could use the transcript as an argumenta-
tive basis in their assessment and adjudication. In order to validate the records,
the scribe himself had to read them out at the end of the very same court session
to allow for corrections and additions.
To cite an example: the Stadtratsprotokoll in gerichtlichen Sachen (city council
records for legal affairs) of Hall in the kingdom of Württemberg for January 25th
in 1825 documents a case of blackmail on account of sexual intercourse and a

||
14 Mittermaier 1856, 308.
15 The Urkundenbeweisverbot (prohibition of documentary evidence) refers to records submit-
ted in the absence of a judge in charge of the verdict (Bennecke, Beling 1900, 341).
16 Lamm 1867, 219.
17 Knapp 1843, 40.
18 Knapp 1843, 150.
350 | Sabine Kienitz

falsely alleged pregnancy.19 After the first round of evidence was recorded, the
case was submitted to the district court. Looking at the layout of the page, it is
obvious that the scribe made some additions in the margins. It is very likely that
he inserted these addenda simultaneously or right after officially reading out
the statements. There are also some corrections throughout the text, which the
scribe must have introduced during the hearing. One assumes that he noticed
his mistakes while he was still writing and corrected them immediately.
As a next step, the respective speakers had to sign the record of their testi-
mony. In so doing, they confirmed the accuracy of the record and made their
own words legally effective. At the end of the testimony, a fixed formula is in-
serted that says: ‘Auf Verlesen bestätigt die Angabe die Bekl.(agte) mit ihren
Handzeichen’ (‘After the reading, the def.[endant] confirms the statement with
her initials’). Obviously, the female defendant, Caroline Dillinger, could not
even write her name or initials. Instead, she chose to sign with three crosses,
which, because of their clumsiness, may also indicate that she had no experi-
ence in using a quill. At the bottom of the page, a signature confirms the pres-
ence of a witness. Here it says: ‘Auf Verlesen’ (‘confirmed after the reading’). It
seems that this person could write her name, but the awkward letters reveal that
she lacked practice.
In this respect, the efficacy of the protocol as a legal document was based
exclusively on the combination of orality and the authentication of the speak-
er’s signature, as well the signatures of the judge and the scribe. In the end, the
verdict relied on those court proceedings.

2 Orality in court and its implications for

recording
The oral proceeding was the centrepiece of the trial as such. Even the possibility
of speech impediments or foreign-language participants is a topic here.20 All
parties including the judge had to express themselves in the presence of the
court and make their pleadings verbally. Orality referred not only to the presen-
tation of the testimony, but also to reading out the court record: ‘Das Protokoll

||
19 StAH, Stadtratsprotokoll in gerichtlichen Sachen, 19/480, hearing of Caroline Dillinger and
Elisabeth Schüle, 25 Jan. 1825.
20 Knapp 1843, 69–70; Civilprozeßordnung 1898, 47–48.
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 351

ist – in der Hauptsache – dazu bestimmt, vorgelesen zu werden’ (‘The transcript

is – in the main – meant to be read out’).21
When looking at concrete examples, however, the question arises as to how
much orality is actually included in these written records. After all, one must
concede that orality is only accessible through the transcription of the spoken
word. It therefore is reasonable to distinguish between the agency of the partic-
ipants as authors and as originators. The speaker is, so to say, the author of his
or her story; the speaker, the scribe, and the judge co-acted as originators of the
written artefact. Of course one has to admit that the oral presentation was ipso
facto subject to the power of the scribe.22 Thus, the very idea of immediacy at
court seems to be a legal fiction. For one thing, the linguistic ability of the par-
ticipants to understand and to express themselves might affect the questioning.
Likewise, their familiarity with the cultural context, namely, the specific situa-
tion of being called to court, might have some impact. In order to assess the
conditions of recording, a basic question is how fast and in what mode and
temper people spoke. One might imagine differences in speech when they ex-
plained their views and argued, when they defended themselves, when they
depicted or remembered facts and circumstances, or when they delineated ex-
cuses and invented lies. Even more important is that the skills of the scribe and
his capacities in speedwriting dominated the situation. It was his task to docu-
ment the argumentation in detail while grasping the content of the spoken
statement.23
Keeping this situation in mind, one must acknowledge that the official
claim of a word-for-word transcription always includes some kind of transla-
tion.24 First, a translation into the standard language is in most cases recognisa-
ble. The fact that people spoke dialect can be assumed, but is hardly visible
here. Secondly, the written artefact itself cannot depict the emotional colouring
of the speech, for example, fear or anger. There are some instances, however, in
which the scribe made the volume of the voice or the manner of speaking visible
via commentary. For example, when he added the information that the accused
had spoken ‘hastig’ (‘hastily’), ‘sich lange besinnend’ (‘reflecting at length’),
‘bestürzt’ (‘stunned’), ‘in brutalem trotzigen Thon’ (‘in a harsh, defiant tone’),

||
21 Flemming 1898, 585.
22 Gensler 1821, 157.
23 Kienitz 2005, 59–70.
24 Göttsch 1991, 445. However, her examples originate from trials in the eighteenth century
and therefore still pertain to the inquisitorial trial. The records represent the hearing in detail,
but the scribe paraphrased into indirect speech.
352 | Sabine Kienitz

‘schnippisch und mit pochendem Herzen’ (‘caustically and with a pounding

heart’), ‘bißig’ (‘cutting’), ‘mit sehr stotternder, kaum zu vernehmender Stimme’
(‘in a stammering, barely audible voice’).25 Apparently, the description depend-
ed on his interpretation, such as when the scribe differentiated the manner in
which an accused person responded to questions, by ‘weinen’ (‘crying’), ‘heu-
len’ (‘wailing’) or ‘bitterlich weinen’ (‘weeping bitterly’). There is also some
evidence that female defendants became verbally abusive. They cursed blatant-
ly and insulted each other in such a way that the judge had to call them to order
repeatedly for ‘unschicklicher und unziemender Reden’ (‘indecorous and un-
seemly speech’).26
Moreover, the scribe translated the oral statements into a distinctly written
form of speech. This is perceptible in the smoothed-out sentence order, as well
as in the phrases that are to some extent adjusted to make sense. Usual filler
words or repetitions, which are characteristic of unscripted spoken language,
are rather rare, but there are examples, such as: ‘Ey, ey, da kräuselt es mir. Ich
hatte nichts mit ihm’ (‘Well, well, it gives me the creeps. I had nothing to do
with him’).27 Likewise, it is noticeable that in contrast to everyday speech, peo-
ple seem to present their narration in complete sentences.
Evidently, there was a cultural authority of the written language, which ful-
ly asserts itself here and transforms to some extent the previous orality. In this
respect, literacy seemed to have been an instrument of domination and power.28
One must also suppose that the conditions of judicial interrogation played a
role, since the terminology used by the judge followed the interests of the judi-
ciary. One must look closely to determine whether people merely repeated the
judge’s phrasing or whether they used words of their own accord. Sometimes
witnesses or defendants even adapted their own language to the expectations of
the judge in anticipatory obedience, such as when people had had previous
experiences with the juridical authorities, which were documented in their per-
sonal criminal record.
The introduction of the principle of orality was much discussed in the 1830s.
Jurists and legal scholars considered it innovative because it strengthened the

||
25 StAL, Kriminalsenat Ellwangen, E 341 I, Bü 37, ‘Strafsache gegen Maria Katharina Röthlin
(Röthel), Christine Schön und andere aus Schwäbisch Hall wegen gewerbsmäßiger Unzucht’,
hearing of Magdalena Bäuerle, 7 Aug. 1824.
26 StAL, Kriminalsenat Ellwangen, E 341 I, Bü 36, hearing of Johanna Friederike Walter, 17
May 1824.
27 StAL, Kriminalsenat Ellwangen, E 341 I, Bü 37, hearing of Rosina Maria Treuter, 4 Aug.
1824.
28 Göttsch 1991, 450.
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 353

position and the rights of people who were in court, defendants as well as wit-
nesses.29 However, the change also brought with it some problems. For hand-
writing was the central means of recording these ephemeral situations. The
transfer of verbatim speech to a written form as an authoritative process of nota-
risation was in the hands of a more or less ambitious or experienced scribe.

3 Longhand script and the legibility and legality

of shorthand
The legal regulations tell us a lot about the requirements and organisation of
orality in court. By contrast, guidelines on the subject of writing in court are
scarce.30 In this respect, only the vigorous debate about the introduction of
shorthand in the 1860s opens up the possibility of further investigation. The
specific practices involved in creating longhand transcripts only became an
issue, and therefore visible in archival records, when they were challenged by
the concept of a new and time-saving documentation system. As the experts
discussed the specifics of shorthand and its characteristic elements – for example,
simplification of common writing and illegibility of a non-alphabetic script – the
faults and benefits of both longhand and shorthand came into view. In the
following paragraphs, two aspects of this debate will be explicitly addressed:
first, the conditions of writing longhand as such and their effects on script; and
second, the legal dimension of shorthand records.
Obviously, the previously described form organising court proceedings,
that is, orality and the obligation to record the spoken statements immediately
and verbatim, would have been an ideal playground for the use of shorthand.31
Yet the opposite was the case: whereas in other countries, for example in Eng-
land, the use of shorthand had long been common practice, even in the field of

||
29 As one of the main outcomes, Mittermaier mentions that the number of acquittals had
decreased significantly (Mittermaier 1856, 306, n. 4).
30 According to Gensler 1821, 164, the scribe should avoid ‘gewisse Schriftzüge, die das Lesen
erschweren und erst einer Entzifferung bedürfen’ (‘any style of lettering that makes reading
difficult and requires decipherment’). Pörschel 1911, 20–22, gives some details on the type of
paper to use and insists on the use of black ink.
31 Menger 1873, 155–167, discusses the necessity of elaborate records for appealing a case. He
also stresses the technique of shorthand as an essential tool for improving the quality of the
records (p. 166, n. 33).
354 | Sabine Kienitz

law,32 the German state authorities refused to apply the system. The earliest
evidence of shorthand in German courts dates to the beginning of the twentieth
century.33 Why were the German state authorities so hesitant, and why did it
take so long for shorthand to finally be used in court?
The discussion about the use of shorthand in the German judiciary began in
the 1860s and relied on the positive experiences with parliamentary short-
hand.34 The promoters described a multitude of advantages of the new method,
which included saving time, saving manpower, and saving material resources.35
The main concern was to offer an alternative to the German cursive script or
Kurrentschrift, which they faulted for being ‘mühsam dahinschreitend’ (‘slow
and cumbersome’) and ‘allzu schwerfällig für den mächtig und rasch ar-
beitenden Geist’ (‘all too clumsy for the powerful and fast-working mind’).36 The
proponents of shorthand disapproved of longhand above all because of the
large number of hand movements necessary for its many somewhat crooked
characters:

Die deutsche Currentschrift nimmt in Folge ihrer Weitschweifigkeit und Vielzügigkeit,

insbesondere der häufigen Erhebung und Senkung ihrer Zeichen über und unter die
Schreiblinie einen nicht geringen Aufwand an physischer Kraft und Zeit in Anspruch,
lenkt daher die Aufmerksamkeit in zu hohem Grade auf die mechanische Thätigkeit des
Schreibens […].37

German cursive script requires – due to the fact that its letters are too lengthy and consist of
too many strokes, in particular because of the frequent elevation and descent of its char-
acters above and below the writing line – a considerable amount of physical effort and
time; therefore it directs one’s attention too much to the mechanical activity of writing […].

Fast recording at court by using longhand script was very physically demanding.
Not only did the scribe need impeccable hearing, but a quick grasp and excel-
lent memory skills were also essential. Simultaneously listening, understanding,

||
32 Zeibig 1867; Gardey 2019, 40.
33 GLAK, Badisches Justizministerium, 234 Nr. 9191–9192, ‘J.U.S. gegen Frh. Karl von
Lindenau wegen Erpressungsversuchs, Beleidigung und Begünstigung’, stenographic record of
the main proceedings for 19 Dec. 1907. I thank Hannah Boedekker for this information.
34 Zeibig 1867; Lamm 1867.
35 Mittermaier 1856 was the first to argue that the employment of publicly appointed and
sworn shorthand scribes would improve the quality of the court records (Mittermaier 1856, 311).
36 Zeibig 1867, 25.
37 Lamm 1867, 209. He claimed that cursive letters require ‘durchschnittlich je fünf Hand-
bewegungen, einige sogar acht’ (‘an average of five hand movements each, some even eight’),
whereas shorthand only requires two or three (p. 210, n. 6).
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 355

remembering, and reproducing what he heard required a lot of mental attention

and retentiveness. These physical and mental aspects are especially interesting:
producing records at court in longhand and cursive script thus seemed
exhausting not only for the body and the hand holding the quill, but also for the
mind. A professional scribe, it was said, would be worn out in nine to ten years
due to the demanding requirements at court. That the mental and physical
difficulty of the task could become a problem in court sessions is also evident
from the many complaints ‘über den Zeitverlust bei solcherart langsamen
Beamten’ (‘about the loss of time caused by some slow scribes’):

Man erinnere sich nur der lähmenden Pausen, welche daraus entstehen, daß dem Proto-
collführer Zeit zum Nachschreiben vergönnt werden muß, [und] der unerquicklichen De-
batten, welche sich nicht selten bei dem Vorlesen des Protocolls sich darüber entspinnen,
ob der Angeschuldigte oder ein Zeuge das oder jenes ausgesagt habe, und in der Regel
nicht anders, als durch nochmalige Befragung oder Vernehmung zum Abschluß gebracht
werden können.38

One only has to remember the paralysing pauses that arise from the fact that the record
keeper has to be allowed time to complete his writing, [and] the unpleasant debates that
frequently arise during the reading out of the records as to whether the accused or a wit-
ness has stated this or that, and which usually cannot be brought to a conclusion other
than through repeated questioning or interrogation.

In view of these complaints, it is easy to understand the basic need for a script
at court that was more manageable for body and mind than the inconvenient,
slow, and laborious German longhand cursive script. In order to meet the in-
creasingly high demands, the experts of shorthand required: ‘Es muss daher
jedes Schriftsystem, welches auf Vollkommenheit Anspruch macht […] die Mit-
tel bieten, so schnell zu schreiben, als man zu sprechen im Stande ist’. (‘There-
fore, any writing system that claims to be perfect […] must provide the means to
write as fast as one is able to speak’).39 In their view, the regular German cursive
script was insufficient: ‘Die Stenographie allein ist im Stande, ein vollständiges
und treues Bild der mündlichen Verhandlung wiederzugeben und doch mit der
Verhandlung selbst gleichen Schritt zu halten [...]’. (‘Shorthand alone is capable
of reproducing a complete and faithful account of the oral proceedings and yet
keeping equal pace with the proceedings themselves [...]’).40

||
38 Lamm 1867, 219.
39 Tietz 1872, 26.
40 Lamm 1867, 219.
356 | Sabine Kienitz

In addition to these problems caused by the complexity of the script and the
techniques of handwriting itself, there were also some technical obstacles. One
of them was the writing support, namely the paper, which, depending on the
quality, might be so rough that it dulled the quill in no time:

Die Oberfläche der unzähligen Papiersorten besteht sehr oft aus Substanzen, welche die
Schärfe der Feder angreifen und abstumpfen. Wird doch schon ein Messer womit wir Pa-
pier schneiden stumpf, weil es Theile enthält, welche der Schärfe des Messers wider-
stehen, vielmehr noch greifen diese Theile die Schärfe einer Feder an.41

The surface of the countless types of paper very often consists of substances that damage
and dull the sharpness of the quill. Even a knife with which we cut paper becomes blunt,
because the paper contains particles that resist the sharpness of the knife, but even more
so do these particles damage the sharpness of a quill.

Rough paper also disturbed writing smoothly. The uneven surface caused fric-
tion, hampered and interrupted the movement, as if it tugged at the quill or the
nib of a steel pen. The script would turn out untidy, stained, and splattered. If
the ink was too thin, it seeped into the paper too quickly, and blotted, ruining
the appearance of the document, taking away from its official air and authority.
If the ink was too thick, writing did not progress smoothly or fast enough. In
both cases, either the time spent waiting for the ink to dry or the use of grit in-
creased. Moreover, the aggressive substances of the ink damaged the quill,
which, if it was not greasy enough, quickly became ineffective. The problem of
the quill becoming too soft for writing could be solved

wenn man etwa zehn bis zwanzig Kiele zugleich in Gebrauch nimmt, die abgeschriebene
Feder hinlegt, eine neue ergreift und die gebrauchten Federn erst dann wieder zuspitzt,
wenn sie hart geworden sind.42

by using about ten to twenty quills at the same time, putting down the worn-out quill,
reaching for a new one, and sharpening the used quills only when they had hardened
again.

Scholars of the art of writing, such as the Prussian instructor Carl Friedrich
Stiehr, insisted that writing was a highly complex process in which all compo-
nents should be in good shape and well coordinated in order to ensure smooth
writing and a clear and legible script:

||
41 Stiehr 1832, 28.
42 Wieck 1853, 318.
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 357

Die Geschicklichkeit der Hand, die Güte der Posen, die Richtigkeit des Schnitts und die
Güte des Papiers und der Dinte schließen sich so aneinander an, greifen so ineinander,
daß gleichsam das eine ohne das andere nicht möglich ist. 43

Manual dexterity, the quality of the poses [i.e. the goosequill], the precision of the cut, and
the quality of the paper and the ink are so interconnected, so intertwined, that it is impos-
sible to have one without the other.

While a ‘gute Feder’ (‘a good quill’)44 was relatively easy to obtain, the manuals
addressed the difficulties for the scribe in achieving the habit of a ‘gute und
flüchtige Hand’ (‘a fine and quick handwriting’). In the eighteenth century,
calligraphers such as Johann Stäps from Leipzig in his ‘Selbstlehrende Canz-
leymäßige Schreibe-Kunst’ (‘Self-Instruction in the Art of Clerical Writing’)45
gave elaborate instructions on how to sit at the table, how to position both arms
and feet, and how to cut and hold the quill. He taught both cursive and chan-
cery script, pointing out above all the differences not only in hand posture, but
also in cutting the quill and in pen style, as these pertained to the different
scripts.46
It took time to develop expertise in writing a fast and legible longhand
script.47 Nevertheless, learning shorthand was just as challenging to say the
least. An official report from 1914 – at that time shorthand had already been
introduced in Hamburg’s courts for some years – noted with regret, that the
older clerks in particular had not been able to adapt to the new writing system,
because they apparently lacked the requisite physical agility and motor skills of
the hand. Not even their declared ‘diligence, perseverance, and persistence’48
sufficed; that is why the use of shorthand had to be left to younger staff mem-
bers. Shorthand placed special demands on posture and especially on the wrist:
the greater angle of inclination made it necessary to write with a pencil. Fur-
thermore, the surface of the paper had to be very smooth and plain without

||
43 Stiehr 1832, 9.
44 ‘Eine gute Feder sei eine, die, ohne daß man viel drückt, leichtweg schreibt’ (‘a good quill is
one that writes easily without the need for much pressure’), according to the German writer
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, quoted by Stingelin 2012, 293.
45 Stäps 1748.
46 Stäps 1748, 5.
47 According to Frank 1919, 84, one of the main criteria for employing a scribe would be a
‘schöne Handschrift’ (‘beautiful handwriting’).
48 StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht. Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, 213-1_1961,
‘Bericht betr. die Einführung der Kurzschrift bei den hamburgischen Gerichten’ (‘Report on the
Introduction of Shorthand in the Courts of Hamburg’), 8 June 1914, p. 3–4.
358 | Sabine Kienitz

lines to give the scribe room to move.49 On the other hand, it was seen as a great
advantage that a scribe well trained in shorthand from the beginning of his
career could maintain his mental and physical strength and thus remain in
service as much as seven to nine years longer than a longhand scribe.50

4 Legal arguments against the implementation of

shorthand
Even though there were many practical arguments in favour of using shorthand
in the courtroom, the specific nature of this writing system served as a major
counterargument. In putting forth legal reasons, opponents referenced the se-
crecy associated with shorthand. They argued that the seemingly encrypted
script was illegible to outsiders or even to practitioners of a different shorthand
system.51 The inaccessible nature of shorthand would violate the legal norm that
every scribe had to be able to read out the written record ad hoc and accurately
in the presence of all participants. This requirement pertained not only to the
individual scribe but also to his colleagues, when, for example, there was a
change in staff during a court session.
There were some other reasons why the legal authorities so persistently re-
jected shorthand in German courts. A primary reason was the absence of a
common shorthand writing system. Neither were there any regulations for im-
plementing shorthand as a mandatory script in legal administration. The re-
spective lobbying associations, favouring either the system of Gabelsberger or
Stolze-Schrey, were still in fierce competition with each other.52 Besides, it was
not even mandatory for scribes to take lessons in shorthand. The general use
and acceptance of shorthand in legal matters made no sense as long as it was
the scribe’s private decision as to what system to use or to stick to longhand. In
view of these inconsistencies, legal experts argued that shorthand records
would not meet basic legal requirements. They refused to accept shorthand as
an official mode of documentation at court,

weil die nur dem Eingeweihten verständliche stenografische Niederschrift selbst ein
Protokoll nicht darstellt und die Uebersetzung in Currentschrift eben nicht das aufge-

||
49 StAHH, 213-1_1961, ‘Bericht betr. die Einführung’, p. 4.
50 StAHH, 213-1_1961, ‘Bericht betr. die Einführung’, p. 7.
51 Lamm 1867, 205.
52 Lamm 1867, 206; Funke 1913.
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 359

nommene Protokoll ist, deshalb aber mittelst der Stenografie ein Protokoll im technischen
Sinne des Wortes überhaupt nicht gewonnen werden kann.53

since the stenographic transcript, which can be understood only by the initiated, does not
constitute a protocol, and the translation into cursive script is likewise not the recorded
protocol, therefore, a court record in the technical sense of the word will never be ob-
tained by means of stenography.

Despite all these legal objections, the German shorthand lobby still insisted on
the indispensable qualities of stenography as ‘mächtiges politisches Bildungs-
mittel’ (‘a powerful political tool for education’),54 that, because of its speed and
accuracy, was most useful especially in court. It was well into the first decade of
the twentieth century before shorthand gained acceptance as part of the bu-
reaucratic reforms in Germany, but this acceptance was also due to the increas-
ing workload in the administrative legal system.55
With the introduction of shorthand, court routines changed to a certain ex-
tent. The schedule of the court session itself remained the same in terms of pro-
cedure. The scribe noted the questions and answers down accurately, but now
did so in shorthand. Then he read out the recorded testimony from this very
record, and subsequently all parties involved certified their submissions. An
example from the Hamburg Amtsgericht (local court) shows that people were
putting down their signature right on the shorthand transcript itself.56 Hence,
they perceived and used the illegible transcript the same way that an earlier
longhand manuscript would have been used. Now the very act of signing turned
the shorthand records into a legally effective document.
With regard to some archival examples from Hamburg, which were pro-
duced during the 1920s, it should be noted that the typewriter and with it the
carbon copy was already accepted and widespread as an important tool for
office work.57 In the years before this technical revolution took place, however,
the procedure for transcribing shorthand records was still as follows. After the
court session was finished, the shorthand document was sent to the chancery.

||
53 Zeibig 1867, 12.
54 Zeibig 1867, 31.
55 Büroreformen 1927; Dumke 1993, 163–167.
56 StAHH, Landgericht Hamburg, 213-11 L 231/1921, ‘Akten in der Strafsache M. F. G. wegen
Abtreibung’, hearing of M. F. G., 13 Oct. 1919.
57 Vismann 2000, 267–276. In Hamburg, the first references to typewritten transcripts date to
1910. StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, here: ‘Anre-
gungen und Mitteilungen, 213-1_1961, Beantwortung des Schreibens vom 11.3.1910 betreffend
Verwendung der Stenographie im Dienste der Gerichte’, 14 March 1910, p. 2.
360 | Sabine Kienitz

Here lower-paid clerks transcribed this stenographic record, producing a fair

copy in longhand.58 Next, they produced several identical replicas for all indi-
vidual court executives involved. All of these manuscripts, of course, had to be
proofread and then signed by the copyist and the judge, not as originals, but as
authentic longhand copies, serving the same purpose.59
The primary benefit of this bureaucratic modernisation process was that the
length of the court sessions noticeably decreased, by a third and up to a half of
the time. Thus, the productivity of the judges and the courts increased accord-
ingly.60 The time saved on-site during the oral proceedings, however, was often
lost due to delay in the back office, where the scribes had to spend more time on
clerical duties.61 As the complaints about sick leave and frequent changes of
clerks show, the court’s efficiency also depended on the productivity of the
scribes.62 This situation meant that the administration was effectively subject to
certain rationalisation strategies, including Taylorism63 and cost-cutting mea-
sures. Such measures resulted in an increasing number of administrative jobs
and thus expanded the hierarchy of clerical services at court. This situation
created new possibilities for building a career in administration.64 Most of the
scribes started as ordinary assistants and tried hard to improve their skills as
scribes on the job, as well as to acquire legal knowledge, in order to rise to a
position as Sekretär or Obersekretär (secretary or senior secretary) or even higher
positions.65

||
58 StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, here: Anregun-
gen und Mitteilungen, 213-1_1961, ‘Beantwortung des Schreibens vom 1.4.1908 betreffend
Verwendung der Stenographie’, 6 April 1908, p. 1.
59 StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht. Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, 213-1_1961,
‘Bericht betr. die Einführung der Kurzschrift bei den hamburgischen Gerichten’ (‘Report on the
Introduction of Shorthand in the Courts of Hamburg’), 8 June 1914, p. 5.
60 Lamm reported on test runs in which they measured the time necessary to record a testi-
mony in shorthand, read it out, and translate the shorthand record back into longhand (Lamm
1867, 222–223); StAHH Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, here:
Anregungen und Mitteilungen, 213-1_1961, ‘Beantwortung des Schreibens vom 1.4.1908 betref-
fend Verwendung der Stenographie’, 6 April 1908, p. 3.
61 StAHH, 213-1_1961, ‘Beantwortung des Schreibens vom 1.4.1908’, 6 April 1908, p. 3.
62 StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Nichtrichterliche Beamte, here: Gerichtsschrei-
ber, 213-1_1842, ‘Präsident Brandis an den Senatskommissar in Angelegenheiten des OLG’,
11 July 1912.
63 Winter 1920, 187–190, 222–223.
64 Thiesing 1927, 18–19.
65 StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Nichtrichterliche Beamte, here: Gerichtsschrei-
ber, 213-1_1842, ‘Bewerberlisten’, p. 2; see also Geschäftsordnung 1905, 5.
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 361

5 The agency of shorthand records

Many years, it seemed rather unlikely that artefacts written in shorthand could
ever serve as legal documents. Obviously, the German authorities then changed
their attitude to this problem at the beginning of the twentieth century. For
some courts of justice in the states of Baden and Hamburg, there is evidence
that shorthand transcripts survived as part of the court record, which proves
that these transcripts really did act as official legal documents.66 I shall return to
this point in a moment. In addition, the Prussian Minister of Justice regularly
requested reports from the German states on the implementation of shorthand
as a work- and time-saving tool at the individual courts.67
As the files in the State Archives of Hamburg demonstrate, the court admin-
istration authorities were very anxious to systematically improve the shorthand
training of scribes at court, even before the introduction of German Unified
Shorthand in 1924. On the one hand, these authorities employed only scribes
with a certified knowledge of shorthand. Furthermore, starting in the 1910s,
scribes in Hamburg, who were about 150 in number, received regular training in
shorthand, with classes for newcomers even during office hours.68 Skill in read-
ing aloud one’s own handwriting (and doing it quickly and from a standing
position) was particularly important. Therefore, shorthand teachers dictated
practice oral testimony twice a week; the scribes-in-training were supposed to
constantly optimise their skill in listening and writing quickly.
There remains the question of how acceptance of shorthand records and
their agency as part of court proceedings was legally certified. How did the judi-
cial authorities solve the problem of authenticating the illegible script? To an-
swer this question I again refer to the Hamburg archival material. When review-
ing court files of contentious jurisdiction from the 1920s, I came across multi-
page stenographic records.69 These records were tied together and bound into

||
66 GLAK, Badisches Justizministerium, 234 Nr. 9191–9197, ‘J.U.S. gegen Frh. Karl von Lindenau
wegen Erpressungsversuchs, Beleidigung und Begünstigung’, stenographic record of the main
proceedings for 19 Dec. 1907; stenographic records and their translation (1907-1908); GLAK,
Badisches Justizministerium, 234 Nr. 9107, ‘J.U.S des R.A. Karl Hau aus Großlittgen wegen
Mords’, stenographic records (1907-1926).
67 StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, here: Anregun-
gen und Mitteilungen, 213-1_1961.
68 StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, 213-1_1961,
‘Bericht betr. die Einführung der Kurzschrift bei den hamburgischen Gerichten’ (‘Report on the
Introduction of Shorthand in the Courts of Hamburg’), 8 June 1914, pp. 3–9.
69 StAHH, Landgericht Hamburg, 213-11.
362 | Sabine Kienitz

the respective files, always accompanied by other documents written in long-

hand and typewritten artefacts. Fortunately, I did not have to learn shorthand to
work with this material. For I soon recognised that in each file there were two
versions of the very same record both referring to the same court hearing, and
always arranged in the same order. First came the typewritten version, which of
course was easy to read, even if the scribe used many abbreviations that were at
first unknown to me. Then followed the shorthand version, whose script was
spread out on the page in an unordered manner, illegible to me, except for some
individual words written in both scripts, shorthand and longhand. Therefore, it
was not at all a question of deciphering the shorthand script to get at the
meaning of the records. Much more relevant was the materiality and sig-
nificance of the written artefact itself as part of common legal practices.
In most cases, legal procedures result in written artefacts of some sort,
whose originality had to be certified officially, be it through signatures, seals,
stamps or other signs of authentication.70 The same goes for the stenographic
court records. There are two points to discuss here. First is the question of
whether those shorthand records could also function as self-contained originals
in the legal sense. After all, these records emerged live in the courtroom and
documented the very words that had just been spoken in public. Accordingly,
the sworn stenographer read out in court his own shorthand record in order to
confirm the correctness of its content. As a next step, the witnesses or the ac-
cused signed this very sheet of paper. By signing it, they confirmed the docu-
ment’s status as an original and the efficacy of the shorthand record as a legal
document, even if only the scribe could read the script.
Now, however, there is a second question, regarding the legal status of the
typescript version, which other clerks later produced in the chancery on the
basis of the shorthand record.71 If the legal efficacy of the document depended
primarily on the connection between reading out the recorded statements and
the signature of the person giving the testimony, how could a typewritten copy
have any legal agency? Would this typewritten document not be more or less
just a fair copy without any legal effect, since there were no signatures on it, but
only some abbreviations as a reference to the act of reading it out and the fact
that somebody had already signed the other document?

||
70 Strippelmann 1860, 40–69; Pörschel 1911, 21–22.
71 StAHH, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, 213-1_1961,
‘Bericht betr. die Einführung der Kurzschrift bei den hamburgischen Gerichten’ (‘Report on the
Introduction of Shorthand in the Courts of Hamburg’), 8 June 1914, p. 5.
 From Mouth to Ear to Hand | 363

Surprisingly, regulations such as the German Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz

(Code for the Constitution of a Court) do not provide any information on this
legal question. Therefore, one can only attempt to answer it on the basis of the
available material. If one analyses the details, the conclusion is obvious that
there are disparities: there still is a difference in agency between these two ver-
sions of the court proceedings. In the end, however, neither version, in and of
itself, would have had any legal effect on the course of a trial. Yet I want to put
forward the thesis that both documents functioned as originals, though the
agency of each depended on the fact that the two were kept together. In this
respect, we are not dealing with two entirely distinct originals, but rather with
one original that consists of two parts, each confirming the originality of the
other. There were two individual yet inseparable written artefacts, neither of
which could perform legal agency on its own; the one in shorthand bore the
signatures of all the participants and was therefore legally compliant, but it was
illegible to outsiders. The other one was a transcription into typewritten script;
it ensured by typewriting the legibility of the spoken word. This typewritten
version, however, was not legally compliant, since it did not contain the signa-
tures. In this respect, the agency of either document depended on their inter-
connected relationship, which the authorities preserved by keeping the
documents together, both spatially and materially. In some cases, the short-
hand transcript was placed in an envelope, sealed and stored, but most of the
time it was pinned directly to the typed copy in the file.72
In the absence of legal requirements, the judicial authorities solved the
problem in a pragmatic way, pointing out the benefit that if there was any un-
certainty about the outcome of a hearing, one could immediately evaluate and
revise what the scribe had noted in the legal proceedings.73 In this way, the
stenographic records reaffirmed the crucial importance of orality in court,
which was only preserved in handwritten artefacts.

Abbreviations
GLAK Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe
StAH Stadtarchiv Schwäbisch Hall
StAHH Staatsarchiv Hamburg
StAL Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg

||
72 StAHH, 213-1_1961, ‘Bericht betr. die Einführung’, p. 6.
73 StAHH, 213-1_1961, ‘Bericht betr. die Einführung’, p. 6.
364 | Sabine Kienitz

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Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci
The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a
Codicological Approach
Abstract: During the preparation of the revised English version of La Syntaxe du
codex, the authors highlighted the need to reconsider the current notion of
‘content’ from a codicological point of view, in order to complement the more
traditional textual and philological perspectives. This contribution offers a first
overview of an ongoing reflection on the identification and delimitation of the
various types of contents that can be found in a codex including the notions of
BlocConts and UniConts. The analysis of contents raises a number of (partially
open) questions concerning their interaction, aimed at a better understanding
of the structure of the codex, as well as of its genesis and subsequent transfor-
mations.

Several reasons led us, a few years after the Syntaxe du codex was originally
published, to consider producing a revised and updated edition in English,
which should soon appear with the same publisher.1 Our revision turned out to
be longer and more complex than expected and the original text of the Syntaxe
has undergone substantial additions and rethinking concerning several points,
including the multi-faceted notion of Content. In this contribution, we summarize

||
1 Andrist, Canart and Maniaci 2013. We were first of all pleasantly surprised to learn that all
the copies of the book had been sold just one year after its publication. Second, we received
valuable and stimulating comments and suggestions from some competent readers and re-
viewers which helped us see that certain points of our reasoning required further clarification
or improvement. Third, we realised that our French prose was not entirely clear to some non-
native speakers: not only has the language barrier in general probably slowed the diffusion of
the book among scholars interested in the complexity of the medieval codex, but some of our
technical statements may have been, understandably, misunderstood by some readers; the
English edition therefore also aims to broaden the circle of our readers and to encourage their
reactions and comments.
While preparing this second edition we felt the constant absence of the French edition’s
third co-author, our dear friend Paul Canart, who sadly left us in September of 2017 and would
undoubtedly have efficiently contributed to and immensely enjoyed preparing this new edition
with us.

Open Access. © 2021 Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci, published by De Gruyter. This work
is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-019
370 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

our additional reflection on this topic and share with the readers some more
prospective questions beyond those touched upon in our monograph.2

1 The basic types of content

The term content – generally designating what can be found in a codex (texts,
images, musical scores, etc.) – is currently used in different ways but is not
formally defined in technical literature. It therefore seems useful to better clarify
its use.3
At first approach, we understand the content of a codex as follows:
Content: ‘In a codex, the whole of the finite sets of signs that convey a mes-
sage’.
These ‘signs’ can be letters, drawings, the elements of a miniature, and so
forth. As for the adjective ‘finite’, in the context of the codex it means that the
set of signs is a complete message, more or less corresponding to the one that
the person(s) in charge of its copy originally transcribed (a whole text, for ex-
ample, or a subset of a text, or all of a reader’s marginal notes) and that it can be
independently understood as a whole, without being divided into smaller units
of meaning or grouped into bigger ones.4 This definition is extended to contents
whose copy was not completed and those which were mutilated as a result of a
transformation of the codex.
Each of these sets of signs can be loosely called a piece of content.5

In the original Syntaxe (hereafter Syntaxe 1), content as a general notion was
divided into the two categories of main contents (contenus principaux, including
‘whole works or copies thereof, images, decorations, musical scores, a mixture
of these previous categories, marginal notes to a text, and so forth’) and

||
2 In recent years Michael Friedrich has followed our work very closely with his lively scientific
curiosity, providing us with stimulating discussions and valuable comments for which we are
deeply grateful to him.
3 On the complexity of the notion of content, see Maniaci 2004, 82–86; Andrist 2016, 18–22.
4 We understand the concept of ‘finite set of signs’ exclusively within the context of a specific
manuscript. For example: in a codex of Homer, every book is a finite set of signs; if a user
writes a comment, it is also a finite set of signs; if, in another codex, someone copies the first
lines of the Iliad in an empty spot, this is also, for this codex, a finite set of signs. As explained
below, the notion of ‘finite message’ can operate at several levels and cannot always be applied
unambiguously to delimit content (see p. 376).
5 On the limits of this definition and the notion of piece of content, see below, p. 376.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 371

accessory contents (contenus accessoires, such as ‘ownership notes, shelfmarks,

scribbles, probationes calami, obituaries, succession marks’ and so forth).6 Dec-
oration of the binding was assigned to the second category as a special case, but
was in fact excluded from our systematisation; we were not unaware of the
unsatisfactory nature of this choice.7 In the new, English edition (Syntax 2) a
deepening of our thinking has led us to better qualify the previously introduced
categories and relate them to the codex’s evolutionary history. We now dis-
tinguish three kinds of content within a codex:
Basic Content: ‘content which is intended to be received, shared, and trans-
mitted by the codex (such as copies of works, images, musical scores, a mixture
of these, their direct paratexts, a scribe’s or reader’s marginal notes on a text,
and so forth)’.
Functional Content: ‘content which makes the reception, sharing, and
transmission of the basic contents possible or easier (such as quire signatures,
folio numbers, owner stamps and notes, shelfmarks, etc.)’.
Ancillary Content: ‘content which is non-functional and which is not intended
to be received, shared, or transmitted by the codex (such as scribbles, probationes
calami and so forth)’.8 There are clearly several kinds of ancillary contents, al-
though we leave here open the question of their exact extent (should they, for
example, include ‘book fillers’, or are those rather a type of basic content?). A
special case is represented by the palimpsests: the original contents on a
codex’s palimpsest leaves do not belong to the new book project and thus does
not strictly belong either to the new book’s production, even if they have been
more or less inadvertently included into it. This original content is chrono-
logically earlier than the new book content but totally extraneous to it, and it can
therefore be considered as an ancillary content, not in itself or in the project in
which it was originally copied, but from the specific perspective of the new book.

A codex’s basic contents consist in a series of pieces of content, such as texts,

images, musical scores, or sometimes a mix of these.9 These pieces of content
(or, for the sake of simplicity, ‘contents’) are usually distinguished from one

||
6 ‘Nous distinguons entre les contenus principaux (œuvres ou copies d’œuvres, images, dé-
corations, partitions musicales, un mélange de celles-ci, des notes marginales sur un texte…),
et les contenus accessoires (notes de possession, cotes du manuscrit, graffiti, probationes
calami, obit, marques de succession)’, Syntaxe 1, 51.
7 ‘Un cas très particulier de contenu accessoire est constitué par la décoration de la reliure’,
Syntaxe 1, 51.
8 These have also been called ‘side content’ see Andrist 2018, 137–138, 143–146.
9 We always mean ‘series’ or ‘set’ as a collection of objects that contains at least one object.
372 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

another by a significant material division, but the situation can be more compli-
cated, as we will discuss it below.
Most pieces of content are made up primarily of texts, or ‘words written in a
significant order’.10 Among these one must distinguish between the pieces of
basic content which
– are (supposedly) copies of pieces of basic content already existing in an-
other manuscript (the antigraph of the piece of basic content, which is its
apograph); ultimately, they usually go via a first copy11 back to a ‘work’,
which is usually an artistic creation; and
– pieces of basic content created for a specific codex, such as first copies (in-
cluding many book epigrams), as well as colophons or the like.

It is then possible to define:

– the work: ‘a production of the human mind which can be materialised in a
book’, and
– the work copy (or witness): ‘in a manuscript, each materialisation of a work
or a given part of a work’. Work copies or witnesses are also sometimes
simply called ‘texts’, but the high degree of polysemy of this term makes it
unapropriate for such an usage. Usually, in a codex most pieces of content
are first or successive copies of a work.

Up to this point we have illustrated the how our thoughts on the subject have
evolved, as presented in the forthcoming Syntax 2. But the notion of content can
be further considered in light of the attention recently given to the several ways
that the overall content is structured in a codex, which has led to the introduc-
tion of new concepts, such as those of modular units and unbroken series.12
In the following pages we concentrate on a neglected ‘building block’ of a
codex’s content, the UniCont, which we introduced already in Syntaxe 1, but
whose implications have not yet been sufficiently accounted for. We are not
presenting here the end result of a definitive model: our intention is rather to
share some preliminary thoughts with anyone interested in entering the dis-
cussion.

||
10 Syntaxe 1, 51, ‘une suite de mots dans une séquence significative’.
11 Copy is understood here in broad sense: since works are intellectual creations, the first time
they are materialised as such is, in this sense, already a copy, which we call first copy. Simi-
larly, the first copy is also a witness (the best possible one!) to the work. This is not here the
place to discuss text transmission phenomena.
12 Maniaci 2004, 79–81; Andrist 2020, 8–9.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 373

As in Syntaxe 1 and Syntax 2, we focus on books in codex form, as a distinct

subset of ‘objects with a content’.

2 Delimitation of ‘Content Units’ and

identification of witnesses
Both versions of our monograph deal with the concept of Content Units
(‘UniConts’) and offer clues for how to recognise their boundaries. Nevertheless,
the theoretical problems behind this notion are not dealt with: for example, not
discussed in the Syntax 2 are the links and differences between UniConts and
the above-defined pieces of content, or how the notion of UniCont can be
related to neighbouring research areas such as philology or paratext studies.
In the following pages we discuss UniConts more thoroughly, introducing
further details and new questions. We refer primarily to codices as they were
originally produced: the implications of possible transformations undergone by
a codex for the analysis of its contents will be dealt with in a further stage of our
reflection.
Our starting points are the basic ideas that:
– a codex is the result of a book project whose content is an essential part
thereof;13
– usually at least one piece of basic content is a witness and
– the criteria for identifying the boundaries between a codex’s pieces of con-
tent must be found primarily in the codex itself, even though external clues
may also be often useful.

2.1 Delimiting UniConts

Let us consider first a codex whose basic content is made up of texts only. How
can the sequence of words constituting a text be broken down into relevant
pieces of content?
Can the physical arrangement of the content on the pages provide the
answer? For example, can any visual device separating one portion of text from
the other portions (such as headings, blank spaces or distinctive scripts, including
majuscule initials or coloured letters) be considered a valid clue for identifying

||
13 As a result, our remarks exclude codex-like objects which do not bear a content.
374 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

the boundaries between pieces of content? Because of their variety and fre-
quency, these devices would mechanically split the text into a large number of
smaller portions of text (which are called Elements of content (ElConts) in the
Syntaxe 1)14 and the resulting division would lose any operative value: even
though some of these ElConts can be significant, in fact the boundaries of only a
small fraction of them might chance to coincide with the boundaries between
the witnesses.

As a result, we cannot escape having to take into consideration the meaning of

the sequences of words. And indeed, our definition of content requires that it
conveys a message.
If one is sufficiently familiar with the language, as well as with the common
visual hierarchy of the separating devices in the book tradition to which the
codex belongs, one should be able to group most of the ElConts that belong
together and isolate the main pieces of content. For example, in the Western
tradition, one quickly recognises the main visual content markers, such as dec-
orative elements which usually correspond to major content discontinuities, or
other specific layout features usually marking the beginning or end of the pieces
of content, as well as the boundaries of small ElConts written in a special ink
and / or script, and / or layed out differently from the rest of the text. By identi-
fying these small ElConts as well as the beginning and the end of larger ones,
one should also be able to a) recognise the presence of headings, colophons or
other accompanying texts; b) group together the ElConts which are closely re-
lated through their meaning into Blocs of Content (BlocCont); c) hypothetically
identify the main pieces of contents and locate their probable borders, even
without being familiar with the corresponding works.
However, this approach is not always without problems.
If the analysts do not have any other information apart from what is found
in the codex they are examining, it is difficult for them to evaluate what has
probably been copied from the model, and what was introduced by the produc-
ers; this is particularly true about the paracontents.15 Besides they cannot either
reach any fully certain conclusion about the extent of the works it contains and

||
14 Syntaxe 1, 104–108: the ancient definition of ElConts also includes the rare situation where
there are no visual devices between the copy of two works.
15 We understand paracontents as, in a codex, pieces of content whose presence depends on
one or several other pieces of content in the same codex semantically (on this definition, see
Andrist 2018). As explained below, they belong to the same content type as the piece(s) of
content they depend on. On the concept of paracontent, see Ciotti et al. 2018; if the paracontent
is a text, it can be called ‘paratext’.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 375

the quality of the copy, because of possible scribal mistakes and transmission
accidents.
There are in fact cases where the content division in a manuscript is aber-
rant, for example when a scribe unduly divides a coherent ensemble because of
a distraction or a misinterpretation of the antigraph, or inversely joins together
two texts which do not make sense together because the transition between
them has been overlooked (or had been already overlooked earlier in the tradi-
tion). Such situations occur very frequently (and some literatures – like the
early Christian ones – are commonly affected by them): for example, when the
scribes misinterpret the visual hierarchy of the textual ensembles they are copy-
ing, and therefore they lay out, for example, new chapters or sections of the
same work as if they were major divisions between works, or, inversely, they fall
to notice the difference between the copies of two works. Such misunderstand-
ings can also happen when the scribes work from several antigraphs with di-
verging organisation principles and are unable to synthesise them into a
coherent presentation. As a result, the explicit content divisions of the codex by
its material content markers do not always faithfully reflect the content divi-
sions from the point of view of text history and philology.
In these cases the analyst lacks a criterion for correctly recognising and
then evaluating the observed anomalies: do they frequently appear in the tradi-
tion of a given work or set of works? Shall they be considered as individual in-
congruities or as a common feature of a specific text tradition?

This is why manuscript scholars must combine the history of books with the
history of the texts they convey. In most cases, a good knowledge of a work’s
tradition may allow the analyst to recognise special situations, such as errors in
a codex’s content divisions. A manuscript scholar does not approach the history
of the texts the same ways that a philologist or linguist would, but takes their
researches into account in order to understand which meaningful series of
words usually circulate together and constitute copies of works.
There is, however, a number of cases where content is presented differently
in the witnesses of a given work: there can be, for instance, manuscripts where
some chapters appear in different orders or sometimes even as distinct pieces of
content. In the tradition of the First Testament this happens, for example, with
the book of Daniel, where the stories of Susanna and Bel, which do not appear
in the Hebrew tradition, are sometimes copied as a chapter of Daniel, at other
376 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

times before or after this book, as separate pieces of content and not always in
the same order.16
In any case of inconsistencies within a work’s history as reflected in its
manuscript tradition (or between the tradition and the work’s ancient bounda-
ries as reconstructed by philologists) the analyst must ask him- or herself
whether the observed discrepancies result from an ‘editorial’ intention, which
would then reflect how the book producers wanted the users to read it, or if they
came about by chance or distraction. Theoretically the examination of a single
manuscript diverging from the usual division (of one or more works) can only
lead to three possible interpretations, depending on a) whether or not the anti-
graph was faithfully reproduced (so that one can speak of two separate tradi-
tions) and, if it was not, b) whether the observed changes were intentional on
the part of the scribes or c) if they simply arose by chance (for example, by a
mistake by the scribes or binders).
Let us consider an example in the Codex Sinaiticus of the Greek Bible,17
whose 34th quire has lost all folios, but the last one. This contains a portion of
1 Chronicles, which occupies up to the fourth folio of quire 35 (= 1 Chronicles
9.27–19.17) with the running title of 2 Esdras in the upper margin; it is then fol-
lowed abruptly – inside a line, without any visual breaks such a punctuation
mark, and without the resulting sentence making any sense – by B Esdras 9.9,
which then goes on normally to the end of B Esdras.18 This discontinuity would
completely escape the attention of someone considering only layout and titles
as clues for understanding the content’s structure, while a knowledge of both
works’ tradition would make it clear. Does the situation observed in the Codex
Sinaiticus represent a separate tradition? The fact that the sentence linking the
two texts does not make sense already points at a mischance, and the reason for
this aberrant situation is most likely an accident in the codex’s ancestors.
Moreover, taking the manuscript tradition as the first (but not only) criteri-
on allows one to consider as distinct works pieces originally belonging to a
larger work from which they have been separately copied; and as distinct works
they also have their own independent manuscript transmission. For example, in

||
16 See for example Munnich, Fraenkel and Ziegler 1999, 20–22, 216–233.
17 GA 01. The remains of the codex are preserved today in four institutions under seven differ-
ent shelfmarks; see the entry corresponding to the main part (diktyon 38316), with links to the
other ones (and their diktyon numbers), in the Pinakes database, <https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/
notices/cote/38316/> (this and all the other links were accessed on 23 March 2021), Andrist
2020, 23 and the web site <www.codexsinaiticus.org>.
18 Milne and Skeat 1938, 1–4; Parker 2010, 65–68; Jongkind 2007, 144–147; Parker 2015, 289–
290.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 377

polemical collections adversus Iudaeos one finds an independent transmission

of Chap. 31 of the Doctrina Patrum, or of Titulus 8 from Euthymius Zigabenus’s
Panoplia dogmatica.19 Similarly, the pararagraph on the four beasts of Ezechiel
as symbols of the four gospels in Irenaeus of Lyon’s Adversus haereses is copied
in many tetraevangelia totally independently from the rest of Irenaeus’s work.

This is why in our Syntaxe 1 we developed the concept of UniConts as portions of

a codex’s overall content, portions whose limits are defined as follows, on the
basis of an analysis of the physical text’s discontinuity markers as well as on the
results of philological and text-historical studies:
– wherever there is a transition in the text from one work to another, even if
this transition is not marked in the text;20
– wherever there is significant material division of the text, even if it does not
correspond to a philologically relevant division;
– (and, of course, by the physical limits of the codex itself).

Our understanding of UniCont is related to, but not identical, to that of ‘piece of
content’, which is a more subjective notion, since the same overall content can
be divided into pieces of content in different ways. The differences rely on the
notion of ‘finite message’, which can apply at different levels. In a Tetraevange-
lium, for instance, does the finite message encompasses the whole book? On the
one hand, the answer is ‘yes’, but each gospel definitely also bears its own finite
message. From this narrower point of view, do the evangelist portraits or the
prologues belong to the message conveyed by each gospel, or does each of them
bear a separate finite message? And within a gospel, should each pericope also
be considered as conveying a finite message? The answer to these questions is
probably always positive, and all of them would define different – and differently
useful – pieces of content; at the same time, a single observer might group
portions of the same text in different ways at different times, depending on
varying needs. Despite its vagueness, the notion of ‘piece of content’ retains its
usefulness to speak of the content of a codex, when it is not possible to be more
precise.

||
19 Andrist 2016, 347–348, 368–369.
20 There are of course cases where it is not easy to spot the transition from one work to an-
other, especially if one or both are not otherwise known. But this rule makes it possible to bring
cases into the analyst’s view where portions of text have been mistakenly joined together
following accidents in transmission, such as the above discussed situation in Codex Sinaiticus.
378 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

UniConts cannot even be mechanically identified with witnesses, even

though there is a close relationship between the two notions: as already
mentioned, a UniCont can in fact include BlocConts such as subtitles or so-
called ‘tail pieces’ which are not always considered as part of the witness (see
below).

2.2 Identifying witnesses

In order to identify the UniConts correctly, we need to answer the important
question of how exactly to recognise and delimit a work’s witnesses.21 What are
their identifying features? As is well known, in many manuscript cultures the
headings/titles in the manuscripts are not stable (and not even always present)
and the identification of a work must therefore rely on its first and last words,
which is not without its challenges.
Variants readings have to be dealt with first, since there are no two identical
copies of a work, except perhaps extremely short ones. These variant readings
may also (and often do) affect the beginning and/or end of the witness and com-
plicate its identification and delimitation. The same difficulty arises when the
variants are not the result of accidents but of a systematic revision of the text; in
this case it can also happen that two copies of the same work have a significant-
ly different beginning or ending.
Fluid traditions, where one finds radically reworked copies of a work, are
an even more difficult challenge. One recognises both their dependency on and
their link to a common textual tradition, as well as the uniqueness of the tradi-
tion’s ‘avatar’ in this or that specific manuscript. There are also cases where
hardly two manuscripts contain the same avatar of the same work. How large
must the difference between two avatars of a single textual tradition be before
we go from considering them witnesses of the same work to seeing them as two
independent works? There is probably no definitive answer to this question.
In several cases the differentiation between works also depends on other
factors, such as the analyst’s/reader’s own way of perceiving things, or his or
her contextual need of a more granular description of the works.
In any case the existence of a critical edition (i.e. an edition with is based on
a critical study of the witnesses and also provides the users with the main vari-
ant readings found in the manuscripts) is very useful, and even more useful if it

||
21 For a discussion of this problematic question, see Sharpe 2003, in particular 50–57; see
examples on pp. 176–183.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 379

can be searched electronically. In some cases, however, the edition itself can
make identifying a text somewhat more difficult, for example if the text of a
work from antiquity is presented in a form reconstructed by the editors and not
in the way it circulated in medieval manuscripts. If the recognition of the actual
shape and boundaries of a work in a given manuscript or set of manuscripts is
based solely on its edited form, and neither the history of its tradition nor its
physical setting are taken into consideration, the analyst risks applying textual
divisions which do not belong to the manuscript but are dictated by a certain
philological conception of the text.

2.3 The internal structure of the UniConts

Our definition of a UniCont is still insufficient to account for all concrete cases.
Let us consider for example a codex or part of a codex with the following
content segmented into ElConts:

Table 1: Example of a series of consecutive BlocConts.

Decoration
Initial Heading/Title
Plain text of the work = Witness
Amen
Ending Heading/Title
Colophon
Decoration

Let us detail the example of the headings/titles.

Are initial or ending headings/titles part of the witness or not? As often,
there are several ways to analyse the situation.
In traditional manuscript catalogues the headings are often left unmen-
tioned or are normalised as standard titles for identification purposes. In any
cases the cataloguers do not consider them as distinct pieces of content.
In more modern catalogues headings are usually described together with
the main text and are often treated no differently from incipits. They are again
considered part of the same ensemble as the main text.
In a traditional philological approach the headings as read in the manu-
scripts are mostly considered not original to the work’s production (or revision),
380 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

even though many works were first put into circulation by the author (or the
revisers) with a heading.
In paratext studies the title is typically kept distinct from the main text, ei-
ther as an ‘authorial paratext’, or as a ‘traditional paratext’ if it was modified
and/or imposed by the tradition.
In both last cases the headings are considered accompanying texts and thus
distinct from the plain text, no matter if they were made by the author or added
at a later stage. As such, they can be considered autonomous BlocConts.
But are the headings part of the UniCont?
Headings are a rather constant feature in manuscripts (except in the case of
mutilated manuscripts or in other special situations) and they may appear in a
great variety of forms and show a rich concentration of variant readings. But
there are also cases where the heading becomes integrated with the beginning
of the main text in a single sentence, or at the end in the form of a tail piece. In
the most usual situations, headings not only belong to the devices marking the
boundaries between two texts and may aid in differentiating the two corre-
sponding UniConts. They are also part of the greater ‘package’ to be read or
copied as a whole, which most importantly includes the BlocCont(s), which
each heading is the heading of.
Similar observations could be made about some other kinds of ‘paracon-
tents’, such as the Eusebian apparatus in the margins of the gospel manuscripts:
they are presented as part of the reading ensemble, or ‘copied package’, even
though they are clearly not part of the plain text.
As manuscript historians, we consider as our main reference the manuscript
itself, and the manuscript tradition of a given work is the soundest ground for
the judgment we will make. In the Syntaxe 1 we proposed a number of theoreti-
cal models concerning the UniConts, among which is the ‘Model Cont 2’, which
presents a fictitious codex bearing ‘two or more texts certainly or probably
without any link between them in the content. For example, a codex containing
a book of the Odyssey, an epistle of Paul, and a small orthographic lexicon,
without significant division within these texts’.22 In such a case we concluded
that we had to do with three UniConts. Although we did not state it openly, we
were referring implicitly to copies of works with their usual accompanying ma-
terial, including their headings and text divisions such as subtitles or section
numbers. Seven years later, we still think it is relevant to include these accom-
panying texts in the same UniCont they belong to. What then should we call
them?

||
22 Syntaxe 1, 105–106.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 381

On the one hand, they are BlocConts, and each of them usually matches a
single ElCont. On the other hand, BlocConts such as headings are also
accompanying texts matching the characteristics of paracontents.23 Therefore,
in our model, headings, colophons and decorative elements used as separation
markers may be considered paracontents to the plain text within the same
UniCont.
As a result, a UniCont can also be seen as a structured whole, including a
‘plain content’ and, possibly, a series of paracontents thereto.
But two caveats are needed:
– the paracontents to a plain content are not necessarily all part of the same
UniCont to which the plain content itself belongs;
– the plain content itself can in turn be a paracontent to another plain content
hosted in the same book. For example, in the case of a prologue to the Gos-
pel of Mark, preceded by the prologue’s own title, the title is a paratext to
the plain text of the prologue, and the UniCont containing both of them is
also a paratext to the Gospel of Mark.24

The resulting structure of the Basic Content can be generally modeled as

follows:
– Basic Content: in a codex, a series of UniConts;25
– UniCont: in a codex, a series of BlocConts, grouped following a codicologi-
cal and text historical analysis as well as according to the results of philo-
logical research (if available);
– BlocCont: in a codex, a series of ElConts, closely related by their meaning
and (apparent) common transmission or composition in the codex;
– ElCont: in a codex, a section of the content mechanically defined by visual
devices (or the limits of the codex).

3 UniConts and other types of content

The discussion above refers mainly to recurring textual content. Let us now add
some observations on other types of content.

||
23 See Andrist 2018.
24 Autonomous basic contents, i.e. contents that are not paracontent of any other content,
may also be called core contents.
25 As explained above, ‘series’ always means ‘one or more’. For example here, it covers cases
where a codex is made of a single UniCont.
382 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

3.1 Non-recurring textual contents

Not all UniConts in a manuscript also occur in other manuscripts, either be-
cause there is only one known extant copy of a work, or because they are ‘cir-
cumstantial’ UniConts (such as a colophon or many book epigrams), composed
in direct relation to a specific copy of a work and the production of a specific co-
dex.
In the first case the content’s heading will usually allow the analyst to un-
derstand that he or she is dealing with the copy of a work. The history of texts,
however, gives no clues for establishing whether this is a full copy of the whole
work, or only of a part of it, or perhaps an autograph witness. Two interesting
examples of this difficulties are the texts found in two celebrated papyri: the
geographical treaty by Artemidorus of Ephesus in the so-called papyrus of
Artemidorus,26 and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife;27 the fierce debate about their
authenticity was made possible by the fact that there is only one extant copy of
each in its own UniCont.28
As for the limits of circumstantial contents, they are usually determined by
their meaning. Let us consider some examples.

Marginal notes to the main text. Marginal scribal or readers’ notes are often non-
recurring content, either circumstancial or related to the message of the codex’
pieces of content. How should they be considered in relation to the UniConts,
for example when a scribe or a reader adds occasional and non-continuous
explanations to the main text on different pages of a codex? The analyst has first
to decide if each of these ElConts should also be considered a separate BlocCont
or if they can be regrouped in one or several larger UniConts; then also if the
resulting BlocConts are part of the same UniCont as the text of which they are
paratexts. How they can be best described is another question, which we do not
address here.
However, marginal notes are not necessarily non-recurring content; their
peripheral position does not, for example, exclude their being copies of other
works or part of works. They can also be corrections to the plain text consisting
only of well-known variant readings. In a case like this how can they be ana-

||
26 Among many publications, see Canfora 2007. For another point of view see Gallazzi,
Kramer and Settis 2008.
27 See now Sabar 2020.
28 According to the latest evidence, it is difficult to consider either of them as anything but a
modern forgery.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 383

lysed? On the one hand, they are part of the work. On the other hand, they do
not belong to the main flow of the copy and from the point of view of the layout
they are separate contents.
If the marginal corrections are by the hand of the scribe or of an original re-
viser (that is, someone belonging to the production team and correcting the
manuscript before it was put in circulation), it is difficult not to consider them
as belonging to the main text; they are intrinsic part of what the producers
wanted to ‘publish’ and thus do not constitute separate content. Technically,
they are ElConts which can be grouped into the same BlocCont as the text they
correct.
What if they are by a later reader? The analysis, we think, depends also on
the viewing angle: from the point of view of production, the notes are certainly
separate pieces of content, added to the original content, probably from another
source and as part of another project.29 But from the perspective of circulation it
can be argued that the notes and the main text together also make up a
UniCont, though this differs (perhaps not by much) from the original one; the
users of the resulting unit have to do with something (more or less) different
from what the readers of the original book had.
What if these notes are not just text corrections but variant readings com-
bined with editorial remarks, such as ‘in other manuscripts one reads…’? This is
clearly another type of (non-recurring) content, which is also a paracontent,
since it is closely related to (and even depends on) the main content. If – as in
the previous example – they can be attributed to the original production team,
they also clearly belong to the same UniCont as the text they refer to but not to
the same BlocCont.
Marginalia that have no direct link with the plain text are clearly separate
contents.

Colophons. Readers usually have little doubt about the boundaries of a colo-
phon, because of its meaning and layout: it usually immediately follows the
plain text, from which it is often separated through a simple device (such as an
extra space or a decorative line) and distinguished by a different layout, script
and/or ink; moreover, there is often no other portion of the text after it. The
colophon is therefore clearly another BlocCont. But is it also another UniCont?
There are several ways to approach the question. One possibility would be
always to consider colophons as separate UniConts, because the nature of their

||
29 Loosely understood as the result of any conscious or unconscious motivation to write some-
thing.
384 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

message is different from the main contents of the codex, and, as a result, they
are distinct secondary contents. Another solution would make the analysis
depend on the situation: if, for example, the codex contains several pieces of
basic context and the final colophon applies to all of them, it will be considered
paratext to all of them or, alternatively, to the whole book, and will thus have to
be analysed as a distinct UniConts.30 But if the book contains only one piece of
basic content, or several pieces but the colophon applies only to one of them, or
if the colophon was accidentally copied from the antigraph, then it might be
considered a part of a single ‘package’ and analysed as being part of the same
UniCont; it would also be a paratext of the basic content it applies to.

3.2 Complex contents

Up to this point we have dealt almost exclusively with manuscripts whose only
contents are texts. Such manuscripts exist, but many others also (or even exclu-
sively) contain other types of content, such as images or pieces of music, and
often content types are mixed. How can UniConts be analysed in such situa-
tions?31

Textual contents with images. There are copies of ancient or mediaeval works
accompanied by images or drawings illustrating the plain text. Independent
from the question of whether the images originally accompanied the work, they
are clearly paracontents to the plain text. No matter if they are a late reproduc-
tion of the original work or were created by the scribe or an artist working with
him, they are also part of the same UniCont. Such is the case with most of the
evangelist portraits in tetraevangelia, as in the below-presented example of
Genavensis gr. 19.32 In some instances one can even argue that two different
(sets of) copies of a work, the one with an image-paracontent and the other one
without it, represent different manuscript traditions of the same work.
In complex cases the images might also receive captions (i.e. small texts
within the image itself) which describe or explain some elements of it; these are

||
30 For colophons as paratexts, see Andrist 2018, 142-143.
31 The following pages contain a theoretical discussion of frequent cases, for which the read-
ers will easily find examples drawn from their own personal experience of manuscripts.
32 Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, gr. 19 (diktyon 17169; GA 75); see Pinakes (<https://pinakes.
irht.cnrs.fr/notices/cote/17169/>). See also Andrist 2008, including the collation of the quires
and the reconstruction of their original sequence.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 385

pieces of paracontent within a piece of paracontent but they are most probably
to be interpreted as part of the same BlocCont.

Works with a ‘visual layout’. In some cases, such as the Liber de laudibus Sanctae
Crucis by Rabanus Maurus or the visual poems by Theodore Prodromus, the
images arise from a particular arrangement of some of the letters composing the
text.33 In these and similar cases the image is not a separate content and there
are no reasons to define a new UniCont. However, since it is difficult to speak of
the layout in terms of content, one can say that the layout has a semantic
significance.

Isolated images. It may happen that images are painted as a frontispiece to the
whole book, for example in the Dioscorides of Vienna,34 some deluxe editions of
the gospels, or in the Basel edition of Elias of Crete’s Commentaries on Gregory
Nazianzen. In this last example these images, which are an original composition
and cannot be considered copies or recreations of other images, cannot be de-
scribed in terms of the dynamics between a work and its copies.35 As far as an art
historian can tell, they are clearly paracontent to the whole of what is copied in
the book or, alternatively, to the whole book. They must be therefore considered
distinct UniConts. If several images are painted with the same purpose within
the same project, and they are placed in the codex one after the other, we might
ask ourselves whether there are as many UniConts as there are images or wheth-
er all of them as a group should count as one: we incline towards considering
them all together as a single UniCont.

Pieces of music. Liturgical manuscripts with systematic musical notation are

also examples of works mixing textual and non-textual elements. In this case it
is not possible to separate the notation from the text, nor can the one be always
clearly considered paracontent to the other. They are also, together, part of the
same UniCont.

Syllogai and collections of excerpta. Complex content can also occur in the case
of textual works, for example the sylloge, i.e. a series of more or less small works

||
33 See Hörandner 1990.
34 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, med. gr. 1 (diktyon 71026); see Pinakes
(<https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/backend/cotes/edit/id/71026/>).
35 Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, A.N. I. 8 (diktyon 8896); see Pinakes (<https://pinakes.irht.
cnrs.fr/notices/cote/8896/>). See also Krause 2018 and now Macé and Andrist 2020.
386 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

(or part of works) which tend to be copied together in more or less the same
order.36 One can argue that they can be considered together as a copy of a single
work. Should they be analysed as one UniCont? On the one hand, in those situa-
tion where they were originally independent works one is inclined to consider
them distinct UniConts. On the other hand however, there might be traditions in
which the scribes (and their readers) clearly perceive them as constituting a
witness to a single work. Both the sylloge’s textual tradition (i.e. whether other
witnesses of it exist or not) and the visual devices used to separate the UniConts
in the codex usually help one understand what the scribes’ and the readers
perception was and to decide if the sylloge should be considered a single
UniCont, or not. This can also be the case with collections of excerpta. The
smaller the excerpta, the higher the chances that they would be best perceived
as parts of a single UniCont.

Chains. As a final example, we wish to touch upon the question of chains, or

catenae – a form of systematic biblical commentary made up of ‘chained’ ex-
cerpts of earlier commentators –, whatever their layout may be.37 Should the
whole set of scholia and the biblical text be analysed as two (or more) works? Or
is it more relevant to consider all of them together as a single complex work,
which thus includes several previous works or parts of works? In any case, are
the scholia paratexts to the plain text of the Bible? Or are the scholia the plain
text, and the biblical text a necessary series of quotations, such as many com-
mentators cite when expounding? Or does the page layout decide which one is
the plain text?
Independent of the answer, in a codex bearing, for example, a chain to the
Pauline Epistles, how many UniConts are there a priori? One, because the chain
was created in a single undertaking? Or fourteen, one per epistle? Again the
answer depends on several factors: in part upon the visual devices at the places
of transition between the recognised BlocConts; in part also upon the answer to
the question above of how many works are considered to be in the book; but
also upon the new question if, in special situations such as a complex work, a
UniCont can cover only a portion of the works content, rather than the whole
work as a minimum extent.

||
36 On the sylloge (from a codicological point of view), see Maniaci 2004, 82–86, with related
bibliography.
37 For a recent point of entry into a complex literature, see Lorrain 2020. For an introduction
to the issue see Maniaci 2002.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 387

The paragraphs above do not take into consideration all the situations encoun-
tered in codices, and certainly leave many questions open, that we hope to ad-
dress at a further stage in our thinking.

4 UniConts and the structure of the basic content

Now that we have presented what a UniCont is and how to recognise it, let us
broaden the perspective and inquire into its relation to the other types of con-
tent in the codex and to the basic content’s structure. Again, in this section we
leave aside questions tied to a book’s evolution, be they mutilations, restora-
tions, the addition of contents, etc.

4.1 UniConts and the contents of a codex

We first return to the various types of contents in a codex. How do UniConts fit
into this picture?
In the Syntax 2 we define a book as ‘a transportable object, made to last,
created or used to receive, share, and transmit content in an orderly and imme-
diately readable manner’. According to this definition a book was conceived in
order to host content. The specific content that the book was conceived to host
is its ‘main content’, for example a corpus of imperial laws or a series of songs to
be sung during a church office. But the main content never comes bare:
– as we have seen, it is always accompanied by (sometimes numerous) para-
contents; and
– in some cases the book producers also add ‘secondary contents’, such as
copies of other works, or circumstantial contents which are not central to
the project.38

Based on the explanation above, we can summarise the various types of content
in a codex in the following table:39

||
38 Analytically, the main content and, if extent, the secondary content are made of a series of
autonomous core contents accompanied by their paracontents. Ultimately, all of these para-
contents depend on a core content, directly or indirectly. On core content, see above footnote 24.
39 For the sake of making this chart comparable with that presented at a conference in Oslo in
2014 (see Andrist 2018, 147), categories B and C, concerning the transformation of the codex,
are also mentioned. Two significant differences between the two charts have to do with the
388 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

Table 2: Summary of the various types of content in a codex.

A. Book-producer’s content
1. Basic content
a. Main content
b. Secondary content
2. Functional content
3. Ancillary content
a. Side-content
b. Contents on re-used material

B. Post-production content

C. Re-made book content

Paracontent is not included here, since it appears at every level as dependent

content within each of the types listed. As mentioned above, they do belong to
the same content type or sub-type as the plain content they depend on.
UniConts also can operate at every level of the basic content; they are
primarily relevant to understanding the structure of each of these levels.

4.2 UniConts, perimeters and a codex’s paratextual structures

Having presented a book production’s main contents, we can now inquire as to
how the paracontents (mainly paratexts) help give structure to the codex’s main
content, and how they relate to UniConts. To illustrate these points let us con-
sider the simple case of the tetraevangelium Genavensis gr. 19. The following
table summarises the main content of the first half of the codex; the lines sepa-
rate what we would describe as distinct UniConts:

||
integration of the functional contents into the classification and the systematic subordination of
paracontents to the independent contents they are attached to.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 389

Table 3: Content of the first half of Genavensis gr. 19.

fols 5 r–6v40 Introduction to Matthew

polychrome decoration line
golden title of the introduction
introduction to Matthew (in black)
empty space (4 lines)
fols 6 r–7v Capitula for Matthew
polychrome decoration line
golden title to the capitula
68 capitula (in red)
empty space (3 lines)
fols 8 r–13v Letter to Carpian and Eusebian canons
polychrome decoration line
golden title of the epistle
Epistula ad Carpianum (in red)
empty half-line
additio to the epistle (in red; small marginal initial);
8 pages with the illuminated canons
fols 14 r–15r empty
v r
fols 15 –148 Gospel of Matthew
(full page) portrait of Matthew
(half page) painting representing the nativity with the
ancestors of Jesus in the margins
golden title of the gospel
Gospel of Matthew (in black) with usual paracontents
empty space at the end (11 lines)
fols 148v–149v Capitula for Mark
simple decoration line (in red)
title of the capitula (in red)
48 capitula (in red)
empty space (6 lines)
fol. 150rv Introduction to Mark
simple decoration line (in red)
title of the introduction (in red)
introduction to Mark (in black)
empty space (2 lines)
fol. 151r empty

||
40 Fols 1–4 are anterior flyleaves.
390 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

Table 3 (continued).

fols 151v–232r Gospel of Mark

(full page) portrait of Mark
(half page) painting representing the baptism of Jesus
golden title of the gospel
Gospel of Mark (in black), with the usual paracontents
(no empty space)
etc.

Two introductory pieces to Matthew, placed in first position, are separated from
the gospel they introduce by the Eusebian material, because of a misplacement
of the folios during a restoration. This might seem strange at first sight, but is in
fact quite common.
The introduction and capitula to Matthew are clearly presented as distinct
UniConts, each of them beginning on a new page, with equally important titles
and some empty space at the end.
Recent research has confirmed that the Eusebian canons and the Letter to
Carpian, which introduces them, are two parts of the same work.41 Should they
then be counted as making up a single UniCont which includes two (or more)
BlocConts? Or, if one accepts the idea presented above, that the copy of a com-
plex work can be analysed as more than one UniCont, can one consider there
are two UniConts here? We leave the question open, and present the two texts
(tendentially) as one UniCont in Table 3 above, but (clearly) as two UniConts in
Table 4 below.
There is instead no doubt that the portrait and the paintings at the begin-
ning of Matthew’s Gospel (fols 15v–16r) were conceived as a grandiose opening
to it.
Overall the placement of the paracontents to Mark is similar to that adopted
for the first gospel, except that the capitula and introduction, whose relative
position has been swaped, are not separated from the gospel itself. This
separation however is an accident, and there is no reasons to treat both sets of
paratexts differently. The empty page which separates them from the opening of
the gospel stresses their less important but distinct position as introductory
paracontents to Mark.

||
41 Wallraff 2021.
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 391

Paratextual ‘perimeters’. The example of Genavensis gr. 19 illustrates an im-

portant aspect of paratexts. In this codex, as in many others, a specific structure
of the content is immediately recognisable: each biblical book and its set of
accompanying paracontents constitute a certain coherent whole. This ensemble
can be called the ‘perimeter’ of this biblical book.42 For example, here the pe-
rimeter of Mark runs from fol. 148v to fol. 232r and includes three UniConts:
– 1) the one centred on Mark (which is a main content of the book), including
its paracontents,43
– 2 and 3) the two other UniConts – the Capitula and the introduction –,
which are also paracontents of Mark.44

Since the grouping of the contents related to Mark is directly linked to a single
main content, we define it as a ‘simple perimeter’, which is distinct from other
simple perimeters (to the other gospels) contained in the same codex.
But wider perimeters can often also be recognised in a codex, including
several simple perimeters where the paracontents depend on several autono-
mous main contents and thus form a larger whole with them. These are then
referred to as ‘complex perimeters’, which may include other complex perime-
ters or even the whole book. For example, here the Letter to Carpian and the
Canon Tables form, together with the four simple perimeters of the Gospels, a
complex perimeter encompassing all of the codex’s original basic contents.45
The original relation between the perimeters, the UniConts and one possible
interpretation of the related BlocConts is summarised in the following Table 4.
This very common example shows how the UniConts operate first of all as a
mean for grouping a series of paracontents around another component of basic
content. Second, they bring some structure to the the main basic contents. And
thirdly, they help understand and communicate how the scribes understood the
codex’s structure and its content.

||
42 Of course, paratexts can also have their own perimeters.
43 These could be called ‘intra-UniCont paracontents’, forming an ‘elementary simple perime-
ter’ with Mark.
44 These could be called ‘extra-UniCont paracontents’, making up an ‘extended simple perim-
eter’ to Mark.
45 For more explanations and another example, see Andrist 2020, 12–14.
392 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

Table 4: Structure of the content in the first half of Genavensis gr. 19.

Perimeters UniConts BlocConts

complex simple (folios) (folios)
r v
8 –9 8r inc. golden title (following a polychrome decoration line)
Eusebiana
8r–9v inc. Letter to Carpian (in red)
9v des. additio to the letter
r v
10 –13 Eusebian canons – 8 pages with the illuminated
canons
? 14rv (empty)

5r–v 5r inc. golden title (following a polychrome decoration line)

Matthew 5r–v Introduction to Matthew (in black) – empty space
at the end, 4 lines
6r–7v 6r inc. golden title (following a polychrome decoration line)
6r–7v Capitula of Matthew (in red) – empty space at the
end, 3 lines
15r (empty)

15v–148r 15v full-page portrait of Matthew

r
16 inc. painting representing the nativity with the
ancestors of Jesus in the margins
16 r med. golden titel (in enlarged script)
r
16 des.– Gospel of Matthew (in black), with usual
148r paracontents – empty space at the end, 11 lines
148v– 148v inc. title (in red, following a simple red decoration line)
Mark 149v 148v–149v Capitula of Mark (in red) – empty space at the
end, 6 lines
150rv 150r inc. title (in red, following a simple red decoration line)
150rv Introduction to Mark (in black) – empty space at
the end, 2 lines
151r (empty)
v v
151 – 151 full-page portrait of Mark
232r
152r inc. painting representing the baptism of Jesus

152r med. golden titel (in enlarged script)

152r des.– Gospel of Mark (in black), with usual paracontents

232r
 The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach | 393

5 Conclusion
As readers will have noticed, the pages above do not arrive at a final answer to
the central issue of the content in a codex, but rather offer the first fruits of an
ongoing theoretical work and share a series of ideas and thoughts on the
UniConts, the BlocConts, the work’s copies, the paracontents and their related
perimeters, and on the other types of contents. They raise some questions and
pass by others, for example the ‘geography’ of the various contents and the
limits of paratextuality. We hope the readers will help us to better define and
further develop our reflection on this central topic for the understanding of the
production and subsequent history of the codex.

References
Andrist, Patrick (2008), ‘Particularités de la couture en deux blocs du Genavensis grec 19’, in
Basile Atsalos and Niki Tsironi (eds), Actes du VIe Colloque International de Paléographie
Grecque (Drama, 21–27 septembre 2003) (Biblioamphiastîs-Parartîma, 1), 3 vols, Athens:
Ἑλληνικὴ Ἑταιρεία Βιβλιοδεσίας, 427–443 (text), 1137–1145 (plates).
Andrist, Patrick (2016), Les codex grecs adversus Iudaeos conservés à la Bibliothèque Vaticane
(s. xi–xvi). Essai méthodologique pour une étude des livres manuscrits thématiques (Studi
e Testi, 502), Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
Andrist, Patrick (2018), ‘Toward a definition of paratexts and paratextuality: the case of ancient
Greek manuscripts’, in Liv Ingeborg Lied and Marilena Maniaci (eds), Bible as Notepad.
Tracing Annotations and Annotation Practices (Manuscripta Biblica, 3), Berlin: De Gruyter,
130–149.
Andrist, Patrick (2020), ‘Au croisement des contenus et de la matière : l’architecture des sept
pandectes bibliques grecques du premier millénaire. Étude comparative sur les structures
des contenus et de la matérialité des codex Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi
rescriptus, Basilianus, ‘Pariathonensis’ et de la Biblia Leonis’, Scrineum, 17: 5–106
[online: <https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/scrineum/article/view/11466>
(accessed on 23 March 2021)].
Andrist, Patrick, Paul Canart and Marilena Maniaci (2013), La syntaxe du codex. Essai de codi-
cologie structurale (Bibliologia, 34), Turnhout: Brepols.
Canfora, Luciano (2007), The true history of the so-called Artemidorus papyrus, Bari: Edizioni di
Pagina.
Ciotti, Giovanni, Michael Kohs, Eva Wilden, Hanna Wimmer and the TNT working group (2018),
Definition of Paracontent (Occasional Paper, 6), Hamburg: Centre for the Study of Manuscript
Cultures [online: <http://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-hamburg.de/papers_e.html>
(accessed on 23 March 2021)].
Gallazzi, Claudio, Bärbel Kramer and Salvatore Settis (2008), Il papiro di Artemidoro:
(P.Artemid.), 2 vols, Milan: Edizioni Dedalo.
394 | Patrick Andrist, Marilena Maniaci

Hörandner, Wolfram (1990), ‘Visuelle Poesie in Byzanz. Versuch einer Bestandesaufnahme’,

Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 40: 1–42.
Jongkind, Dirk (2007), Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus (Text and Studies, 5), Piscataway, NJ:
Gorgias.
Krause, Karin (2018), ‘Celebrating Orthodoxy: Miniatures for Gregory the Theologian’s ‘Unread’
Orations (Ms. Basiliensis AN I 8)’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 68: 133–155.
Lorrain, Agnès (2020), ‘Autour du Vaticanus gr. 762 : notes pour l’étude des chaînes à présen-
tation alternante’, Byzantion, 90: 67–95.
Macé, Caroline and Patrick Andrist (2020), ‘Understanding the Genesis of a Multi-Layered
Byzantine Manuscript. The Illuminated Copy of Elias of Crete’s Commentary on Gregory
Nazianzen (Basel, UB, AN I 8)’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 70: 289–304.
Maniaci, Marilena (2002), ‘“La serva padrona”. Interazioni fra testo e glossa sulla pagina del
manoscritto’, in Vincenzo Fera, Giacomo Ferraù and Silvia Rizzo (eds), Talking to the Text.
Marginalia from Papyri to Print. Proceedings of a Conference held at Erice, 26 September
– 3 October 1998, as the 12th Course of International School for the Study of Written
Records (Percorsi dei classici), 2 vols, Messina: Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi
Umanistici.
Maniaci, Marilena (2004), ‘Il codice greco “non unitario”. Tipologia e terminologia’, in Edoardo
Crisci and Oronzo Pecere (eds), Il codice miscellaneo, tipologia e funzioni. Atti del
convegno internazionale (Cassino, 14–17 maggio 2003) (Segno e testo, 2), Cassino:
Università degli studi di Cassino, 75–107.
Munnich, Olivier, Detlef Fraenkel and Joseph Ziegler (1999), Susanna, Daniel, Bel et Draco,
editio secunda (Septuaginta. Vetus Testamentum Graecum, 16.2), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht [first edn by Joseph Ziegler, ibidem, 1952].
Parker, David (2010), Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the World’s Oldest Bible, London: British
Library.
Sabar, Ariel (2020), Veritas: A Harvard Professor, A Con Man and The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,
New York: Anchor, 2020.
Sharpe, Richard (2003), Titulus: Identifying Medieval Texts: An Evidence-Based Approach,
Turnhout, Brepols.
Wallraff, Martin (forthcoming 2021), Die Kanontafeln des Euseb von Kaisareia. The Canon
Tabels of Eusebius of Caesarea. Critical Edition and Analysis. Untersuchung und kritische
Edition (Manuscripta Biblica, 1), Berlin: De Gruyter.
Malachi Beit-Arié
The Advantages of Comparative Codicology:
Further Examples
Abstract: The sharing of basic anatomy, techniques and scribal practices of
codex production that embodied in manuscripts produced in all the codex civi-
lisations warrants implementing a comparative perspective in our research and
in determining the codicological typology of each of the script cultures of the
codex. Yet, comparative codicology does not have to be confined to the codex
cultures and should attempt to unveil affinities to the production of non-codex
manuscripts, as one sample demonstrates. Comparative codicology should
indeed be expanded and be universal.

1 Introduction
Some thirty years ago, I published a short article devoted to the benefits of com-
parative codicology to scholarship and research.1 My findings were based on the
observation that practices of book production were imprinted by a shared tradi-
tion ingrained in all cultures in which the codex served as a receptacle for texts
and a means for their preservation and dissemination, regardless of the variety
of languages and scripts. One may marvel at the force of the regularity and con-
tinuity revealed in the basic structures, production techniques, social, artisanal
and intellectual functions, and the aesthetic principles embodied in mid- and
late medieval codices throughout book civilisations in all cultures. Be they codi-
ces inscribed in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Persian or Hebrew scripts, or in the less
widespread Syriac, Coptic, Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts – they all partake of the
very same anatomy of the codex: common writing materials, similar proportions
and formats, the analogous molecular structure of quiring achieved by the fold-
ing and stitching together of a regular number of bifolia, and the use of various
means of markings in the margins ensuring the correct order of quires and bifo-
lia. The great majority of these codices would be set for copying by the laying
out of the writing surface and by its ruling in a variety of techniques, most of
them shared, functioning as a scaffold for the writing. All made use of

||
1 Beit-Arié 1993b. See now Beit-Arié 2020.

Open Access. © 2021 Malachi Beit-Arié, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-020
396 | Malachi Beit-Arié

additional para-scriptural and peri-textual graphic means for improving the

readability of the copied text and for achieving its transparent hierarchy. Some
would include illustrations, ornamentation and illuminations in the margins or
within the body of the copied text. Although the manifestations of this common
infrastructure underwent changes over time, as for example the composition of
quires, the ruling techniques, and the text’s disposition on the page, this struc-
ture also displayed, throughout its permutations, a stability and continuity
which lasted close to a millennium, allowing us to regard it as some kind of
universal grammar that permeated, in some elusive ways, all codex civilisa-
tions. Furthermore, its imprint can still be recognised even after the invention of
the mechanical printing press, which, notwithstanding its revolutionary nature,
still embodies patterns inherited from the deep structure of the manually pro-
duced codex. In truth, the basic book form survived very much into our own
times, despite the paradoxical resurrection of the form of the vertical scroll – the
rotulus – on computer displays.
The existence of a common basic tradition of codex production warrants,
therefore, that we integrate a comparative perspective and rely on it in our re-
search and in determining the codicological typology of each of the script cul-
tures, calling even for the establishment of a general comparative codicology.
All the more crucial is the reliance on a comparative perspective in the study of
Hebrew manuscripts and in establishing their historical typology.2 This need is
an outcome of the wide dispersal of Hebrew manuscript production in the zones
of the codex civilisations around the Mediterranean and in adjacent regions to
its north and east.3

||
2 The indispensability of the comparative approach and the rewards of implementing it were
first emphasised in Beit-Arié 1981. This emphasis is reflected also in the subtitle of Beit-Arié
1993a (Towards a Comparative Codicology) and presented there pp. 99–103. There I remarked
that Hebrew manuscripts, by bridging between East and West and between Islam and Chris-
tianity, may serve as a productive medium for comparative research. Indeed, in recent years
awareness of the importance of the comparative aspects of bookcraft has been spreading with-
in European codicology as well. This is evident in the collection published in 1998 (Hoffmann
1998), which brought together articles presenting data on the material characteristics of Latin,
Greek, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, and Armenian manuscripts.
3 No doubt, this dispersal and concomitant distribution of script types of the Hebrew codex
render the comparisons between Hebrew bookcraft and design and those of the host societies
of vital importance for the understanding of the unique typology of the Hebrew book in each of
its different diasporas, and for the identification of its sources of inspiration and affinities.
Indeed, despite the shared script and, in most copied and designed books, the shared use of
the Hebrew alphabet, and despite the strong religious cohesion and social solidarity, the affini-
ty of Hebrew codices with one another is often lesser than that which existed with non-Hebrew
 The Advantages of Comparative Codicology | 397

In my 1993 article, I included a few illustrations demonstrating the ad-

vantage of using comparative codicology in our research. I argue that the com-
parative method contributes not only to the study of one given manuscript
culture but should also infer upon the collated cultures. The said article cites as
an example what could be an explanation for the long delayed adoption of
plummet ruling by Hebrew scribes in North-Western Europe (particularly in
Franco-German lands), which also required a shift in the ruling technique. The
unexplained belated adoption of the coloured metallic instrument that replaced
the economical blind relief ruling by hard point (which prevailed in all the
codex civilisations until the late eleventh century) has been elucidated once a
comparative search was applied. It could have hardly been a coincidence that
the shift to plummet by Latin copyists overlapped with the early stage of devel-
opment of the layout of the glossed Bibles from the early twelfth century. Were
literary requirements of Hebrew texts similar?
Indeed, a quantitative decline of original Hebrew literary creation during
the thirteenth century, coinciding with a proliferation of the anthological genre
– namely, annotated texts embedded with glosses, which peaked at the end of
the century – required an adjustment of the ruling technique. From the second
half of the thirteenth century onwards, especially in Germany and Northern
France, the Hebrew book scene saw the evolution of several textual genres (es-
pecially commented biblical and halakhic [legal] codices) of complex structure,
which integrated, merged, or linked multiple layers of texts, or combined a core
text with commentaries, annotations, and glosses. A uniform delineation and
regular ruling patterns were unsuited to the scribe’s (and author’s) attempt to
achieve structural transparency for the entirety of the copied texts through vis-
ual and graphic means. To reflect the layers’ relations one to another and espe-
cially to the core text, these texts would deploy several modes of script of

||
codices produced by host societies. Spain (and after the Christian reconquista also Christian
Spain) and North Africa were greatly affected by Arabic calligraphy but less so by Arabic book-
making; on the other hand, the codicological features, design and scripts of Hebrew manu-
scripts produced in France and Germany were definitely marked by Latin manuscripts pro-
duced in their respective environments, yet this was less so in Hebrew manuscripts produced
in Italy until the fifteenth century, Beit-Arié 2002, 377–396.
Employing a comparative perspective in these regards may enable us not only to deepen our
understanding of transformations in the practices of bookmaking in the various zones, but also
help elucidate an issue much debated by historians, who diverge in their assessments as to the
degree of acculturation and integration of the environment’s ways and customs by the Jewish
society, or the degree of reclusion of these persecuted and rejected minorities, which were yet
embedded within gentile societies.
398 | Malachi Beit-Arié

different sizes and densities. Such layered copying required frequent adjust-
ments of the ruling pattern. Layered and glossed texts thus pertain to the prac-
tice of dynamic copying, as their layout would be redesigned for each page. As
the structures and layouts of the commentated biblical texts and of the wide-
spread halakhic corpora necessitated a flexible and dynamic form of ruling, they
prompted the adoption of the plummet, which had been avoided by Hebrew
scribes during a long period. My arguments that practices of book production
are imprinted by a shared tradition in all cultures were confined to cultures
whose book form was the codex. It had not occurred to me that some codicolog-
ical practices can be traced in non-codex manuscripts as well. I would therefore
add another two demonstrations in the comparative study of manuscripts, one
of them pertaining to a codicological practice shared by Oriental and Occidental
codices, while the other relates to a Chinese bamboo manuscript and its affinity
to Oriental and Occidental codicological practices.

2 Positioning of parchment bifolia in quiring

Quires made of parchment with distinguishable sides were structured and or-
dered methodically and consistently by matching the bifolia sides and the open-
ings of the codex. The conspicuous difference of the texture, or at least the hue,
of the parchment sides led to a wide acceptance of the practice in all civilisa-
tions of the codex, at least from the tenth century and on, of arranging the
quire’s bifolia by matching their sides prior to folding: hair side facing hair side
and flesh side facing flesh side. Consequently, we find that the two pages showing
in each quire opening, each belonging to a different bifolium (except for the ones
in the central opening of each quire), are identical in appearance – alternating
hair sides and flesh sides. As a result, one can easily discern if a folio is missing:
for when the matching of the sides is disrupted and an opening displays two
different sides of the parchment facing each other, we may conjecture that a
folio (or an odd number of folios) is lacking.
Astonishingly, this practice, which had been current since the tenth century
or before throughout all zones and all types of bookcraft, was noticed only in
late-nineteenth century. It had been named ‘Gregory’s rule’, after the scholar of
Greek manuscripts who publicized it.4 The guiding principle behind this sym-
metrical arrangement seems to have been aesthetic. However, a parchment

||
4 Gregory 1885, 264–265.
 The Advantages of Comparative Codicology | 399

maker in Rotterdam engaged in the history of parchment making, Henk de

Groot, recently claimed convincingly (as in his email sent to me dated 9 July
2015) that the bifolia leaves were arranged by corresponding sides in view of the
concavity of hair sides and the convexity of flesh sides. Disposing the folios
according to opposite arcs (concavity facing concavity and convexity facing
convexity) neutralizes the curvature and is therefore crucial in the production
of a codex as a tight block, whether closed or open and leafed through. The
aesthetic aspect was, so it seems, an outcome of the codicological requirement.
To quote de Groot’s extraordinary statement:

I think the manuscript makers choose the parchments leaves in opposite bowing to neu-
tralize the bowing of the leaves together. The result: a flat manuscript block. The equal
colour of the openings was a lucky gift of beauty.

( ) ( ) ( ) gives: IIIIII
( ( ( ( ( ( gives: ((((((

It has been argued that this regularity was an outcome of constructing the quire
by means of folding an entire parchment sheet. The scant number of early Latin
codices in which quires were constructed by folding, as well as the quire struc-
ture in some of the earliest Greek and Latin codices showing an odd number of
bifolia dispute this view. The order of the bifolia’s sides in the quire would usu-
ally be marked by the initials representing the flesh or hair side on every recto
side in the first half of the quire, e.g. HFHFH (for a quire made of five bifolia
beginning with the hair side, with the openings alternately matching).
It appears that Gregory’s rule, displayed in every quire of all dated Hebrew
codices, had not been observed in some of the early-undated manuscripts, al-
though they too show a regular arrangement. In Geniza fragments and even in a
few complete codices, all apparently from the region of Iraq, it so happens that
the spread out bifolia were arranged with the hair (or flesh) facing regularly a
uniform direction; in other words, after folding, the sides did not match at each
opening (except for the centre opening). Instead, flesh sides would face hair
sides.5 The assumption that this practice was typical of Babylonian Hebrew
manuscripts (produced in Mesopotamia, ancient Iraq)6 is undermined by the
data concerning this method of arrangement in early Oriental and Occidental
manuscripts inscribed in other scripts – Latin, Syriac, and Arabic.

||
5 HHHHH (in quinions, as practised in the Orient), as in Vatican, BAV, Vat. ebr. 66, the early
Sifra manuscript with Babylonian vocalization, see Glatzer 1995, 19–24.
6 See Glatzer 1995.
400 | Malachi Beit-Arié

The methodical arrangement with non-matching sides is attested also in

Latin Insular manuscripts (produced on the British Isles) from the second half of
the sixth century until around 700 (and later also from the ninth century till the
eleventh); as well as in manuscripts produced in scriptoria on the continent,
especially under the influence of Insular bookcraft.7 Julian Brown maintained
that this quiring practice in early Insular manuscripts (which quiring by
quinions may attest to Oriental influence) was affected by papyrus codices.8
According to Sebastian Brock, Gregory’s Rule had not been maintained in early
Syriac manuscripts produced in both the eastern and western parts of the
Middle East.9 The arrangement of bifolia with non-matching sides, namely in
the HHHHH pattern (as in those Hebrew manuscripts), was the standard ar-
rangement in Syriac manuscripts produced in the scriptoria of Syriac monaster-
ies of both the Eastern Church, known as the Nestorian Church, and the Western
Church, known as the Jacobite or Syriac Orthodox Church.10 Moreover, in a large
sample of fragmented Arabic manuscripts of the Qur’an from the end of the
seventh century through the middle of the tenth century it appears that most of
the bifolia were arranged with non-matching sides (HHHHH).11 Consequently, it
seems that the method of constructing quire bifolia disregarding the matching
of parchment sides was not zone- but time related; moreover, it could well be
that all early codices in all scripts were arranged at first according to this meth-
od, imitating the papyrus codex, and that at some point (which might have been
different for each region or script) bifolia came to be arranged with matching
sides. Babylonian Hebrew scribes might have continued to practice the old

||
7 Vezin 1978, 26–27.
8 Julian Brown refers to the sheets of papyrus that were cut into bifolia, formed by strips taken
from the stem of the reed, and were manufactured in two layers so that the strips of one layer
were perpendicular to those of the second layer and thus they were pressed and forged togeth-
er. When arranging the bifolia that had been cut from papyrus sheets, they would be laid out in
such a manner that in each of the codex’s openings one side displayed horizontal strips of fibre
while the opposite side displayed vertical strips. Brown believes that quiring by non-matching
sides in Insular manuscripts was influenced by the practice found in early Continental and
Oriental manuscripts: as parchment started to be used, scribes who were not practised in the
folding of sheets were likely to create their parchment quires as was done in papyrus codices,
see Brown 1984, 234–235.
9 His view was put forward in an unpublished paper, which I thank him for letting me read:
P.S. Brock, ‘Saba, the Scribe “who never made a blotted tau” – Some Codicological Notes on
Three Syriac Manuscripts from Redsh‛aim, ca. A.D. 724–726’.
10 Briquel-Chatonnet 1988, 158–159.
11 See Déroche 2005, 71–76. Déroche 2005, 83–85, proposes that this practice imitates the
papyrus codex, as Brown had already proposed before him.
 The Advantages of Comparative Codicology | 401

method for some time even after Jewish scribes in other areas had adopted the
new one.

3 Chinese Bamboo Manuscripts

Bamboo (or wood) slips were the main book form for writing manuscripts in pre-
imperial and early imperial China before the widespread introduction of paper
during the CE’s first two centuries.12 The long, narrow strips of bamboo were tied
together and connected by binding strings. The custom of interring books made
of the durable bamboo strips in royal tombs preserved many works in their orig-
inal form for centuries. Large collections of bamboo-slip manuscripts were ex-
cavated and discovered since the early twentieth century.
One of the basic problems facing researchers who deal with early Chinese
bamboo or wood manuscripts is the disintegration of the excavated slips. The
binding strings that had been originally holding together the slips constituting a
manuscript – either vanished or remained as traces only on individual slips. The
problem of reconstruction becomes even more complex if the manuscript in
question was not scientifically excavated. Since 2011, the phenomenon of
carved lines (sometimes drawn in ink or by brush) on the recto side of slips has
been observed and studied, particularly by Thies Staack, a student of Michael
Friedrich, who was a supervisor of his dissertation. Staack surveyed and
clarified the finds of lines on the slips’ verso and emphasised that continual
verso lines were mainly found to have related to the written recto of the original
sequence of the slips. Consequently, the continuous forms of the lines serve as a
fundamental key for the textual reconstruction of the bamboo manuscripts.
Staack extended the application of the European (and Middle Eastern) codico-
logical terminology while dealing and interpreting the function of the verso
lines, borrowing the term ‘codicological unit’ for a sequence of the slips, and
suggesting that the sets of slips in bamboo manuscripts are roughly comparable
to the quire of codex manuscripts.

For the codex-codicologist, the functional similarity of the practice of continu-

ous lines carved on the back side of bamboo slips to the quiring of Western and
Near Eastern codices is indeed striking. Moreover, the Ancient Chinese practice

||
12 The information is completely drawn from the following publications: Staack 2015, 2016
and 2017.
402 | Malachi Beit-Arié

shows affinity to European codicological means meant to ensure the right order
of the bifolia or folios within the quire and marking their sequence after copy-
ing, and all the more so during the copying process. The means employed by
Latin and Jewish copyists to ensure the correct binding of the codex can be clas-
sified into two main groups: methods based on catchwords drawn from the
copied text,13 and methods based on numbering that was added to the text at its
material. Both systems were implemented at the codicological dividing points of
the codex structure – initially only at the transition from one quire to the next,
and eventually also in transitions between bifolia within the quire and even
between the manuscript’s folios, although these are not independent codicolog-
ical units. In all zones of production of Hebrew codices both methods were
used, usually simultaneously in the same manuscript, but in the numbering
methods were extremely rare, and even in Byzantium they were scarcely used.
Generally, the methods used to ensure the order of the codex in paper manu-
scripts were different from those used in parchment manuscripts, except in the
Middle East, where paper replaced parchment as the standard writing material
already in the beginning of the eleventh century. In the other zones, where pa-
per spread only much later, paper was presumably deemed more vulnerable
than parchment and its folios more likely to be separated from their pairing and
to become detached from their quire. For this reason copyists were not satisfied
with only preserving the order of the quires, like most copyists of parchment
manuscripts, but added more means to ensure the order of bifolia and folios.14 It
can hence be inferred that these means spread in those areas in later periods.
Acquaintance with these methods15 has clear typological but also chronological

||
13 An unusual method of using graphic markings instead of catchwords was employed in an
undated fifteenth-century manuscript in an Ashkenazic script (New York, Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, L873). A number of forms were marked at the bottom of each verso page
and were repeated on the following recto pages.
14 This explanation for the proliferation of means of ensuring the order of bifolia in the more
vulnerable paper codices can be contested: without temporary stitches, the order of parchment
bifolium copying could be also easily disrupted during the copying process.
15 The development of means for ensuring the order of the Hebrew codex, until they came to
be implemented on every single folio – even on every single page – was presumably not only
precipitated by the transition to writing on paper but was also (and perhaps primarily) due to
the relatively late development of indexing and inscription of a table of contents in Hebrew
books, and naturally these required a precise marking of text locations. Probably the earliest
evidence for the inscription of a table of contents appears in the prologue of Rabbi Eliezer ben
Natan (one of the early Tosaphists from Germany, deceased 1170) to his work Even haʻezer.
Another important reference is the hierarchical detailing of the names of the chapters (halakhot)
in each book of Maimonides’ Mishne Tora.
 The Advantages of Comparative Codicology | 403

value. The prevalence of each type may help us date a manuscript and to some
degree identify its provenance as well. What’s more: understanding these meth-
ods provides a vital key to uncovering the structure of the quires when invisible,
especially in paper manuscripts, and reconstructing the folios, the bifolia, and
even the missing quires of a codex.
In conclusion, the partaking of functional means for ensuring the continual
order of the copied text in manuscripts is shared not only by different codex
production traditions in areas around the Mediterranean but also by pre-
imperial and early imperial China bamboo slips manuscripts. Comparative codi-
cology must not be confined to the codex civilisations and should attempt to
unveil affinities to the production of non-codex manuscripts. Comparative codi-
cology should indeed be expanded and become universal.

Acknowledgements
It is my honour to participate in a festschrift dedicated to Professor Michael
Friedrich, a pioneering scholar who initiated, established and expanded the
unique Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures. Thanks to his vision and
inventiveness, material manuscript studies are now diffused and manifest in
numerous cultures and countries and the comparative approach has been
boosted.

References
Beit-Arié, Malachi (1981), Hebrew Codicology: Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Em-
ployed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts, Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences
and Humanities [reprint with addenda and corrigenda, first publication Paris: Institut de
Recherches et d’Histoire des Textes, 1977].
Beit-Arié, Malachi (1993a), Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West: Towards a Comparative
Codicology (The Panizzi Lectures, 1992), London: British Library.
Beit-Arié, Malachi (1993b), ‘Why Comparative Codicology?’, Gazette du livre médiéval, 23: 1–5.
Beit-Arié, Malachi (2002), ‘Towards a Comparative Typology of Italian Hebrew and Latin
Codices’, in Francesco Magistrale, Corinna Drago and Paolo Fioretti (eds), Libri,
documenti, epigrafi medievali: Possibilità di studi comparativi. Atti del Convegno
internazionale di studio dell’Associazione Italiana dei Paleografi e Diplomatisti, Bari (2–5
ottobre 2000), Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 377–396.
Beit-Arié, Malachi (2020), ‘Comparative codicology’, in Frank T. Coulson and Robert G. Babcock
(eds), The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography, Oxford : Oxford University Press ,
669–673.
Briquel-Chatonnet, Françoise (1998), ‘Cahiers et signatures dans les manuscrits syriaques.
Remarques sur les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale de France’, in Hoffmann (ed.)
1998, 153–169.
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Brown, Julian (1984), ‘The Oldest Irish Manuscripts and their Late Antique Background’, in
Próinséas Ní Chantháin and Michael Richter (eds), Irland und Europa, die Kirche im
Frühmittelalter / Ireland and Europe: The Early Church, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 311–327
[collected in Janet Bately, Michelle Brown and Jane Roberts (eds), A Palaeographer’s View:
Selected Writings of Julian Brown, London: Harvey Miller, 1993, 221-244].
Déroche, François (2005), in collaboration with Annie Berthier et al., Islamic Codicology: An
Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script [transl. Deke Dusinberre and
David Radzinowicz, ed. Muhammad Isa Waley], London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foun-
dation.
Glatzer, Mordechai (1995), ‘Early Babylonian Hebrew Manuscripts’, Gazette du livre médiéval,
27: 19–24.
Gregory, Gaspar René (1885), ‘Les cahiers des manuscrits grecs’, Comptes rendus des séances
de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 29/3 : 261–268.
Hoffmann, Philippe (ed) (1998), Recherches de codicologie comparée. La composition du codex
au Moyen Âge en Orient et en Occident, Paris: Presses de l’École normale supérieure.
Vezin, Jean (1978), ‘La réalisation matérielle des manuscrits latins pendant le haut Moyen Âge’,
in Albert Gruys and Johan P. Gumbert (eds), Codicologica, 2: Éléments pour une codicolo-
gie comparée, Leiden: Brill, 15–51.
Staack, Thies (2015), ‘Identifying Codicological Sub-units in Bamboo Manuscripts Verso Lines
Revisited’, manuscript cultures, 8: 157–186.
Staack, Thies (2016), ‘Reconstruction of Early Chinese Bamboo and Wood Manuscripts: A
Review (1900–2010)’, <https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/occasional-
papers.html#14662914> (accessed on 2 Feb. 2021).
Staack, Thies (2017), ‘The Neglected “Backyard” of Early Chinese Manuscripts: How an Analy-
sis of the Verso of Bamboo Slips can enable the Reconstruction of a Manuscript Roll’,
<doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00023213>.
Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche
About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan
Bindings
Abstract: The history of Islamic bindings is hampered by the lack of evidence
about the date and place of production of the bindings. The library of the
Saadian sultans of Morocco provides at least some clues about the local produc-
tion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, before the introduction of the plate
stamping that local binders borrowed from Ottoman sources. As the library was
captured by Spain in 1612, many bindings are still in the condition they were in
at that date. This article focuses on manuscripts transcribed in Morocco during
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and intends to define a type of bindings
that seems to have been very successful at that moment.

1 Introduction
The culture of Saadian Morocco is of particular interest as it was a time of
changes. Books were also involved. Their bindings bear witness to the shift in
tastes but also in techniques that started during the sixteenth century. Slightly
later, in the seventeenth century, al-Sufyānī wrote a treatise on bookbinding in
which he described three kinds of bindings produced in Morocco in his time.1
According to Prosper Ricard, who edited this text, these three kinds of bindings
were produced from al-Sufyānī’s days until the nineteenth century. They are the
Oriental type; the ‘Hispano-Moorish’ one and one with an infrequent decora-
tion, used above all in the eighteenth century.2 We can conclude that there were
two clearly different types of binding decorations in Morocco, one being usually
defined as ‘Maghrebi’, with specific aesthetics, its ornamentation being pro-
duced with small tools and gilt and another one which is Oriental, ‘in Persian
style’ according to Ricard, but could be more correctly defined as Ottoman. The
bindings from the last group are decorated with a central mandorla and eventu-
ally also with four corner pieces, these five components being stamped with
plates. This technique, originating in the Eastern part of the Islamic world, was

||
1 Abū al-‘Abbās Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Sufyānī, Ṣinā‘a tasfīr al-kutub wa-ḥill al-dhahab,
ed. Ricard 1925 [1st ed. 1919], and its translation in Levey 1962.
2 Ricard 1933, 110.

Open Access. © 2021 Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche, published by De Gruyter. This work
is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-021
406 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

met with a tremendous success as it allowed for a quick and sophisticated deco-
ration of the binding boards. It also reduced the variations as the same plate
could be used for various bindings and result in almost exactly the same pattern
stamped on each of them, which is not the case with the small tools.
Variations were nevertheless possible with this technique, but they were of
another nature: a contrast between the stamped decoration and the rest of the
board can be obtained by stamping the plate(s) on pieces of leather or paper of
another colour, by extensive gilding and painting, etc. During the Saadian peri-
od, Moroccan binders started to use these new techniques and aesthetics that
were apparently well received by their customers.3 In spite of this success, there
may have been either some local reluctance to import wholesale the Ottoman
fashion or the plates imported from Constantinople may have been too expen-
sive for local craftsmen. Nonetheless, local imitations of the mandorla plates
were soon available, engraved with patterns that do not exactly copy the very
stable Ottoman repertory but reinterpret these compositions.4 In general, the
plates gradually superseded the traditional bindings decorated with small tools
that, in order to produce a specific ornament, had to be stamped many times in
combination.

2 Small tooling in Moroccan bindings in

El Escorial collection
The link between the binding and the manuscript it covers has to be examined
with caution. In the El Escorial collection, many bindings are no longer in their
original condition. In many instances, binders working for the library removed
the decorated leather covering from the old boards that were then discarded
and they pasted it over new boards; in this process, they may have damaged the
edges of the original binding – if they were not already damaged when this
restoration was carried out. It might even be possible that, in this process, the
leather covering of a manuscript was glued on the boards of another one.
However, the rather high number of bindings involved, some of them still very
close to their pristine condition, provides us with a safeguard in our discussion
of these bindings.

||
3 De Castilla 2019.
4 De Castilla 2019, esp. 103–106.
 About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 407

2.1 The corners and the frame

This older tradition of Islamic bindings used small tooling for ornaments that
were either central5 or covering the whole surface of the field.6 The latter version
was first rectangular, but from the twelfth century on,7 binders started to prefer
octagonal fields. Instead of drawing a rectangular frame corresponding with the
shape of the book, they started leaving out small triangles in each of the cor-
ners, either defined by fillets and/or stamps or by stamping a triangular shape
which would eventually develop later into a corner piece (Fig. 1). A number of
bindings in the Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial collection (hereaf-
ter: RBME) attracted our attention because they formally stand apart by the
structure of their decoration from this well-established tradition of Islamic bind-
ings.
Fifty-three examples of this specific frame are kept in the El Escorial collec-
tion.8 Their connection with the Western Islamic world is clear since only five of
these bindings cover a copy written by an Eastern hand.9 The three colophons
containing an indication about the place of copy suggest that they could have
been prepared in Fez.10 The origin of the library itself, in any case, supports the
hypothesis that the bindings are mostly – if not all – Moroccan.
The wide frames of these bindings are drawn by three, sometimes four fil-
lets or groups of fillets almost equally separated from each other by a large
space (Fig. 2a). In order to distinguish their respective positions, we will give
them a number from the inside of the frame to its outside: the fillet surrounding
the field itself will therefore carry the number 1, 2 being attributed to that of the
middle and 3 to the next one that is usually the closest to the edges of the board
and 4 to the last one (when discernible).11

||
5 Weisweiler 1962, 46–57, types 17 to 110 (also Déroche et al. 2005, 294–296 and figs 91–93).
6 Weisweiler 1962, 41–46, types 1 to 16.
7 Weisweiler 1962, fig. 30 (manuscript dated 1197), 37 (dated 1205) and 38 (dated 1099). The
dates are indicative since the relationship between the binding and the block of quires needs to
be assessed.
8 On the binding of RBME 1830 is a frame which is very close to this model, but has only two
fillets; conversely, the frame of RBME 986 has four fillets.
9 Among the bindings that will be discussed below, RBME 658, 1076 (copy dated 1514), 1099
(copy dated 1525), 1211 (copy dated 1479) and 1619 (copy dated 1536).
10 RBME 248, 933 and 996.
11 The outermost fillets may have disappeared during the process of restoration described
below.
408 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

For the reason alluded to above, it is not always completely clear whether
all the components of the frame have been preserved since in the process of
removing the leather from the original board, the fillet closest to the edges may
have been lost. However, a few complete or better preserved bindings show
that, at least in some instances, a fourth fillet running close to the edges was
part of the frame. This is for instance the case of RBME 986 or RBME 1149.
However, the three fillets previously described are a constant component in this
group of bindings, along with triangular interlace ornaments set in each corner
of the board.
In contradistinction to the dominant tradition of octagonal fields, the trian-
gular corner pieces do never encroach on the rectangle drawn by fillet 1 but are
always located in the part of the frame comprised between fillets 1 and 3, the
space they occupy varying slightly (Fig. 2b). For this reason, the field is rectan-
gular. A few more refined bindings additionally include a line of S-shaped tool-
ing surrounding the frame. As for the corner pieces, they are all triangular as
stated previously, but two situations can be defined. In one case, the triangular
piece of interlace is not in contact with the rectangle defining the field and
drawn by fillet 1. It is therefore inserted between fillets 2 and 3. In the second
type of corner piece, on the other hand, the interlace is in contact with fillet 1 at
the angle. In the majority of cases, it is comprised between the two external
fillets (that is to say 1 and 3), but there are exceptions where the triangular piece
of interlace is found between fillets 1 and 2. An additional decoration is some-
times associated with the corner piece: a tool has been stamped in the corner,
either within the field or in a small square drawn by the extension of fillet 1 until
it reached fillet 2.

2.2 The central ornament

The decoration of the central ornaments is highly coherent. They are constituted
by an interlace pattern which can take various forms: circles, squares standing
on the tip as well as various shapes related to the aforementioned ones. These
compositions are also found in association with other types of frames on the
bindings of the collection. As a first step in the study of this bookbinding tra-
dition, we shall focus here on the bindings with the type of frame described pre-
viously when it is associated with ornaments related to a square on its
tip/diamond, leaving therefore aside the bindings with a circular central deco-
ration.
Among the thirty-nine items that we shall discuss now, we shall concen-
trate on twenty-four bindings that are associated with manuscripts dated from
 About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 409

1198 to 1579, four of them being written in an Oriental script. Ten items are
dated to the sixteenth century, but it should be noted that eight of them predate
the middle of that century.12 The most recent item is dated 1579 and seems to be
the original binding of the manuscript.13 Six copies were produced in the fif-
teenth, five in the fourteenth, two in the thirteenth and one in the twelfth
century.
The interlace is actually a very old component of the binding decorations
since it appears on Qur’anic bindings of the ninth century, with a characteristic
decoration of ‘caterpillar’.14 With the passing of time, the tools used to stamp
this decoration have evolved. In the earliest examples, a tool with two or four
teeth was used to produce the pattern little by little by stamping the tool repeat-
edly, the interlace effect being enhanced by the impression of fillets on both
sides of the sequence of impressions.15 Later, the size of components of the inter-
lace pattern was reduced and smaller tools were required: the binders usually
combine two tools when stamping this kind of composition, a segment and a
quarter of circle with two fillets framing a series of short dashes – either per-
pendicular to the fillets or oblique.16 In this way, they were able to complete the
compositions more quickly (Fig. 2b). All the Moroccan binders who prepared the
bindings under examination used both tools. As it is generally the case in the
Muslim world in Medieval times, they had only a limited toolkit at hand: besides
the two interlace tools already mentioned, the examination of the bindings
under discussion shows that they employed between one and three additional
tools for the bindings of this group, essentially punches and less frequently
rosettes or rosette-like and palmette-shaped tools. On three bindings only, other
shapes do appear.

2.2.1 Type A

A first type of central ornaments stamped on the bindings (Type A) is a square

standing on its tip (Fig. 3a). The loops of the interlace delimit spaces where the
binder eventually stamped larger circular tools like rosettes or related shapes.

||
12 Seven manuscripts from the first half of the sixteenth century, two (RBME 964 and 1077)
from its second half.
13 RBME 1077.
14 Marçais and Poinssot 1948; Déroche 1986; Dreibholz 1997.
15 Marçais and Poinssot 1948, 322–324 and fig. 54; Dreibholz 1997, 17.
16 An exception with parallel fillets engraved on the segment appears on the binding
RBME 760 (a copy dated 1198).
410 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

These spaces are located on the vertical and horizontal axes: at their intersec-
tion, a space is located at the centre of the ornament, the others being arranged
above it, on both sides and below. In some cases, the central ornament does not
include such spaces: the loops of the interlace run very close to each other and
completely cover the square. Smaller punches have been stamped in the loops
of the interlace and on the outside of the square. Single or double fillets starting
from the tips of the square have sometimes been drawn by the binders on the
horizontal and vertical axes of the board. Type A is the most commonly found in
our sample, probably owing to the easiness of its execution. Eleven items are
found, eight of them associated with manuscripts dated from 1209 to 1520.17
A first variant of this central ornament (Type A.a) resembles a shape fre-
quently used by Muslim bookbinders, that of the eight-pointed star. On the
bindings of the El Escorial collection, this variant of Type A relies on a slight
modification of the sides of the square, interrupted in their middle by an addi-
tional loop of the interlace (Fig. 3b). Segments of fillets radiate usually from the
tip of the eight outer loops, corresponding to the axes and their bisectors, to-
wards the sides of the field. As in the simpler Type A ornaments, the loops of the
interlace may delimit five spaces within the figure: sometimes a rosette or a
circular tool has been stamped there, sometimes these spaces remained blank.
Punches have been stamped in the loops of the interlace as well as on the out-
side of the ornament. This composition was almost as successful as the previous
one: ten items are found in the collection, seven being associated with dated
manuscripts, from 1315 to 1565.18 Both Type A and Type A.a involve the stamping
of rosettes, a tool that is not used on the other bindings that will be discussed
now.
A second variant of this central ornament (Type A.b) keeps the general out-
line of Type A, but the interlace does not include blank spaces (Fig. 3c). Instead,

||
17 Unless otherwise stated, the manuscripts are written in Maghrebi script. RBME 658 (copy in
Oriental script), 1003 (copy dated 1438), 1033, 1035 (copy dated 1520), 1122 (copy dated 1518),
1191 (copy dated 1209), 1211 (copy in Oriental script, dated 1479), 1246 (copy dated 1303), 1514
(copy dated 1234, binding perhaps taken from another manuscript), 1863 (copy dated 1499) and
1867. RBME 658, 1003, 1033, 1035, 1122, 1192, 1211, 1514 and 1867 have been restored in El
Escorial.
18 RBME 276, 384 (copy dated 1508), 632 (copy dated 1324), 933 (binding perhaps taken from
another manuscript), 964 (copy dated 1565), 1067 (copy dated 1315; binding perhaps taken from
another manuscript), 1076 (copy in Oriental script, dated 1514; binding taken from another
manuscript?), 1262, 1322 (copy dated 1543), 1465 (copy dated 1455). RBME 1322 has actually an
eight-pointed star outline. RBME 933, 1067, 1076, 1262, 1322, 1465 have been restored in El
Escorial.
 About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 411

two parallel segments of the interlace tool have been stamped on the vertical
and the horizontal axes of the square on each side of its centre; they create a
cross-like shape, with punches stamped in the loops of the interlace. In one
case, a palmette tool has been stamped at the four tips of the square.19 A binding
offers a slightly more complex version of this pattern, perhaps derived from
Type A.a since an extra-loop is found in the centre of each side.20 Various paral-
lel segments, instead of two stamped on the vertical and horizontal axes, inter-
rupt the interlace; as in Type A.a ornaments, short fillets radiate from the tip of
the eight external loops along the axes and their bisectors towards the sides of
the field. Rosette stamps are not used on these bindings. Five bindings have
been decorated in this way, two of them being associated with manuscripts
dated 1525 and 1579.21

2.2.2 Type B

The second type of central decoration (Type B) associated with the three fillets
frame is smaller than the first one. The shape of the square standing on the tip
has been preserved and the interlace is composed by the combination of what
we would define as a square with a loop at each corner and a cruciform shape
that has a long history in Islamic bindings’ central ornaments (Fig. 4a). A circu-
lar stamp has been sometimes stamped in the centre of Type B compositions. In
almost all examples found in the El Escorial collection, punches have been
stamped in the loops of the interlace as well as on the outside of the square.
Seven items were found in the collection, four of them with dated manuscripts
copied between 1396 and 1507.22
As is the case of Type A, there is a variant we called Type B.a. It would be
actually more accurate to speak of variants that keep the idea of a small inter-
lace central ornament, but vary its composition. In three cases, it terminates on
the horizontal and vertical axes by a heart-like shape (Fig. 4b).23 The other two

||
19 RBME 1099.
20 RBME 1077.
21 RBME 979 (binding perhaps taken from another manuscript), 999, 1016, 1077 (copy dated
1579) and 1099 (copy in Oriental script, dated 1525). RBME 979, 999, 1016 and 1099 have been
restored in El Escorial.
22 RBME 650 (copy dated 1396; binding perhaps taken from another manuscript), 654, 1091
(copy dated 1397), 1149 (copy dated 1507), 1150 (copy dated 1491), 1864 and 1869 (binding
perhaps taken from another manuscript).
23 RBME 760 (copy dated 1525) and 1358; RBME 1830 (see n. 8) has the same central ornament.
412 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

examples of this group do not clearly follow the same pattern; punches have
been stamped in the loops of the interlace.24
A single binding with a three fillets frame does not exhibit a central orna-
ment related to Type A and B or to their variants (and not to the circular compo-
sitions either).25 Interlace tools similar to those of the bindings previously
described have been used to stamp a knot of Solomon into the leather – in asso-
ciation with punches.
The techniques used by Moroccan binders who produced these bindings
can also be defined more precisely. Due to the scarcity of descriptions of the
tools, we shall rely on the groundbreaking study by Georges Marçais and Louis
Poinssot (MP).26 As was stated before, only a handful of tools were available in
each workshop. The two interlace tools, segment and quarter of circle, were
ubiquitous: all the workshops used them. They may vary in length or in the way
the element between the two outer fillets is treated. It is mostly made of short
dashes perpendicular or slightly oblique (Figs 2b, 5a and 5b), but the segment
tool sometimes consists of parallel fillets. The punches were also found every-
where, MP 57c being the most popular (22 cases; Fig. 5c). The larger punches
similar to MP 57f are either used alone (3 cases; Fig. 5d) or in combination with
another kind of punch (4 cases).27 Rosettes and circular tools were also com-
monly used by the binders producing central ornaments Type A and A.a (Figs 5h
and 5f); in addition, they were used in the corners of the frame (see for instance
Fig. 3a). Next to a classical rosette shape (9 cases) which can be compared to MP
63 a-d,28 there is a circular stamp with a central dot surrounded by other dots,
also associated with Types A and A.a (3 cases; Fig. 5g). Less frequently, a pal-
mette close to MP 64h was stamped in the corners of the frame, but it is also
found at the tip of the central ornament of binding RBME 1099 (Fig. 5e). It
appears mostly on bindings of Types A.a and A.b (6 cases), once with Type B. A
few bindings were stamped with heated tools: this is probably the case of
manuscripts RBME 999 or 1099. Gilding when present is always very limited: the
three examples found in our corpus are all restricted to punches, mostly in the
central ornament.29

||
24 RBME 1063 and 1097 (copy dated 1468; binding perhaps taken from another manuscript).
25 RBME 1619 (copy in Oriental script dated 1536).
26 Marçais and Poinssot 1948. We refer to the drawings on figs 54 to 66: MP 64h refers to
fig. 64, item h in Marçais and Poinssot’s study. The dimensions of the tools are not considered
here. For descriptions, see also Weisweiler 1962, 61-78.
27 Compare with Weisweiler 1962, 76, stamp 93.
28 Compare with Weisweiler 1962, 74, stamp 80.
29 RBME 632, 1003 and 1322.
 About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 413

3 Headbands
Eight original headbands have been preserved: two patterns appear more often,
one with parallel lines, the other one in a ‘W’ shape, and the association of red
and yellow threads is the prefered one, before blue and white; however, the ‘W’
pattern is dominant when one takes into consideration the corpus of fifty-three
bindings with three fillets frame (10 instances). As stated previously, in most of
the cases, the original lining of the inner board has been replaced in the course
of the restauration. However, we found among the dated manuscripts of this
group of bindings seven linings which may be original: in one case, it is a yel-
low paper, but fabric and leather are more numerous (three instances each).
When taking into account the fifty-three bindings of our corpus, leather is better
represented among the ten original linings with five instances; fabric has been
used four times.

4 Conclusion
The relationship between the binding and the volume it protects has to be
approached with caution. Bindings can be changed and this has apparently
happened after the manuscripts reached the El Escorial Library: as mentioned
previously, the binders/restorers replaced original bindings that were in a bad
state by local ones, with the El Escorial coat of arms, or removed the old leather
covering and pasted it on top of new boards. In that case, it seems that they may
have used in a few cases coverings that were not originally connected with the
manuscript they are associated with now.30 However, the number of items in the
corpus is sufficient to approach the two fundamental questions that arise when
studying bindings, that of their place of production and that of their date, with-
out risking to err considerably in answering both questions. The El Escorial
collection is particularly important in this regard since it mainly houses the
manuscripts of Mulāy Zaydān (r. 1603–1627) that were captured by Spain in
1612. With the exception of the manuscripts destroyed by a fire in the end of the
seventeenth century and those drastically rebound between the seventeenth
and nineteenth centuries, the manuscripts are as close as possible to their state
in the early seventeenth century. The library amounts to a ‘time capsule’, which
makes an answer to the two questions easier. The first question is the simplest

||
30 See for instance RBME 650 or 1097. In our sample, eight manuscripts are in that case.
414 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

one: within the group of twenty-four dated copies with both the three fillets
frame and the square central ornament, only three are written by an Oriental
hand, the rest being all Maghrebi; if we take into account the corpus of fifty-
three bindings with the same kind of frame, irrespective of their central orna-
ment, the Oriental copies are only five. We can conclude that the bindings with
the three fillets frame were produced in the Western part of the Islamic world,
presumably in Morocco.
The three dated Eastern copies with a binding with the frame described pre-
viously (Fig. 2a) were completed between 1479 and 1525.31 As for the dated
Maghrebi copies, only two of them are later than the middle of the sixteenth
century;32 eight were produced in the first half of that century,33 slightly more
than those dated to the fifteenth century (one from its first half,34 five from the
second one)35. We find then five fourteenth century copies,36 but only two from
the thirteenth37 and one with a manuscript dated to the end of the twelfth centu-
ry.38 However, the date of completion of the oldest copies is not of much use as it
is highly probable that their present binding is the result of a replacement, the
date of which is difficult to ascertain. In some cases, the similarities between an
old binding and a more recent one suggest that the latter provides a clue for the
dating: for instance, a copy dated 1315 (RBME 1067) was probably bound in the
same workshop as another one prepared for a manuscript completed in 1514
(RBME 1076). The dates of the copies produced in the Eastern part of the Islamic
world support the general orientation of the group of bindings associated with
Maghrebi manuscripts, which invites to conclude that the period of production
of these bindings extends from the late fourteenth century to the end of the
sixteenth century, central ornaments of Type B and B.a being perhaps earlier

||
31 RBME 1076 (dated 1514), 1099 (dated 1525) and 1211 (dated 1479). RBME 1619 (dated 1536),
also written in an Oriental hand, is not included in the present study since the central
ornament of its boards is of another nature. These manuscripts as well as RBME 658 do not bear
any trace suggesting that they were still in the Eastern part of the Islamic world at a later date.
RBME 1619 bears a note dated to the same year as the transcription.
32 RBME 964 (1565) and 1077 (dated 1579).
33 RBME 384 (1508), 1035 (1530), 1076 (1514), 1099 (1525), 1122 (1518), 1149 (1507), 1322 (1543)
and 1619 (1536).
34 RBME 1003 (1438).
35 RBME 1097 (1468), 1150 (1491), 1211 (1479), 1465 (1455) and 1863 (1499).
36 RBME 632 (1324), 650 (1396), 1067 (1315), 1091 (1397) and 1246 (1303).
37 RBME 1191 (1209) and 1514 (1234).
38 RBME 760 (1198).
 About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 415

than Type A and its variants: the dates of the former range from 1396 to 1507,39
whereas the latter include more material from the sixteenth century.40 Looking
at the larger group of forty-four dated manuscripts with a binding with interlace
design related to the three fillets frame group, the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries also represent the bulk of this production: twenty-five items are
associated with copies completed between 1451 and the end of the sixteenth
century (the latest item is dated 1584). The dates also suggest that the second
part of the sixteenth century was a period of decline for this kind of decoration
based on the interlace in front of the growing success of the new style imported
from the Ottoman Empire. The numbers are clear: in the collection, twelve
manuscripts in Maghrebi script from the last quarter of the sixteenth century
have a binding alla turca against a meagre four in the ‘traditional’ style.41 The
situation is almost reversed in the preceding quarter of this century, with
respectively three of the former against twelve of the latter.
It could be possible to argue that the bindings of the manuscripts examined
here were made when they were incorporated into the Saadian library. It should
however be noted that some of the manuscripts discussed here bear witness of
the fact that they were not yet in the Saadian library at a comparatively ad-
vanced date in the sixteenth century, which casts doubt on this possibility. On
the other hand, the diversity of tools and craftsmanship, in spite of the common
repertory shared by these bindings, would hardly support the idea that they
were made for the sultan’s library at about the same time and by the same work-
shop – or by a limited number of binders.
Moreover, a few bindings found in the collection show that the interlace
decoration could also be used for more elaborate bindings than most of those
which have been examined here. One of the best examples is the RBME 248.42
The study of this manuscript completed in Fez on 17 Ṣafar 969/27 October 1561
for a princely patron, confirms that traditional Maghrebi techniques were still
alive in the third quarter of the sixteenth century and that the type with the
three fillets frame was used in upper end workshops. Its binding, as that of
RBME 47, bears testimony of the skill of some binder. However, towards the
same date, other Maghrebi copies were already covered by bindings decorated

||
39 We exclude RBME 760 (dated 1198); RBME 650 and 1091 are respectively dated 1396 and
1397, and the copy of RBME 1149 was completed in 1507.
40 Nine bindings in total (RBME 384, 964, 1035, 1076, 1077, 1099, 1122, 1322 and 1863).
41 Taking into account all the Moroccan bindings with the three fillets frame, irrespective of
the central ornament.
42 See Déroche 2014; Déroche 2019, 181–190.
416 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

in an almost identical way as those produced in Ottoman binderies. The data at

our disposal are scarce and contradictory. The ‘old style’, if we may call it thus,
does not seem to be a matter of geography: as indicated at the beginning, three
bindings in the larger group of interlace decoration were prepared in Fez, but
RBME 47 seems to have been bound in Marrakesh. Economics may have played
a role: the small tools were locally produced, whereas the Ottoman plates had to
be imported and were likely more expensive. On the other hand, high quality
bindings were prepared with the traditional set of tools and local imitations of
the plates soon became available.43 Tastes also were important: some patrons
probably preferred the ‘old style’ while others were favouring the Ottoman
aesthetics.
If our dating of the group of bindings with three fillets frame and a square
related central ornament is correct, the copies in Oriental script may have been
bound for the first time in Morocco. As they were produced about a century
before Mulāy Zaydān’s library was seized, with the exception of RBME 1211, it
can be doubted that their bindings were renewed during this comparatively
short period of time. This might imply that they were imported without a proper
binding, an interesting information about the book trade between the Eastern
part of the Mediterranean and Morocco.
This group of bindings is crucial for our reconstruction of bookbinding his-
tory in Morocco between the fifteenth and early seventeenth century. It is a
witness of the survival of techniques and aesthetics in Morocco until late into
the sixteenth century that were rooted in a long tradition. As stated by al-
Sufyānī, Moroccan binders were still, in his time, catering to the tastes of book
owners who liked the traditional Maghrebi style. They were also working for
those who preferred the Ottoman tastes and techniques. The study of a larger
corpus of Moroccan bindings, both decorated with small tools and with plates,
will allow us to follow the changes during the Saadian period and their chro-
nology. It might also provide clues about regional peculiarities and the sociolo-
gy of Moroccan book owners in Saadian times. And the sheer number of
examples in a collection with a specific provenance may also lead to the identi-
fication of workshops active in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

||
43 De Castilla 2019, esp. 103-106.
 About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 417

Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European
Research Council under the European Union Funding for Research and Innova-
tion (Horizon 2020) ERC Grant Agreement number 670628, ‘Saadian Intellectual
and Cultural Life’ (SICLE, 2016-2021). The authors are particularly grateful to the
Director of the Library of the San Lorenzo de El Escorial, P. José Luis del Valle,
for his help during the research leading to these results.

References
de Castilla, Nuria (2019), ‘Maghrebi bindings in Ottoman dress. About techniques and changes
of taste in Saadian Morocco’, Turcica, 50: 89–113.
Déroche, François (1986), ‘Quelques reliures médiévales de provenance damascaine’, Revue
des études islamiques, 54: 85–99.
Déroche, François (2014), ‘Des miscellanées princières d’époque saadienne. Le manuscrit 248
de la bibliothèque de San Lorenzo de l’Escorial’, in Nicholas de Lange and Judith Olszowy-
Schlanger (eds), Manuscrits hébreux et arabes: Mélanges en l’honneur de Colette Sirat
(Bibliologia, 38), Turnhout: Brepols, 163–174.
Déroche, François (2019), ‘The prince and the scholar: A study of two multiple-text manuscripts
from fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Morocco’, in Alessandro Bausi, Michael Friedrich
and Marilena Maniaci (eds), The Emergence of Multiple-Text Manuscripts (Studies in
Manuscript Cultures, 17), Berlin: De Gruyter, 165–191.
Déroche, François et al. (2005), Islamic codicology, an introduction to the study of manuscripts
in Arabic script, London: Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation.
Dreibholz, Ursula (1997), ‘Some aspects of early Islamic bookbindings from the Great Mosque
of Sana’a, Yemen’, in François Déroche and Francis Richard (eds), Scribes et manuscrits
du Moyen Orient, Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 16–34.
Levey, Martin (1962), Mediaeval Arabic Bookmaking and its Relation to Early Chemistry and
Pharmacology = Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S., 52/4.
Marçais, Georges and Louis Poinssot (1948), Objets kairouanais, IXe au XIIIe siècle. Reliures,
verreries, cuivres et bronzes, bijoux, vol. 1, Tunis: Tournier / Paris: Klincksieck.
Ricard, Prosper (ed.) (1925), Abū al-‘Abbās Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Sufyānī, Art de la reliure et
de la dorure, 2nd edn, Paris: Paul Geuthner.
Ricard, Prosper (1933), ‘Reliures marocaines du XIIIe siècle. Notes sur des spécimens d’époque
et de tradition almohade’, Hespéris, 17: 109–127.
Weisweiler, Max (1962), Der islamische Bucheinband des Mittelalters nach Handschriften aus
deutschen, holländischen und türkischen Bibliotheken, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
418 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

Fig. 1: Binding, Morocco, end of the 15th–16th c. RBME 1540 (copied in 1469). ©Real Biblioteca
del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
 About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 419

Fig. 2a: Binding, detail of the frame (with the fillets number indicated) and the cornerpiece,
Morocco, 16th c. RBME 1149 (copied in 1507).

Fig. 2b Binding, detail of the cornerpiece with the two interlace tools, Morocco, second half of
the 16th c. RBME 248 (copied in 1561).

Figs 2a–b © Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

420 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

Fig. 3a: Binding with central ornament Fig. 3b: Binding with central ornament
Type A, Morocco, 15th–16th c., RBME 1191 Type A.a, Morocco, second half of the 16th c.
(copied in 1209). RBME 964 (copied in 1565).

Fig. 3c: Binding with central ornament Type A.b, Morocco, 16th c. RBME 1016 (probably copied
in the 16th c.).

Figs 3a–c © Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

 About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings | 421

Fig. 4a: Binding with central ornament Type B, Morocco, 16th c. RBME 654 (copied in the 16th c.).

Fig. 4b: Binding with central ornament Type B.a, Morocco, end of the 15th-16th c. RBME 1358
(copied at the end of the 15th–16th c.).

Figs 4a–b © Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

422 | Nuria de Castilla, François Déroche

a b

c d e

f g

Fig. 5: Stamps. Images published in Marçais and Poinssot, 1948: a = Fig. 54b; b = Fig. 55d;
c = Fig. 57Fe; e= Fig. 64h; g = Fig. 58m, and h= Fig. 63e.
Agnieszka Helman-Ważny
A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road
Abstract: This study is a tale of the early history of papermaking in the Chinese
borderlands as perceived through the materials that compose the manuscripts
discovered in Central Asia. The manuscripts and printed books on paper exca-
vated from archaeological sites in the ancient Silk Road kingdoms of Chinese
Central Asia were examined for the raw materials used in their manufacture and
the technology behind their production. The data retrieved by material analysis
revealed the materials used for making the books, and the way that the materi-
als have evolved with technological innovation. A wide range of types and qual-
ities of paper, when interpreted chronologically according to dates included in
the manuscripts, contributed to the timeline of the early history of paper.

1 Central Asian manuscripts as repository of

early paper
Ideas relating to the history of paper began to change at the beginning of the
twentieth century, when archaeological excavations revealed vast new collec-
tions that were brought to Europe by, among others, Aurel Stein and Paul
Pelliot. Many authors have described the complex history of the acquisition of
these manuscripts. This is done especially vividly by Peter Hopkirk in Foreign
Devils on the Silk Road and by Craig Childs in Finders Keepers. A Tale of Archaeo-
logical Plunder and Obsession.1 China considers this plundering of its treasures
the archaeological crime of the century. The same people who were considered
great explorers by the West were referred to as thieves and fortune-hunters by
official Chinese authorities. From whatever perspective, this was a time of im-
mense archaeological richness and colonial freedom for Western powers.
These extensive collections of manuscripts and books printed on paper,
which were excavated from archaeological sites in the ancient Silk Road king-
doms of Chinese Central Asia and from a hidden library cave to east of the Gobi
Desert, are the earliest repositories of extant paper that bear witness to the early
history of papermaking. These manuscripts are now dispersed among collections

||
1 See Hopkirk 1980 and Childs 2013, 119‒131.

Open Access. © 2021 Helman-Wazny, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-022
424 | Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

in Europe and Asia, and they have created new opportunities to review the his-
tory of paper. There are vast collections of manuscripts available for research:
Britain holds a collection of about 50,000 manuscripts, paintings, and artefacts
from Chinese Central Asia, as well as thousands of historical photographs,
mostly from the first three Central Asian expeditions led by Stein.2 Germany
holds a collection of c. 40,000 fragments of text, and thousands of frescos and
other artefacts yielded by four German expeditions to Turfan led by Grünwedel
and Le Coq. France holds a collection of c. 30,000 manuscripts brought back by
Pelliot, which also holds the entire collection of Nouette’s photographs of the
expedition and Pelliot’s diaries and other archives. Japanese and Russian col-
lections amount to c. 20,000 manuscripts each, and the Dunhuang materials in
China amount to around 16,000 items. These vast collections that preserve the
archives of early paper in Central Asia are available for study.
Dated between the third and thirteenth centuries CE, the extant manuscripts
were written in over twenty languages and scripts, including those of the
empires and kingdoms on the periphery of Central Asia during this period:
Chinese, Tibetan, Iranian, Indian, and Turkic. The oldest paper manuscripts
available for study are Sanskrit and Tocharian manuscripts found in Kucha and
dated between the third and sixth centuries CE. At that time, paper was used for
manuscripts that were written in Sanskrit or Khotanese, dated approximately
between the fourth and the eight centuries CE, and found in Khotan. By the fifth
century, paper manuscripts were produced in Dunhuang, and this collection
contains written and printed texts in Chinese, Tibetan, Khotanese, and Turkic,
dated between the fifth and tenth centuries. Another repository of old paper
from Central Asia is the Turfan collection in Chinese, Tibetan, Turkic, and Syriac
and dated between the ninth and thirteenth centuries.
These manuscripts are often imprecisely dated with the exception of the
group of Chinese manuscripts fortuitously fixed in time by dates given in colo-
phons.3 Further manuscripts, however, may also be fixed in time and place by
other information, such as the names of specific people and places, or episodes
associated with historical dates. Information regarding provenance derives from
the archaeological contexts (all of the Silk Road period) in which manuscripts

||
2 See British collections: Contents and Access, International Dunhuang Project website
<http://idp.bl.uk/pages/collections_en.a4d#2> (accessed on 2 Oct. 2020).
3 In 1919 Lionel Giles, newly appointed keeper in the Department of Oriental Printed Books
and Manuscripts, undertook the compilation work, and between 1935 and 1944 he published a
series of articles in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies which formed a chronological
list of dated manuscripts from Stein’s collection (see Giles 1935, 1937, 1940, 1943).
 A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road | 425

were found, including Buddhist stupas, military forts, residential and official
buildings, rubbish heaps, and tombs. The dated manuscripts allowed us to
correlate technological and scientific data with the dates included in their
colophons. The dated manuscripts were thus especially useful in reconstructing
the time-line of paper history. To make sure, however, that my results are not
limited to this group of manuscripts, I also studied undated manuscripts.
With respect to great numbers of books and large collections of manuscripts
from along the Silk Road, it is difficult to pinpoint when a group of manuscripts
is sufficiently large to create historically valid results. Since Julius von
Wiesner’s time at the beginning of twentieth century, scholars have managed to
subject approximately 1500 manuscripts to fibre analysis.4 Statistically it is
probably still too few, though sufficiently large to complete a history of paper
with a great deal of valuable information. This is significant in comparison to
the scarcity and vagueness of information in the written sources.

2 Evidence of papermaking technologies along

the Silk Road
Technology, the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the
production of paper, may also be understood to be an aspect of social and cul-
tural transmission through time and space. The paper, thread, ink, pigments,
and other constituent parts of the Silk Road manuscripts and printed books
derive from different and often distant centres of production. The textiles that
are found in the same archaeological contexts as the manuscripts and that in
some cases form an integral part of them, such as the silk ties used to bind
scrolls, the silk book covers, and the manuscripts written on silk, are similarly
diverse, displaying a variety of materials, weaves, patterns, and pigments.
Material culture, such as extant collections of manuscripts, is thus an ideal
source for the study of technological developments such as the mass-production
of paper, inks, pigments, and textiles, but the scientific analysis that has been
carried out on these materials thus far has been drawn from small samples that
cannot be considered fully representative. A recent study has shown that there
is the potential for understanding cultural, technological, and religious

||
4 Julius von Wiesner was a pioneer of material analysis applied to the Silk Road manuscripts;
see von Wiesner 1902 and 1903. For the history of fibre analysis of this early material, see
Helman-Ważny 2020, 341–366.
426 | Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

transmission and interaction across the Silk Road through combining textual
research with paper and pigment analysis.5
The development of mass-production in papermaking across the Silk Road
in the first millennium CE constitutes one of the most important technological
developments of the era.6 The rise of these Central Asian trade routes coincided
with the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) in China and with the appearance of
paper as a new writing material (Fig. 1). Many commodities other than silk were
traded along the Silk Roads, including paper. Of all the precious goods traded
along these routes, silk was perhaps the most remarkable for the people of the
West;7 paper, on the other hand, was poorly understood until the sixth or sev-
enth century of the first millennium. The technological development of paper,
however, may have been closely linked to the trade in silk, as the increasing
development of silk production along the Silk Roads brought about the estab-
lishment of papermaking workshops, since mulberry trees cultivated for silk
production in the villages and oases of Central Asia could also be used for mak-
ing paper.

Fig. 1: The Silk Road at the time of the origin and early paper. Map drawn by Dorota Helman and
Olga Ważny.

||
5 Van Schaik, Helman-Wazny and Nöller 2015.
6 See Hansen 2016 for an overview of the Silk Road civilizations and trade.
7 Frye 1996, 154.
 A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road | 427

Essentially, no comprehensive attempt has yet been made to understand the

complexity, spread, and modes of change of the early papermaking technolo-
gies. We only have fragmentary evidence which has yet to show the whole pic-
ture. The physical nature of paper, textile and book, its full meaning and value,
as well as the way technologies spread in ancient and medieval Asia are less
thoroughly explored. Most of the information we have is retrieved for large,
known centres of paper production, usually from Chinese, Korean, or Japanese
sources.8 Textual sources were commonly prioritized despite the fact that they
clearly cannot provide conclusive historical evidence for the origins and dissem-
ination of papermaking, weaving, printing, or other technologies related to
book production. Archaeological and material evidence has recently gained in
importance.
We know that these technologies were transmitted along the major trade
routes, with papermaking and printing developing first in Asia during this peri-
od before their transmission to Europe. Aside from this very general statement,
however, we know little about the way this transmission occurred. The adoption
of these technologies in specific areas was uneven and dependent on a variety
of factors, including long-distance trade, the availability of local materials, and
cultural contexts, especially those related to religion.
Because we have an unclear knowledge of the driving forces behind the de-
velopment of the technologies of the book, there is a need for an investigation
into the relationships between the development of technologies, religion (espe-
cially Buddhism), and different linguistic cultures along the Silk Road. Among
textual sources, many Buddhist scriptures encourage the reader to make physi-
cal copies of texts, which suggests that religious ideology served as a driving
force behind the development of technology. The copies of scripture were made
for the sake of religious merit, ensuring a better rebirth and future lives, as well
as for the purpose of providing protection against various evils in this life. Pas-
sages from such texts could be copied and worn as amulets to protect the body,
or they could be put inside statues or hoisted into the air as flags to protect the
state. Buddhism, in particular, has been a key factor in the social and economic
dynamics that drove the development of papermaking technologies in Asia,9

||
8 Tsien 1973, 1985, 2004; Hunter 1932, 1978; Pan 1981, 1998; Rischel 1985, 2004.
9 Tsien 2004.
428 | Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

with the phenomenon of mass printing in particular being inspired by Buddhist

ideas of the merit of scriptural reproduction.10

3 Material and methods

The visual appearance of paper is affected by the type of raw material used in its
manufacture, the technology behind its production, and the tools used, as well
as by the preparation of the leaves during the production of the book. Some of
this evidence was either immediately visible or could be revealed through a
variety of scientific analyses.11
Between 2005 and 2014, I studied a total of 350 manuscripts selected from
the Dunhuang collections in the British Library in London, the National Library
of France in Paris (Bibliothèque nationale de France), the Institute of Oriental
Manuscripts in St. Petersburg (Институт восточных рукописей Российской
академии наук) and from the Turfan collection in the Berlin Brandenburg
Academy of Sciences (Die Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissen-
schaften) and the Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). My work
initially focused on Chinese manuscripts found along the Silk Road and then
expanded to include other manuscripts, such as Tibetan, Uighur, Sogdian, To-
charian, and Sanskrit. In these manuscripts I studied the raw materials, the
various fibres, and the plants from which they derive. I then looked at other
aspects of the papermaking process which influence the nature of the resulting
paper, such as the degree of fibre blending, the type of papermaking mould
used, and the preparation of the paper surface before a drawing, calligraphy, or
a print was set upon it. A study of the various materials and methods provides
us with a basis from which we can then begin to interpret and categorize the
many ways these papers were made and used.

||
10 The importance of the ‘cult of the book’ in Buddhism of different regions has been
addressed by many authors: see, for example: Schopen 1975; Kornicki 1998; Schaeffer 2009;
Apple 2014; Diemberger et al 2014.
11 Details on the scientific methodology used are to be found in the following articles:
Helman-Ważny and van Schaik 2013, 720–721; Helman-Ważny 2016, 131–132; Durkin-
Meisterernst et al 2016, 8.
 A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road | 429

3.1 Raw materials of Central Asian manuscripts

There is a wide range of types and qualities of paper found in the aforemen-
tioned manuscripts from Central Asia. Paper of recycled textile fibres from rags
and paper of new bast fibres were both identified (Figs 2 and 3). Rag paper was
most typically composed of hemp and ramie fibres in differing proportions,
sometimes additionally mixed with scarce amounts of other fibres, such as
paper mulberry/mulberry (Broussonetia or Morus sp.), flax, jute, silk, wool, or
cotton. Manuscripts from the Dunhuang collection notably contained ramie-
and hemp-rag fibres with an admixture of jute, flax, and silk, while in Turfan
the same rag-fibre paper contained an admixture of cotton and wool. These
additions may be used as a marker of particular areas, or time of use, if con-
firmed by future analysis.
The Tocharian manuscripts studied, probably the earliest dated, were made
almost exclusively of rag paper. The pure mulberry fibres were in the minority
in the group of Tocharian and Sanskrit manuscripts. Chinese manuscripts dated
to the fifth and sixth centuries CE are almost exclusively on rag papers, and only
a few manuscripts on rag paper are dated to between the seventh and ninth
centuries, while the number of rag-paper manuscripts increases in the tenth
century.12 Similar results were obtained by Anna-Grethe Rischel and more re-
cently by Lucas Llopis and Léon-Bavi Vilmont. Rischel’s examination of Loulan
manuscripts revealed that the third-century Loulan papers are a mixture of
recycled hemp, ramie, linen, and mulberry fibres.13 The same components with
the occasional addition of sparse fibres of cotton were found in the remaining
thirty-three manuscripts dated later or not dated, and in four cases the cotton
fibres were also mixed with paper mulberry fibres.14 Llopis and Vilmont identi-
fied hemp, linen, sometimes with addition of ramie or mulberry, in the paper of
350 Tocharian manuscripts. These raw materials again suggest that these pa-
pers were made of rags (textile waste).15 Rag paper was also confirmed by Enami
Kazuyuki, Sakamoto Shoji, Okada Yoshihiro, and Masuda Katsuhiko in manu-
scripts dated to between the fourth and eighth centuries CE, which were un-
earthed around the Tarim Basin and are now kept at Ryukoku University, the

||
12 Helman-Ważny 2016, 132–134.
13 Rischel 2001, 179–188.
14 Raschmann 2012.
15 Arnaud-Nguyen 2020, 404–405.
430 | Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

Kyoto National Museum, and Toyo-Bunko (Asian Library). Thus, hemp, mulberry,
cotton, and foxtail millet were detected in papers from Japanese collections.16
According to secondary literature on papermaking around the tenth centu-
ry, the use of rag paper declined, possibly because of a shortage of raw materi-
als and the consequent high production cost. The documents dealing with
papermaking after the Song Dynasty (960–1279) also mention rag paper only
occasionally, a fact confirmed by the greater variety of plant components identi-
fied in manuscripts dated later than the tenth century.
My sample of manuscripts revealed rag paper in all groups of manuscripts
irrespective of the script in which they are written (Fig. 2). This includes a good
many of the Sogdian and Turkic manuscript fragments produced in the Western
regions of the Silk Road as far as Samarkand, located at the junctions of trade
routes from China and India. The Arabs in the eighth century must therefore
have witnessed the production of rag paper in Samarkand.
After rag paper the second largest group represented among the manu-
scripts studied comprise inner-bark (phloem) paper composed of woody plant,
such as Broussonetia sp. (paper mulberry) or Morus sp. (mulberry), derived from
living plants (Fig. 3). These fibres are considered the best material for producing
high quality paper. In my sample I observed that bark (phloem) paper made of
mulberry or paper mulberry began to attain an equal footing with rag paper at
the end of the seventh century, and then to prevail in the eighth.17 The inner
white bark of paper mulberry from indigenous trees may have grown wildly or
may have been cultivated for this purpose. In addition to paper mulberry in
Tibetan manuscripts dated to the ninth century and later, Daphne sp. fibres
were also found.
It has been assumed that paper mulberry bast was added to Cai Lun’s paper
reported in 105 CE in the Hou Han shu (‘History of the Later Han Dynasty’). A
record for that year (commonly cited as the date of the invention of paper)
shows that the technique of papermaking was reported by the eunuch Cai Lun
to the Eastern Han Emperor Ho, and that those first paper samples were made of
tree bark, remnants of hemp, rags of cloth, and fishing nets.18 The evidence
collected from material analyses of Hedin’s Chinese paper fragments from
Loulan and according to Stein’s Sogdian paper fragments suggest that the more
advanced Chinese production of paper from pure new bast fibres had already

||
16 Enami et al 2010, 12–22; Enami et al. 2012, <http://turfan.bbaw.de/bilder/ct/vortrag-
enami.pdf> (accessed on 21 Feb. 2021).
17 Helman-Ważny 2016, 134–135.
18 Tsien 1985, 40.
 A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road | 431

developed in the third century. The technology did not spread westwards as far
as Samarkand, but eastwards and northwards, where plants of the Thyme-
laeaceae and Moraceae families were available.

3.2 Mapping of materials and technology

The findings concerning the use and distribution of paper in the selected manu-
scripts show the range of materials which might point to the provenance of the
paper.19 If the fibre consists of pure mulberry and the mould screen is made of
bamboo splits, the paper is most likely of Chinese or more Eastern origin, but if
the paper consists of a mixture of rag fibres and the mould is made of reeds, the
provenance cannot be given with any degree of precision, since rags could travel
and be turned into paper anywhere. Rag paper may be produced anywhere
along the Silk Road, but mulberry paper was only produced in regions where
mulberry trees grew. It should be remembered, however, that paper mulberry
could grow in desert oases, but was usually cultivated for silk production,
which yielded much higher profits, and was thus less frequently used for paper
production, with the exception of rare and specific circumstances.
The technological development and bast fibres allowed the production of
thinner, more even, and better-quality paper, so we may hypothesize that the
centres of rag-paper production were more often located in desert regions,
where mulberry trees were sparse and used rather for the breeding of silk worms
than for paper production. The rag technology continued unchanged in regions
with no natural growth of the requisite plants for the production of paper,
whereas the chemical maceration of new bast fibres continued in China and
spread to Korea, Japan, Tibet, Nepal, and other regions where these plants
grew.
The woven paper made with a textile sieve, in written sources assumed to
be a characteristic of the oldest and most primitive technology, typifies a minor-
ity of my sample and, in dated papers, appeared only after 692 CE (Fig. 4). Wo-
ven paper was found more in samples of bark (phloem) paper made of paper
mulberry and mulberry. It is also worthy of note that all of the oldest samples
dated by colophons to the fifth century CE were made of ramie and hemp rags on
laid patchy paper additionally characterized by irregular laid lines, suggesting
the use of a sieve made of reed or grass rather than bamboo (Fig. 5). This type of
paper, characterized by the abovementioned combination of features, does not

||
19 Nöller and Helman-Ważny 2013, 6–7.
432 | Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

appear in later dated manuscripts. The paper type I have found most widely
associated with early paper produced locally in Dunhuang and Turfan is thus
thicker rag paper characterized by twelve to eighteen laid lines per 3 cm, often
with uneven fibre distribution within a sheet. A second type that could have
been produced along the eastern part of the Silk Road is characterized by be-
tween twenty-seven and thirty-three laid lines per 3 cm, made of paper mulberry
and mulberry.
Macroscopic observations suggest that the floating mould with a fixed
screen of woven textile did not necessarily precede the dipping mould equipped
with the loose screen. If it did, it was replaced by the dipping mould equipped
with the loose screen made of reeds as early as the third century. Reeds were
then used, and soon thereafter bamboo sieves took over in the areas where
these plants grow, but that papermaking sieve screens were also traded along
the Silk Road and occasionally used in the more deserted Western regions can-
not be ruled out. In the Himalayan regions, woven moulds have been preferred
until the present day.

4 Concluding remarks
The data retrieved from material analysis of Central Asian manuscripts shows
the materials that were used in the manufacture of books along the Silk Road in
the first millennium CE and the way those books have evolved with technologi-
cal innovation. The wide range of types and qualities of paper used in the book-
making process was confirmed to include paper of recycled textile fibres from
rags and the paper of new bast fibres (Fig. 6). Rag paper was most typically
composed of hemp and ramie fibres in differing proportions, sometimes mixed
with scarce amounts of other fibres, such as paper mulberry or mulberry (Brous-
sonetia or Morus sp.), flax, jute, silk, wool, or cotton.
The fibre examination of these manuscripts has helped to establish a key for
identifying the Central Asian plant fibres used in papermaking. I have created a
collection of plants used for papermaking in Central Asia and prepared master
samples for comparative fibre identification. An attempt to reconstruct their
distribution in Central Asia in the past is an important step forward in finding
the geographical origin of unknown books when compared with the results of
fibre analysis performed on other manuscripts with a known plant composition.
There remain, however, many problems to resolve in the future, including a
more precise estimation of such plants’ regional occurrence, which can be reliably
 A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road | 433

modelled for recent centuries, but not for the first millennium due to the lack of
relevant climatic data.
Technological development in papermaking was conditioned by a number
of coexisting factors, such as the local availability of raw materials and tools, as
well as cultural habits originating from locally known technologies. Specific
types of papermaking moulds were used in specific regions and possibly coex-
isted for periods in common areas. The results also show that artists and scribes
made technological choices regarding paper, depending on the function of the
objects they were creating. Understanding the broader Central Asian context of
these results will depend on future analysis of material from other archaeologi-
cal sites. The challenge for future work is also to learn more about the places in
which the paper of those manuscripts was produced.
All these results are limited by the number of manuscripts tested. Addition-
al data collected in the future may provide a more complete picture of the histo-
ry of paper and allow us to map geographical locations together with time in
order to pinpoint technological change, and ascertain what materials were out-
sourced and when. At this point, however, based on the limited collection of
manuscripts tested, I can only share preliminary observations rather than a
fixed overview.

Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), Project
No: 169966949, 08/11/2010 – 30/11/2013, PI: Prof. Michael Friedrich, entitled:
History and typology of paper in Central Asia during the first millennium AD:
Analysis of Chinese paper manuscripts, Department of Chinese Language and
Culture, Asia and Africa Institute, University of Hamburg, Germany.

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Fig. 2: Rag paper under the microscope. Photographs by Agnieszka Helman-Ważny.

 A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road | 437

Fig. 3: Paper mulberry fibres under the microscope. Photographs by Agnieszka Helman-Ważny.
438 | Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

Fig. 4a: The woven paper made with a textile sieve in the manuscript archived as S238 from the
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Fig. 4b: Technology of papermaking with a textile sieve.

Figs 4a----b: Photographs by Agnieszka Helman-Ważny.
 A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road | 439

Fig. 5a: Number of laid lines in 3 cm.

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440 | Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

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Tilman Seidensticker
Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the
Project ‘Katalogisierung der Orientalischen
Handschriften in Deutschland’
Abstract: This article presents and assesses the outcomes of the project ‘Katalo-
gisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland’ (KOHD) achieved in
the ‘Arabic manuscripts’ section of the Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Hand-
schriften in Deutschland (VOHD). The article describes and explains the (some-
times heterogeneous) method of cataloguing and thus serves as a guide to these
volumes. Special attention is paid to the introductions and the numerous manu-
scriptological findings contained in them. The online database KOHD Digital,
successor to the printed series, is also briefly presented, with particular atten-
tion to the question of sustainability.

1 Introduction
By the end of the year 2022, a mammoth German academic project, which began
in 1958, will be finished. The name of the project in question is ‘Katalogisierung
der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland’ (KOHD). As its name implies,
the aim of KOHD is to provide a union catalogue of Oriental manuscripts in
German collections. In the following pages, I give an overview of the catalogu-
ing activities in one of the larger language groups, the field of Arabic manu-
scripts. My aims are to present and assess the outcome of the project’s book
series, Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland (abbreviated
VOHD), to describe and explain the rather heterogeneous method of catalogu-
ing in the volumes that appeared between 1976 and 2020, and to compare what
has been accomplished in the printed volumes with the successor to the printed
series, the online database KOHD Digital.
At the moment, a written work dedicated to the project’s history does not
exist. Nevertheless, ample material can be found in the introductions to the
printed volumes (173 as of September 2020) as well as in the files (c. 185 in num-
ber) stored at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SBB),
Orientabteilung. The following material outlines the background of the project.
In November 1955, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) issued a call
for applications for the ‘Priority Programmes’ of 1956. After a significant delay,

Open Access. © 2021 Tilman Seidensticker, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-023
442 | Tilman Seidensticker

Dr Wolfgang Voigt (at that time of Westdeutsche Bibliothek Marburg) submitted

a four-page application for the project ‘Katalogisierung orientalischer Hand-
schriften’ in October 1957. The application was based on intensive consultation
with libraries in East and West Germany, with the Deutsche Morgenländische
Gesellschaft (DMG), and with numerous professors of Oriental studies. Voigt’s
justification for the cataloguing project amounts to fourteen lines; he points to
complaints by German and international researchers that no printed catalogues
had been compiled for Oriental manuscripts acquired after about 1900 by Ger-
man libraries or museums. The DFG’s first grant letter is dated 11 March 1958
(see Fig. 2) and provides funding for eight full-time collaborators who could
begin their work in February 1958.
The librarian Wolfgang Voigt (1911–1982) initially managed the project. At
the same time, he also became editor of the project’s publication series VOHD,1
as would be the case for his successors too. Voigt held this position from 1958
until his death in 1982.2 His first two successors were the SBB librarians Dieter
George (1935–1985, head of KOHD 1982–1985),3 and Hartmut-Ortwin Feistel
(b. 1943, head of KOHD 1985–2013). Tilman Seidensticker, Professor of Arabic
and Islamic Studies at the University of Jena and author of this article, has led
the project since 2013.
There have been two major changes to the project since its founding. The
first was a transition from DFG funding to the patronage of the Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Göttingen in 1990. The second change was in the medium of
cataloguing. Since 2016, most of the results have been published in the online
database KOHD Digital (more on this below). Nevertheless, all the catalogues
which were planned and prepared prior to 2016 are still being published in print
in the project’s publication series VOHD. The number of collaborators, both full-
time and honorary, along with their individual Oriental language specialisa-
tions, also varied over time.
Voigt made one notable miscalculation in his report. According to his pre-
diction, ‘even in the case of the large holdings in Islamic and “Indian” manu-
scripts, the work will be completed, if possible, in 1963’.4 In reality, the work
would be finished around sixty years later than Voigt had hoped. The delay was
due to several factors, the most significant of which is that many libraries – not
surprisingly – continued to acquire Oriental manuscripts after the project had

||
1 Voigt 1957/58, 68–69.
2 On Voigt, see Ernst Hammerschmidt’s obituary (Hammerschmidt 1985).
3 On George, see Martin Kraatz’s obituary (Kraatz 1987).
4 Voigt 1957/58, 69.
 Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project KOHD | 443

begun. Furthermore, the first inventory listed around 14,000 Oriental manu-
scripts.5 This figure was later corrected to ‘more than 40,000’ and then to ‘more
than 70,000’.6 The increase was due not only to further acquisitions, but also to
more exact (i.e. larger) figures furnished by the libraries. From the beginning,
one factor has counteracted this increase of material. Voluntary specialists from
Germany and abroad, who were not funded by the project, helped out by pre-
paring numerous volumes. For example, since 2014, eight volumes have ap-
peared which relied on such external assistance, comprising 3,850 pages in
total.7

2 The VOHD sections treating Arabic manuscripts

Section (= sub-series) XVII Arabic manuscripts is specifically designated for
descriptions of manuscripts in Arabic. For several reasons, other sections of the
series also contain descriptions of Arabic manuscripts; these other sections
shall be briefly mentioned before the main section and its specifics are present-
ed in greater detail.
Ewald Wagner published a volume devoted to Islamic manuscripts from
Ethiopia (XXIV, 2, 1997) in section XXIV African manuscripts. Descriptions of 139
Arabic works (from 88 manuscripts) are included. They stem from the archive of
the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Nachlass Schlobies)
and the author’s collection, now in the possession of the Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin.
Section XXXVII Islamic manuscripts was created for smaller collections for
which polyglot Arabic-Persian-Turkish experts could be found. Christian Arabic
manuscripts were regularly included as well. Manfred Götz published a volume
covering Nordrhein-Westfalen (XXXVII, 1, 1999), in particular the holdings of
the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn, the Universitäts- und Stadtbiblio-
thek Köln, and the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf. Within these 189 manuscripts, he
found 104 works in the Arabic language. The next volume, written by Beate

||
5 Voigt 1957/58, 69.
6 The figure of 40,000 is reported by Voigt 1966, viii; that of 70,000 by Treue in Franke et al.
1976, 3.
7 V, 2 Erica Hunter and Mark Dickens 2014; XII, 8 Hartmut Walravens 2014; XVIIB, 11 Kathrin
Müller 2014; XII, 7 Tsuneki Nishiwaki 2014; XII, 2 Renate Stephan 2014; XIII, 27 Dieter Maue
2015; XXXVII, 2 Manfred Götz 2015; II, 20 Siegfried Schmitt 2018; XVIIB, 14 Gregor Schoeler
2020.
444 | Tilman Seidensticker

Wiesmüller (XXXVII, 4, 2005), could well have been included in section XVII. It
describes, besides a small number of non-Arabic manuscripts, 340 Arabic man-
uscripts from the Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Stiftung, now in the care of the
Oriental Institute at Cologne University. In his Thüringen volume (XXXVII, 5,
2001), Florian Sobieroj describes the collection of the Thüringer Universitäts-
und Landesbibliothek Jena, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek Weimar, and
a small remainder from the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha that was not described
by Pertsch (1878–92). Within these holdings, there are 95 Arabic manuscripts
with 139 Arabic works, as well as others with mixed Arabic-Turkish or Arabic-
Persian texts.
Section XLIII was created for a specific type of Arabic manuscript, namely,
the Arabic manuscript fragments from the Coptic monasteries Dayr Abū Maqār
and Dayr Abū Pšoi; these fragments are now kept in the Staats- und Universi-
tätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky in Hamburg. For this section, Veronika Six
authored an 1170-page volume – the most extensive in the whole VOHD series
(XLIII, 1, 2017, bound in two parts).
Finally, there are volumes that cover a small number of Arabic components
in multi-text manuscripts8 or in manuscripts with mixed Bohairic-Arabic con-
tent (XXI, 6 Ute Pietruschka and Ina Hegenbarth-Reichardt 2018). Mixed Bohairic-
Arabic manuscripts, as in the latter volume, are also described in VOHD XXI, 1–
5, but this fact is not evident from the catalogue titles.
The core section for manuscripts in Arabic is XVII Arabic manuscripts, di-
vided into two subsections, A and B. The two volumes of subsection XVIIA,
authored by Rudolf Sellheim (1928–2013), bear the subtitle Materialien zur ara-
bischen Literaturgeschichte (XVIIA, 1–2, 1976 and 1987). Their contents exceed
the expectations of a regular catalogue (see below, Section 4). The manuscripts
he describes are an allegedly random selection (cf. VOHD XVIIA, 2, xi) from the
holdings of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, mainly
from the shelf-mark group ‘Ms. or. oct.’.
XVIIB is the core cataloguing subsection for manuscripts in Arabic. In this
subsection, fourteen volumes were published between 1976 and 2020. Over
roughly 7,300 pages, 4,318 Arabic manuscripts from the following libraries are
described:
– Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz: XVIIB, 1: Ewald
Wagner 1976 (362 MSS); XVIIB, 2: Gregor Schoeler 1990 (104 MSS); XVIIB, 3:
Rosemarie Quiring-Zoche 1994 (199 MSS); XVIIB, 5: eadem 2000 (335 MSS);
XVIIB, 6: eadem 2006 (311 MSS); XVIIB, 7: eadem (with Beate Wiesmüller)

||
8 XIII, 3 Hanna Sohrweide 1974; XIV, 2 Soheila Divshali and Paul Luft 1980.
 Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project KOHD | 445

2015 (243 MSS); XVIIB, 13: eadem 2019 (724 MSS); XVIIB, 14: Gregor
Schoeler 2020 (263 MSS). The work on this library’s holdings is still in pro-
gress, with new descriptions appearing in KOHD Digital.
– Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München (BSB): XVIIB, 8: Florian Sobieroj 2007
(275 MSS); XVIIB, 9: idem 2010 (330 MSS); XVIIB, 10: Kathrin Müller 2010
(310 MSS); XVIIB, 11: eadem 2014 (170 MSS); XVIIB, 12: Florian Sobieroj 2018
(759 MSS). This library’s formerly uncatalogued holdings9 are now all cata-
logued in the aforementioned volumes.
– Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen: XVIIB, 4:
Tilman Seidensticker 2005 (44 MSS). Together with the large remainder of
around 620 manuscripts, described by Florian Sobieroj in KOHD Digital, the
formerly uncatalogued holdings of this library10 have been catalogued in
their totality as part of the KOHD project.

The uncatalogued Arabic holdings of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek

Hamburg11 (besides the Christian Arabic fragments catalogued by Veronika Six;
see above): 62 manuscripts, have been catalogued by Frederike-Wiebke Daub in
KOHD Digital.
In the future, smaller collections of uncatalogued Arabic manuscripts from
some libraries, such as the Universitätsbibiothek Tübingen, will be included in
KOHD Digital, if there is capacity until the end of the project in 2022.
It was decided at the beginning of the project that each volume would be ar-
ranged systematically; ‘for scientific reasons and in the users’ best interest’.12
According to the rules of orthodox codicology, this is a mistake. In the case of
multi-text manuscripts, it has been asserted that the codicological connexion
between components is torn apart through systematic arrangement. This allega-
tion, however, does not hold, since the codicological information of all multi-
text manuscripts is given at the beginning of the description of the first part.
Immediately after the description of the first part, there is a short list that lets
the user know which other parts follow and where they can be found in the
catalogue. In this way, it is possible to change from a systematic arrangement to
an alternative codicological arrangement without losing information.
Nevertheless, in some cases, arrangement according to ascending shelf
marks was preferred. In the case of XVIIB, 4 (Göttingen, Seidensticker): where

||
9 That is, the manuscripts not catalogued in Aumer 1866.
10 That is, the manuscripts not catalogued in Meyer 1894.
11 That is, the manuscripts not catalogued in Brockelmann 1908.
12 Voigt 1957/58, 71.
446 | Tilman Seidensticker

just 44 manuscripts with 80 works are contained in one volume, an arrange-

ment according to content seems to be of little use. In the volumes XVIIB 8 and
9 (BSB), Florian Sobieroj has also followed an arrangement according to shelf
marks. In his first volume, XVIIB, 8, this arrangement seems to be particularly
justified because it allowed a collection of Yemenite manuscripts bought from
Eduard Glaser to be kept intact. In XVIIB, 14, Schoeler catalogued the Arabic
parts of the format-related shelf-mark group ‘Ms. or. fol.’ of the SBB, and here
too, an arrangement according to numerus currens seems to be more appropri-
ate.
The sequence in which the collections of individual libraries were cata-
logued differs greatly. In the case of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, two ex-
perts, Sobieroj and Müller, worked simultaneously. They decided to approach
the job like workers digging a tunnel from both ends. The Munich volumes
XVIIB, 8 to 12 cover the shelf marks Cod. arab. 1058 to Cod. arab. 2820 in the
approximate sequence A, B, E, D, and C. Things were more complicated in the
case of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, where four people were involved in cata-
loguing (Sellheim, Wagner, Schoeler, Quiring-Zoche). The shelf marks here are
more complicated, since the Arabic collections are just a smaller share of four
shelf-mark groups (‘Ms. or. fol.’, ‘Ms. or. quart.’, ‘Ms. or. oct.’, ‘Hs. or.’ [after
1945]). In two cases the authors were allowed to make their own choice from the
shelves (XOHD XVIIA, 1–2, Sellheim; XVIIB, 2, Schoeler). This latitude makes it
even more important than in the case of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek to pro-
vide a general index for all the volumes. It was decided that this index should
not be a printed index but rather be included in the project’s database.

3 The database KOHD Digital

When the final KOHD phase (2016–2022) was planned, it soon became clear that
much tighter cataloguing would be necessary. The numbers of uncatalogued
manuscripts amounted to 1,400 Old Turkic, 1,230 Persian, 1,850 Sanskrit, and
3,300 Tibetan manuscripts. In the case of Arabic, there was a remainder of
about 3,000 uncatalogued manuscripts. Online cataloguing was seen to be the
best medium; printed volumes were considered an exception from then on.
 Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project KOHD | 447

The design for the database13 did not need to be reinvented; rather, the pro-
ject could build upon a database developed in a DFG-funded project (Verena
Klemm, Leipzig University) that was intended for the Arabic, Persian, and Turk-
ish manuscripts of Leipzig University Library.14 The data model for that database
was largely built upon KOHD’s description scheme. Between 2016 and 2019, the
KOHD Digital model was gradually adapted to fit other language groups includ-
ed in the KOHD project.15
This step uncovered huge differences between the manuscript cultures, an
insight that had previously been hidden by the numerous sections and subsec-
tions in the VOHD series. Nevertheless, it proved possible to create a data model
that was appropriate for all language groups and subgroups.
The final data model allows almost everything mentioned in the printed
catalogues to be included. On the other hand, the approaching end of funding
made it necessary to confine the work to the following elementary data:
1. Shelf mark
2. Possessing institution
3. Author
4. Biographical data
5. Author: bibliographical reference
6. Work title
7. Incipit in original script
8. Subject matter16
9. Number of folios
10. Measurement of folios/text areas
11. Number of lines
12. Copyist
13. Date of writing
14. Place of writing

||
13 In fact, the project had to design a second database because the specifics of the Coptic
literary papyri catalogued in the Berlin workgroup ‘Coptic manuscripts’ demand a special
treatment. Descriptions of the papyri, parchments, paper manuscripts, and ostraca are
recorded in the database KOHD Coptica <https://coptica.kohd.adw-goe.de> (accessed on
22 April 2021, as all the other links quoted in this article).
14 <https://www.islamic-manuscripts.net/content/index.xml>.
15 Both KOHD Digital and its Leipzig precursor are, on the level of data processing, much
obliged to Jens Kupferschmidt (Computing Centre of Leipzig University).
16 To develop a universal thesaurus for subject matter that is applicable to all language
groups seems to be an almost insuperable task. Therefore, the present subject-matter
taxonomy is quite rough.
448 | Tilman Seidensticker

15. Completeness
16. Reference to further copies
17. Glosses
18. Remarks

In practice, additional information can be given, and not only in the final ‘re-
marks’ field. If, for example, the cataloguing expert is able to easily identify a
special type of script or the specific content, he or she can include this infor-
mation in a data field specifically provided for this sort of metadata, and this
field will then be visible to the users; if empty, it will not be visible.
Online databases have marked benefits, primarily instant worldwide acces-
sibility and the possibility to correct mistakes and to add information retrospec-
tively. On the other hand, their sustainability is limited in comparison to printed
volumes, even beyond the question of data backup. A comparison with smart-
phones is revealing. Smartphones are technical marvels when they are released;
their memory capacity and processing power massively dwarf that of the models
they replace. Nevertheless, they all fail and turn into high-tech trash within ten
years. It is the same with databases. The rapid changes in hardware, operating
systems, and other software prohibit any predictions about whether a database
will be (safely) usable even just a decade after the project’s completion.
In the case of KOHD Digital, a way towards sustainability was found, based
on the assumption that the possessing libraries are, in the long term, better able
to provide data sustainability than anybody else, including the Göttingen Acad-
emy of Sciences and Humanities. Among German libraries, the Staatsbibliothek
zu Berlin is the greatest with respect to its collection of Oriental manuscripts,
and this library has accepted its share of responsibility in a highly constructive
manner. A major DFG grant will allow the SBB to establish, from 2020 to 2023, a
digital union catalogue that will provide fundamental metadata of Oriental
manuscripts stored in almost all German libraries. The project was designed by
Christoph Rauch, head librarian of the Oriental Department, who plans to start
this work by focussing on manuscripts in Arabic script. A second project phase
(2023–2025) may ensure that data from South Asian and Turfan manuscripts can
be included as well. Data from printed catalogues published prior to or outside
the VOHD series, as well as data from the VOHD series and from KOHD Digital,
will be contained on this platform, Orient-Digital. (Meanwhile, the problem of
 Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project KOHD | 449

sustainability for databases of recent decades has been identified on the level of
the DFG as an important general task.17)

4 The method of cataloguing

Before work started, Wolfgang Voigt published a detailed cataloguing scheme
that was mandatory for all language groups.18 A number of experts had deliber-
ated on it during the 24th International Congress of Orientalists in Munich in
1957.19 This scheme tended to be rather exhaustive but at the same time it re-
stricted some type of information, which was allowed only in special cases
(such as precious bindings, rare writing support, incomplete or incorrect folia-
tion, etc.). When in 1976 the first two Arabic volumes were published (VOHD
XVIIA, 1 Sellheim; XVIIB, 1 Wagner), a strange disagreement about the appro-
priateness of the scheme as applied to Arabic manuscripts became obvious.
While Wagner stuck to Voigt’s instructions and thus set standards for future
XVIIB volumes, Sellheim denied that catalogues such as Wagner’s were a mean-
ingful enterprise.20 Short handlists, Sellheim argued, were senseless because for
that purpose one could simply print the libraries’ accession books.21 On the
other hand, more detailed descriptions were hardly reasonable in Sellheim’s
eyes, because, as he wrote, the majority of manuscripts contain books or trea-
tises that had been presented in previous catalogues or that have even been
printed.
What Sellheim deemed desirable was to advance research in cataloguing, by
ample reference to secondary or primary literature. The final aim of his work
was nevertheless nothing more than to heap up material, in his words, ‘… daß
sich folglich die Katalogisierung zu einer originären, aktuellen und anregenden
Materialsammlung ausweitet’.22 In his two volumes, this interpretation of the

||
17 The initiative National Research Data Infrastructure (German abbreviation: NFDI) will,
according to a letter of intent from 2020, try to preserve the ruins of as many former database as
possible; cf. <https://www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/programmes/nfdi/index.html>.
18 Voigt 1957/58, 72–75.
19 George 1983, 159.
20 VOHD XVIIA 1, xvi–xvii. The principal thoughts of Sellheim’s introduction had already
been published two years earlier in a programmatic article bearing the title ‘The Cataloguing of
Arabic Manuscripts as a Literary Problem’ (Sellheim 1974).
21 In recent decades it has become clear that in countless cases the accession books are
unreliable.
22 VOHD XVIIA, 1, xvii.
450 | Tilman Seidensticker

task brought forth graphic tables with transmitter chains, genealogical trees of
authors, scribes, commentators, and former owners, stemmata of commentaries
and glosses, and much more. These scholarly digressions are highly valuable
for special aspects of Arabic literature and its transmission, but they are decid-
edly not what one would look for in a manuscript catalogue. Any ambition to
make the masses of Arabic manuscripts accessible to the scholarly public de-
mands more pragmatism than Sellheim was willing to allow.
Being committed to Voigt’s scheme and, of course, Wagner’s paradigmatic
volume XVIIB, 1, the remaining thirteen volumes of the Arabic XVIIB section
exhibit diversity in detail. To some extent, the authors were free to pay particu-
lar attention to aspects they regarded as especially important. From about 2010,
all participants were aware of the project’s approaching phase-out. Nothing can
illustrate this change better than Rosemarie Quiring-Zoche’s two volumes VOHD
XVIIB, 7 and 13, both devoted to manuscripts from the SBB and compiled more
or less simultaneously. In this case, the project’s obligation to make sufficient
progress resulted in a bipartite course of action. Quiring-Zoche decided, based
on decades of experience, which manuscripts merited a long description (in
VOHD XVIIB, 7). The remaining manuscripts were catalogued in a short format
that was, up to that point, unusual (in VOHD XVIIB, 13), taking Rudolf Mach’s
Catalogue of Arabic manuscripts (Yahuda section) in the Garrett Collection,
Princeton University Library (Princeton 1977) as a model. As Fig. 1 shows, for
each work (a) its title, (b) the author, (c) his dates, including references, and
(d) the incipit23 are given. For the manuscripts (six in that example), only
(e) shelf mark, (f) number of folios, (g) number of lines, (h) text-area measure-
ment, (i) name of the scribe, and, if known, (j) the place and date of writing are
given.
In this way, each manuscript is described in no more than one or two lines.
By contrast, in her other volume, XVIIB, 7, Quiring-Zoche devotes about one
page to each work, and in some instances even more (for example, three and a
half pages in the case of no. 71, pp. 60–64). Although the resemblance of vol-
ume 13 to a handlist is exceptional in the XVIIB section, the format did allow a
forward leap of 724 manuscripts in describing the SBB’s Arabic holdings within
a short time.

||
23 It is inevitable that in this way the incipit is a standardized version; in other volumes the
actual incipits, with their mistakes and deviations, are given.
 Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project KOHD | 451

Fig. 1: Cut-out from VOHD XVIIB, 13, 56, showing the entry for a famous work on the prophet
Muḥammad from the sixth century AH (twelfth century CE). Six copies are listed in a total of nine
lines.

5 The introductions
Catalogues, which describe manuscripts one by one, cannot be properly used
without indexes. The basic indexes include those referring to titles (in Arabic
script and in transliteration), authors, scribes, and dated manuscripts. In addi-
tion, (a) places and buildings and (b) things (Sachen), terms, and groups of per-
sons (XVIIB, 3, 5–12) can be made accessible by providing separate indexes. When
it seemed appropriate, indexes of illuminated, illustrated, or otherwise particu-
larly ornamented manuscripts were given (XVIIB, 2, 8–9). Further indexes of sin-
gle collections or provenance (Yemenite, Maghribī) are provided in two volumes
(XVIIB, 1 and 7). Nevertheless it is the introductions that are the most important
place for presenting observations of a more general character. They contain a
wealth of information, some aspects of which are presented in the list below.
– Although the indexes of dated manuscripts are an important and obligatory
guide to the age of the manuscript in question, most introductions supply
additional information on this subject, as well as tables showing the distri-
bution of the volume’s manuscripts according to century.
– Manuscripts containing unique, rare, or (in some sense) important texts are
treated in detail, as are autographs or copies closely related to them. These
paragraphs are particularly important to philologists.
452 | Tilman Seidensticker

– When components of separate collections are contained in the catalogued

manuscript groups, the background of these collections is covered. Ewald
Wagner has given an overview of the collection of Rushayd Daḥdāḥ (XVIIB,
1, xvi–xvii); Rosemarie Quiring-Zoche has sketched the characteristics of
the so-called Rescher collection, which mainly stems from the medrese mi-
lieu in Turkey and in the Balkans under Ottoman rule (XVIIB, 3, xii–xiii).24
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München owns 154 manuscripts from
Yemen, acquired from Eduard Glaser. In a separate part of his introduction
to XVIIB, 8 (pp. xxi–xxxviii), Sobieroj discusses these holdings, including
their background, content, specifics, etc. A group of 26 manuscripts from
the SBB, shelf-mark group ‘Hs. or.’, also originates from Yemen; their spe-
cifics are described by Quiring-Zoche in XVIIB, 7 (pp. xiii–xvi).25 Arabic
manuscripts from the Maghreb are easily identified by their specific script.
In XVIIB, 7, a separate section of the introduction is devoted to the 15 Ma-
ghribī codices, especially their thematic range, described in that volume by
Quiring-Zoche (pp. xvi–xviii). A very special type of provenance, quite
common in the older holdings of German libraries, is the Türkenbeute, that
is, spoils from the wars between European powers and the Ottoman Em-
pire.26 In his Thüringen volume (XXXVII, 5), Sobieroj studied the collections
that were acquired in this way and are kept at the libraries in Jena and
Weimar (xiii–xiv). A shorter section of the introduction to XVIIB, 7, by
Quiring-Zoche, is devoted to the same type of collection held by the SBB
(p. xix).
– Closely related to the question of collections and provenance is the matter
of former (particularly Oriental) ownership. In the introductions to volumes
XVIIB, 3, 5–8, and 12, the former owners are discussed. In XVIIB, 3, Quiring-
Zoche analyses their professions (p. xx). In XVIIB, 6, xiii–xiv, she presents
the chain of owners as preserved by notes in the 1170 AH /1756–7 CE copy of
an Arabic dictionary. It was copied in Baghdad, purchased by a Damascene
Christian monk, later sold to Shiraz, and finally came into the possession of
a family member of the Iranian ruler Nāṣir al-Dīn (reigned 1264–1313 AH /
1848–1896 CE) (pp. xii–xiii).

||
24 Quiring-Zoche’s cataloguing work on the Rescher collection led her to author an article on
Arabic literature in the Ottoman Empire; see Quiring-Zoche 1989.
25 For further studies specifically devoted to Yemenite manuscripts, see Quiring-Zoche’s vol-
ume XVIIB, 7, xiii, n. 2.
26 On the Türkenbeute, see Seidensticker 2017, 78–80.
 Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project KOHD | 453

– The scribes have been a topic of interest in several introductions (XVIIB, 3,

8–9, 12). Quiring-Zoche has written about their professions (XVIIB, 3, xx);
Sobieroj presents important results concerning their mode of working, es-
pecially the time it took to copy manuscripts (XVIIB, 8, xxx–xxxi; 9, xviii–
xix). In XVIIB, 12, xxv–xxvi, Sobieroj deals with manuscripts that were writ-
ten for the scribes’ own use.
– Art historians might be interested in illuminated and illustrated manu-
scripts or those written by calligraphers. Beyond the aforementioned index-
es, some introductions devote special attention to such holdings, including
Schoeler’s volume XVIIB, 2, xvii; Sobieroj’s volumes XVIIB, 8, xviii and
XVIIB, 9, xvii; Schoeler’s volume XVIIB, 14, xvi–xvii; and Quiring-Zoche’s
volume XVIIB, 7, xix–xx. The bindings are given special attention in the
last-mentioned volume, pp. xx–xxii, as well as in Müller’s volume XVIIB, 11,
xxii–xxiii.

Notwithstanding the increasing time pressure, the authors were able to pay due
attention to detail. In this way, the introductions yield an increase of manu-
scriptological knowledge in many instances. For example, in XVIIB, 8, Florian
Sobieroj was able to present a formerly unknown, specifically Yemenite Arabic
term, qaṣāṣa, which obviously denotes some sort of collation (p. xxv). On the
doublures of two Yemenite manuscripts, he also detected notes about marriages
(p. xxxvii, n. 55). While the use of Arabic manuscripts as a family register is,
generally speaking, a well-known practice, any mention of spouses was previ-
ously unknown. Some years later, Rosemarie Quiring-Zoche announced a simi-
lar discovery in another Yemenite manuscript (XVIIB, 7, xv). The XVIIB volumes
do not pay particular attention to watermarks, but Kathrin Müller decided to do
so in her two volumes XVIIB, 10 and 11 (and provided indexes for them). While it
was previously known that in Venetian paper the three-crescents watermark (tre
lune) began to dominate by the second half of the eleventh century AH (seven-
teenth century CE), in her introduction to XVIIB, 10 (p. 23) Müller draws atten-
tion to tre lune watermarks in a manuscript written in 1035 AH / 1626 CE.

6 Conclusion
That catalogues published over a span of forty-five years by several authors
differ in many respects is no surprise. The background for these differences
given in this article demonstrates that, for several reasons, there is not just one
adequate or correct method of cataloguing. The wealth of information to be
454 | Tilman Seidensticker

found in many of the different volumes’ introductions shows that one type of
information will be lost during the transition from print publishing to data-
bases: even though the introductions comment on sometimes random selec-
tions of manuscripts, observations about collections and groups of manuscripts,
made by people with intimate knowledge of these selections, are rarely acco-
modated in databases. It is hoped that the cataloguer’s focus on manuscript
groups and the commonalities within these groups will somehow survive the
change of media.

Acknowledgements
My cordial thanks to Christoph Rauch (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) for his help,
particularly for providing access to the project files kept by the Orientabteilung,
as well as to Beate Wiesmüller (KOHD Hamburg), Florian Sobieroj (KOHD Jena),
and Gregor Schoeler (Basel) for their valuable comments on a draft version of
this article.

Abbreviations
BSB Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München
SBB Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz
VOHD Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland (see below; all
references to the VOHD volumes can be checked on the project’s website:
<https://adw-goe.de/forschung/forschungsprojekte-akademienprogramm/
kohd/publikations-serie/>.)

References
Aumer, Joseph (1866), Die arabischen Handschriften der K. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in Mün-
chen, Munich: Palm’sche Hofbuchhandlung.
Brockelmann, Carl (1908), Katalog der orientalischen Handschriften der Staats- und Universi-
tätsbibliothek zu Hamburg. Die arabischen, persischen … Handschriften, Hamburg:
Meissner.
Franke, Herbert, Walther Heissig and Wolfgang Treue (eds) (1976), Folia rara: Wolfgang Voigt
LXV. diem natalem celebranti ab amicis et catalogorum codicum orientalium conscriben-
dorum collegis dedicata (VOHD, Supplement vol. 19), Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.
George, Dieter (1983), ‘25 Jahre Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutsch-
land’, Mitteilungen der Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 15: 156–165.
Hammerschmidt, Ernst (1985), ‘Wolfgang Voigt (1911–1982)’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgen-
ländischen Gesellschaft, 135: 1–9.
 Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project KOHD | 455

Kraatz, Martin (1987), ‘Dieter George (1935–1985)’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländi-
schen Gesellschaft, 137: 12–19.
Meyer, Wilhelm (ed) (1894), Verzeichniss der Handschriften im Preußischen Staate. I.3.3: Die
Handschriften in Göttingen. Universitäts-Bibliothek: Nachlässe von Gelehrten; Orientali-
sche Handschriften. Handschriften im Besitz von Instituten und Behörden. Register zu
Band 1-3, Berlin: Bath.
Pertsch, Wilhelm (1878–92), Die arabischen Handschriften der Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu
Gotha, 5 vols (Die Orientalischen Handschriften, 3–5), Gotha: Perthes.
Quiring-Zoche, Rosemarie (1989), ‘Arabisches Schrifttum im Osmanischen Reich: Zur Hand-
schriften-Sammlung Rescher’, in Ewald Wagner and Klaus Röhrborn (eds), Kaškūl. Fest-
schrift zum 25. Jahrestag der Wiederbegründung des Instituts für Orientalistik an der
Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 100–115.
Seidensticker, Tilman (2017), ‘How Arabic Manuscripts Moved to German Libraries’, manuscript
cultures, 10: 73–82.
Sellheim, Rudolf (1974), ‘The Cataloguing of Arabic Manuscripts as a Literary Problem’, Oriens,
23/24: 306–311.
Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, Wolfgang Voigt [then successi-
vely: Dieter George, Hartmut-Ortwin Feistel, Tilman Seidensticker] (eds) (1961–), Wiesba-
den: Steiner.
Voigt, Wolfgang (1957/58), ‘Anhang. Katalogisierung der orientalischen Handschriften in
Deutschland’, Westdeutsche Bibliothek. Jahresbericht 1957/58: 67–76.
Voigt, Wolfgang (ed) (1966), Forschungen und Fortschritte der Katalogisierung der Orientali-
schen Handschriften in Deutschland. Marburger Kolloquium 1965 (Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft, Forschungsberichte, 10), Wiesbaden: Steiner.
456 | Tilman Seidensticker

Fig. 2: DFG grant letter, directed to Wolfgang Voigt; photocopy of the original document, con-
tained in the file ‘Schwerpunktaufgaben DFG. Handschriftenkatalogisierung. I’, which is stored
in the files of the KOHD project, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Orient-
abteilung. (The personnel costs of 78,400 German marks amount to 9,800 German marks
annually per person, which is surprisingly low. A year later, the sum of 15,034 German marks
annually per person was calculated, due to improved pay scales; cf. Voigt’s letter to the DFG,
dated 21 Jan. 1959, same file.)
Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski
Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts:
Introducing Categories Based on Content,
Use, and Production
Abstract: In recent years, multiple-text manuscripts (MTMs) have attracted
growing academic interest. MTMs deserve ample attention, since they constitute
the majority of manuscripts in many cultures. The aim of this article is to cate-
gorize MTMs in a way that goes beyond textual content or mere codicological
features. Focusing on and combining three aspects (content, use, and produc-
tion), we propose the following categories: Petrified MTMs, Intertwined MTMs,
Open MTMs, Repurposed MTMs, and Recycled MTMs. These MTM categories
reflect commonly shared phenomena and can be applied to MTMs from various
manuscript cultures. At the centre of our approach is an attempt to better un-
derstand the projects behind MTMs. In this way, we seek to analyse and catego-
rize MTMs with regard to their emergence, transmission, use, reception, and
perception.

1 Introduction
The present article evolved from an ongoing discussion about multiple-text
manuscripts (MTMs) which took place within the framework of the Sonder-
forschungsbereich ‘Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa’ at the
Universität Hamburg, beginning in 2011.1 More specifically, the article has its
beginnings in the workshop ‘Typology of Multiple-Text Manuscripts’, organized
by the authors of this article, together with Martin Delhey and Vito Lorusso in
April 2016.2 After our many discussions about these manuscripts, we have
aimed at unravelling the ‘MTM net’. Our contribution, which is only a first at-

||
1 The concept of multiple-text manuscripts has been variously investigated in recent years:
the phenomenon and related terminology have been described by Maniaci 2004; Gumbert
2004; Gumbert 2010; Bausi 2004; and Bausi 2010; recent collective volumes have been edited
by Friedrich and Schwarke 2016; and by Bausi et al. 2019.
2 Papers were presented by Michael Baldzuhn, Wiebke Beyer, Jonas Buchholz, Philippe Depreux,
Jens Gerlach, Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, Gisela Procházka-Eisl, and Thies Staack. We would like to
thank all of them for providing valuable insights which stimulated the present article.

Open Access. © 2021 Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski, published by De Gruyter. This work
is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-024
460 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

tempt at an elaborated typology of MTMs, focuses mainly on codex manu-

scripts. We hope that colleagues working on non-codex MTMs will follow up on
the categories that we propose here and adapt them based on the material
available in their respective manuscript cultures.
The MTMs discussed in the following pages are ‘made up of more than one
text and have been planned and realized for a single project with one consistent
intention; as a result, they are usually made of a single production unit’.3 The
project behind an MTM can be realized over a shorter or longer period of time
and by one or more than one person. In some cases, the production unit is made
with the space to accommodate only the fixed number of texts that are meant to
be included. In other cases, this unit can be expanded over time by adding fresh
leaves to accommodate additional texts.4 In still other cases, the unit can be a
blank book, which the MTM-makers either assemble themselves or purchase as
a ready-made notebook. And last but not least, there are cases in which the
project implies the use of an existing codicological unit from a previous project,
whether that unit is an MTM or a single-text manuscript (STM).5 MTMs can be
single-volume or multi-volume manuscripts. Composite manuscripts, which are
distinct from MTMs, will not be considered in our discussion. Therefore, we
exclude manuscripts that were enlarged by the addition of a circulation unit or
parts of it.
Typologies or classifications of MTMs exist in various disciplines and are of-
ten concerned with the content of these manuscripts. In Turkish and Ottoman
studies, for example, there have been several attempts to refine existing classi-
fications or to introduce new ones – usually with a focus on genre, theme, and
authorship.6 In the field of European codicology, the recently proposed classifi-
cations consider both textual and codicological aspects.7 In 2010, Alessandro
Bausi described the Corpus-Organizer, an MTM category based on the following
three criteria: content, use, and production.8
Taking up the combined approach of Bausi, we focus on the same three as-
pects to identify other MTM categories. The intricate relationship between the

||
3 Bausi et al. 2019, vii.
4 Cf. ‘UniProd-MC’ in Andrist et al. 2013, 60, or ‘enlarged unit’ and ‘extended unit’ in Gumbert
2004, 31–33.
5 Cf. ‘UniProd-C’, ‘UniProd-MC’, and ‘Uni-Prod-C-MC’ in Andrist et al. 2013, 60.
6 For a short summary, and the plea for a ‘detailed, painstaking classification’ of personal
MTMs, see Procházka-Eisl and Çelik 2015, 7–8.
7 Cf. for instance ‘codice monotestuale/pluritestuale monoblocco’ in Maniaci 2004, 82 and 87–
90; ‘monomerous’ in Gumbert 2004, 26–29.
8 Bausi 2010a.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 461

content, use, and production of MTMs is as self-apparent as it is with all manu-

scripts.9 For instance, an MTM used in rituals by more than one person can have
features that differ from those of an MTM produced by a single person for pri-
vate study. More concretely, a ritual manual for communal use is more likely to
exhibit neat handwriting and a self-contained text structure, while to an outside
observer the private notebook of a scholar may appear less carefully written or
less well arranged. In such cases, the combination of decisive features related to
use, production, and content can help us to identify various MTM categories.
Therefore, our treatment of MTMs focuses on the projects behind these
manuscripts. Detecting the various layers of a notebook, for example, is a start-
ing point of the analysis we propose. Next, however, we would examine the
relationship between these layers and the relationship of these layers to the
MTM project or projects. In short, following Patrick Andrist, Paul Canart, and
Marilena Maniaci,10 we propose to tease apart the layers of a codex and try to
associate the individual layers to distinct projects. In so doing, we seek to better
understand whether an MTM was planned from the beginning to consist of vari-
ous layers or was designed as a single production unit.
In addition, we compare observations regarding individual MTMs with
other manuscripts from the same context as well as related contexts. In the case
of content, for example, we suggest an informed comparison of the MTM(s) in
question with other manuscripts carrying similar or related texts. In this way,
we seek to better understand and categorize MTMs with regard to their emer-
gence, transmission, use, reception, and perception. Needless to say, only a few
cases allow such a multifaceted investigation, which demands ample historical
sources, including both manuscript evidence and secondary literature. But it is
from these studies that we are able to learn more about cultural patterns, which
can inform our hypotheses about MTMs with a less well-documented history.

2 Content
The most obvious question to ask about MTMs concerns their textual content.
With or without sufficient information about the context in which an MTM was
used and produced, our starting point is the identification of the texts collected,
followed by an analysis of their content, with particular attention to the order in

||
9 Cf. Wimmer et al. 2015.
10 Andrist et al. 2013.
462 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

which the texts appear. This examination focuses on the combination of at least
the following criteria: (a) genre, (b) theme, (c) text form, (d) text structure,
(e) text organization within the manuscripts, (f) language.
The identification of some of these criteria can be problematic, since they
are abstract concepts created within the scholarship of specific (mostly West-
ern) cultures. The reception, variety, and diversity of genres, themes, and text-
forms in non-Western cultures do not necessarily reflect categories that are
valid for Western scholars. Therefore, while the different languages in an MTM
can be objectively discerned (independent of linguistic arguments, such as
whether they are proper languages or dialects of the same language), the under-
standing of genre, themes, text structure, or text organization largely depends
on subjective evaluation and in-depth knowledge of the literary and material
patterns proper to specific cultures across time. Hence it is possible that some
researchers will characterize the same MTM as unorganized and others as sys-
tematic, depending, for example, on their individual expertise and familiarity
with similar manuscripts within a specific manuscript culture or across several
such cultures.
To better understand and classify MTMs, the individual texts and their ar-
rangement in the manuscripts need to be evaluated and compared both in syn-
chronic and diachronic perspective. In the first case, a contrastive analysis of
the manuscripts produced in the same milieu and period and transmitting the
same or similar content can reveal precious information regarding the presence
and diffusion of specific MTM forms. In the second case, analysing the trans-
mission of the individual (or groups of) texts attested in the MTMs can reveal:
(a) the genesis of each individual manuscript, (b) the process behind the for-
mation of specific MTM forms, (c) whether texts that had previously circulated
in STMs or in MTMs were rearranged in new MTM forms, and (d) the reasons
behind this process.

3 Use
Like all other manuscripts, each MTM is made to fulfil the needs of its users –
whether they are the MTM-makers themselves, the commissioners, or others,
who are not actively involved in making the manuscript, but are supposed to
use it later. These needs depend on various factors, among which the following
may be named as examples: (a) context(s) of use, (b) number of users, (c) mode(s)
of use.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 463

The making of MTMs is present in many cultural contexts, but there is a

remarkable number of individual MTMs that belong to the educational, profes-
sional, and ritual, or liturgical, contexts, to name just a few. In many cases,
these contexts are not easily separable. For instance, education covers scholar-
ship, which is also a professional activity and can be concerned with ritual.
However, or precisely because of this, it appears that in many cases MTMs were
best able to meet the demand of some manuscript users and were a popular
choice when circumstances allowed. As Alessandro Bausi outlined,

[…] one of the main tasks carried out in a manuscript culture by a MTM […] is to fix the in-
tellectual production of a given time, plan to transmit it to the future, and interact with
that transmitted from the past or excerpting and adapting new materials of different prov-
enance from different linguistic and cultural domains. This goal is achieved by putting in
direct, physical contact, and consequently in conceptual proximity, different knowledge
from different times, places, and contexts, causing hybridizations, new alchemies, and
new interpretations, by transferring mental assumptions to the physical level and vice-
versa. 11

Pupils, scholars, judges, and ritual practitioners, for example, compiled their
own text collections, tailored for their specific and personal needs. It is assumed
that many personalized MTMs remained in the hands of their compilers and
were not accessed by other users. Such personal use can be mirrored in the
organization or layout of personal text collections, whose features may be less
obvious to outside observers. There are of course manuscripts that exhibit later
use or reuse, but this subsequent use is not to be confused with a continuation
of the project behind an MTM, which can include successive producers and
users.
Manuals that assemble texts for various kinds of performances, most prom-
inently for rituals, constitute another common type of MTM. These collections of
prayers, hymns, invocations, or formulae are often prepared for several users,
such as the religious specialists of a given congregation or the members of a
ritual community. These MTMs may be used during the ritual, to facilitate read-
ing aloud or singing, for example, or they may serve as templates for memoriza-
tion or as aides-memoires. Such manuals may belong to congregations or
communities that commissioned their production, retained them in their custo-
dy, and sometimes adapted them to ritual changes.

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11 Bausi et al. 2019, ix.
464 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

4 Production
Our understanding of MTMs not only relates to their content, but also defines
them in accordance with their production: an MTM usually encompasses one
production unit and is the result of a single project. What at first reads as simple
can become complex in reality. A single MTM-maker, who outlines the project,
accomplishes it without help, and does so in a fixed period of time, is the simple
case. Even if we think of multi-volume MTMs or a group of MTM-makers, for
example, artists in a workshop or a circle of scholars, such projects are rather
straightforward.
Among the more complex cases are MTM projects that imply continuous
work on the codicological units and that did not predetermine in detail which
texts were to be included. Individual notebooks or commonplace books are such
cases, since the makers of these MTMs planned to gradually add texts and,
when needed, to enlarge the codicological units by inserting fresh leaves or
fascicles, for example, or to continue in a new volume. Other examples are
MTMs that were compiled by more than one person, such as Hausbücher, ar-
chival registers, and albums of friends (alba amicorum), whether such manu-
scripts belonged to a family or an institution, as in the first two cases, or were
meant to remain with a single person, as in the case of an album amicorum.
Some of these manuscripts consist of ready-made blank books, available at pre-
modern stationeries and bookbinders; other such manuscripts were assembled
and prepared by those who kept them. We call these manuscripts Open MTMs,
and we will elaborate on them shortly.
MTMs whose makers made use of an existing, text-carrying codicological
unit in order to realize their projects constitute another case both intricate and
common. Numerous are the examples from various manuscript cultures in
which an MTM was made by starting from a previous production unit and add-
ing new texts such as translations, commentaries, and many other kinds of
texts, which relate to the content of the existing production unit. Sometimes, by
starting with a manuscript containing a work and adding more text to it in emp-
ty margins, on blank pages, in between lines, or on attached empty leaves, the
MTM-makers turned an STM into an MTM. Other times, we observe that MTM-
makers started their own project by reusing a previously prepared MTM.
For us as scholars, it can be hard to distinguish subsequent additions which
are part of the same project from subsequent projects in the same codicological
unit. Yet because the phenomenon of reusing codices to form MTMs is wide-
spread in some cultures we include it in the category of Repurposed MTMs; we
will delve into its details and give examples shortly. In La Syntaxe du codex,
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 465

these phenomena are approached through the concept of layers.12 We see this
codicological approach as parallel to our perspective, which considers the stra-
tigraphy of the codex within the framework of MTM projects.
The differences between MTM projects can become visible in the manu-
scripts’ layout features. Some MTMs have a visual organization designed to host
the various texts and facilitate navigation back and forth between them. We can
assume that the makers of such manuscripts prepared a suitable layout from
scratch, sometimes employing existing layout conventions. In some cases, the
contents were arranged in running text, one after the other, and in order to
separate the textual units, the MTM-makers used graphic elements or inserted
headings and titles. Another convention is the arrangement of translations,
commentaries, or glosses to a text in a parallel or additional column, in pre-
designed, generously wide margins, or in interlinear spaces. But there is also a
considerable number of MTMs with a visual organization that is less elaborate
or that follows individual patterns which we cannot easily understand. Not to be
forgotten, of course, are those MTMs in which the layout alternates from, for
example, columns to running text and back.
Repurposed MTMs are not necessarily in line with the common layout con-
ventions of MTMs as described above. This peculiarity is often due to the fact
that the visual organization of the existing codicological unit determined the
layout of the ‘new’ MTM. In such cases, the MTM-makers had to find their own
solutions to fit their texts into the existing layout.

5 Titles and labels

Some key features to be taken into consideration when seeking to understand
and categorize MTMs in relation to content, use, and production are labels and
titles.13 These features help us to understand how MTMs are perceived within a
specific manuscript culture.
Labels can be assigned to MTMs that transmit a defined corpus of texts
which is recognized as such in the local traditions. Sometimes, labels can also
refer to a genre, conveying an idea of what the MTMs contain.14 The individual
texts in the MTMs can have titles but are still considered part of the corpus that

||
12 Andrist et al. 2013.
13 On this topic, cf. Brita et al. (forthcoming).
14 The relationship between MTM label and genre was discussed in the meeting of CSMC
Research Area C on 7 July 2014.
466 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

is identified by the label. The label can be written on the cover or appear in a
margin, subscription, or colophon of the MTM, but a label is not necessarily
required to appear in the manuscript. Sometimes these labels appear in histori-
cal inventories and catalogues of collections; more rarely, they are also attested
in catalogues compiled by modern (Western) scholars. The tendency in modern
scholarship, however, is to assign generic labels. ‘Miscellany’, for instance, does
not reveal anything except that the manuscript under scrutiny is an MTM. ‘An-
thology’ and ‘florilegium’ usually indicate that the texts included are texts se-
lected from one or more authors. A less generic label assigned by scholars is
Hausbuch (‘house book’), which was intended to identify German medieval
MTMs that belonged to a family and transmitted practical knowledge useful for
daily life.15 In German studies, however, there is an ongoing debate about the
appropriateness of this label, since it is not grounded in the manuscript tradi-
tion.16
Within manuscript cultures, labels can refer to the manuscript content. For
instance, Gadla samāʿtāt (‘spiritual combat of the martyrs’) is the label assigned
in the Ethiopian manuscript culture to MTMs that transmit the ‘Acts of the
Martyrs’; similarly, Buyruk (‘the command’) is the label assigned by Alevis to
MTMs containing text collections about their beliefs and practices (more on
these two labels below). A label can also refer to the use of MTMs. An example
are the small protective MTMs that are widespread in the Islamic world and
labelled ḥamāyil or ḥamāʾil (Arabic for ‘things with which one carries some-
thing’) with reference to their portability and common use as amulets.17 Finally,
an example of a label related to production is the Turkish cönk (‘boat’). It refers
to the peculiar and oblong, boat-like shape of MTMs containing certain collec-
tions of poetry.18
Unlike labels, titles are strictly related to the texts transmitted in MTMs and
must be explicitly expressed, whether in short or more elaborate form, either on
the cover or in the core content, margin, heading, subscription, or colophon of
the manuscripts. Consequently, titles are also used to name the books that
contain those texts. As often observed in historical inventories and catalogues,
the title assigned to the MTM is sometimes the title of the first or longest text in
the manuscript, while at other times it is the title of the text or group of texts

||
15 Heiles (forthcoming).
16 Cf. Goldenbaum 2020, 85–98; Heiles (forthcoming).
17 Berthold (forthcoming).
18 Gökyay 1993.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 467

considered most representative or most peculiar out of the entire MTM.19 When
the use of texts in an MTM is changed, such texts may be selected and copied
from the old MTM and recombined in a new one. In such cases the new MTM
may receive a title that differs from the previous one and that reflects the new
use and function of both the texts and the MTM.20 Furthermore, although a title
may not have been part of the initial project (most MTMs do not have one), a
title was sometimes added to the MTM by later users, thus revealing these users’
understanding of the MTM in question.21

6 MTM categories
6.1 Corpus-Organizer MTMs
As the name of this category suggests, Corpus-Organizers are manuscripts con-
taining texts that belong to a defined corpus acknowledged as such in a manu-
script culture and identified by a label. The number of texts that belong to the
corpus is not necessarily definite and can grow over time. All the texts of the
corpus can be attested in a single manuscript, but in the case of large corpora
they can also be variously distributed in a set of manuscripts named with the
same label used to identify the corpus.22 Titles can be assigned to the individual
texts of the corpus, and they are relevant for identifying the textual units within
each manuscript, but it is only the label that allows us to identify the set of Cor-
pus-Organizer MTMs. The criteria adopted for the distribution of the texts over
the set of manuscripts and the sequence of texts within the individual manu-
scripts reflect cultural patterns and can depend on a combination of factors,
such as: (a) circumstances of use ‒ e.g. manuscripts whose texts are arranged in
calendric order for ritual needs; (b) material constraints ‒ e.g. the capacity of
ready-made blank books to host only a certain number of texts of various
length; (c) nature of the content ‒ e.g. texts arranged according to topics in

||
19 Piccione (forthcoming).
20 See Buzi, 2016, 99–100, for instance.
21 Piccione (forthcoming).
22 A set of manuscripts corresponds to a series of cognate MTMs that are all representative of
the corpus and that can be produced and used over either a short or a long period of time. The
need for this clarification derives from the cases in which some texts of the corpus are also
attested in manuscripts that contain other texts not belonging to the corpus and that have a
different label or no label at all. These MTMs are not part of the set of Corpus-Organizer MTMs.
468 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

scientific manuscripts or according to authors in literary manuscripts; (d) length

of the texts ‒ e.g. first longer and then shorter texts. Corpus-Organizer MTMs, as
the term itself suggests, have the function of organizing the corpus. The criteria
adopted for this organization must be detected in each case through contrastive
analysis of a set of MTMs that are related in time and space.
Our understanding of the relationship between a corpus of texts and its ma-
terial realization in MTMs relies on studying the transmission processes of both
the texts and the MTMs. The possibility of reconstructing with a higher or lower
degree of correctness the genesis of a corpus, and consequently its distribution
in the set of MTMs, largely depends on the material evidence available. In the
case of the Gadla samāʿtāt, presented by Alessandro Bausi in his paper about
Corpus-Organizers, it is clear that the formation of the corpus follows a cultural
pattern that is related to the veneration of saints in Ethiopia and the liturgical
use of the MTMs. These texts are indeed liturgical readings about both non-
Ethiopian and, to a lesser extent, Ethiopian saints, and the textual units are
arranged in calendrical order in the individual manuscripts. The practices con-
nected to the veneration of the saints fostered the compilation of this corpus of
hagiographic literature for liturgical use. The texts were initially translated into
Gǝʿǝz from Greek in the late antique period and from Arabic in the early medie-
val period. Since there is no evidence that Gadla samāʿtāt MTMs predate the
thirteenth century, this date is the starting point of our investigation. MTMs
attesting the first layer in the formation of the corpus display a group of previ-
ously translated texts whose prehistory and previous manuscript distribution is
unknown. Due to the presence of a consolidated label (Gadla samāʿtāt), record-
ed in manuscript inventories since the end of the thirteenth century,23 it can be
assumed that these Corpus-Organizer MTMs are the result of previous arrange-
ments (and rearrangements).
The Gadla samāʿtāt corpus continued to grow during the following centu-
ries by the addition of more texts translated from Arabic and the creation of new
texts about local saints. The sequence of the textual units continued to follow
the order of the calendar, but the growth of the corpus prompted a progressive
change in both the format and the layout of the manuscripts, which made it
possible to accommodate more and more texts. The oldest MTMs (end of the
thirteenth, beginning of the fourteenth century) are indeed relatively small in
size, and the textual units are distributed in a two-column layout, whereas,

||
23 The earliest inventories record different forms of the label. In the manuscript EMML 1832,
which contains different inventories dated between 1292 CE and the fourteenth century, we find
the following evidence: Samāʿtāt and Gadla samāʿt (fol. 6r).
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 469

starting from the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century,
the size of the manuscripts progressively increased, and the texts are often laid
out in three columns. From this period, extremely large MTMs (Fig. 1) and two-
volume MTMs (Fig. 2 and 3) are attested.24 In the following centuries, the grow-
ing number of saints to be venerated and the material constraints of these MTMs
must have been the reason for the gradual obsolescence of the Gadla samāʿtāt
MTMs in favour of different types of collections. Among these collections are the
Synaxarion MTMs, which contain abridged versions of hagiographic texts and
could thus better accommodate the saints’ commemorations for the whole litur-
gical year. This was not the case with the Gadla samāʿtāt MTMs, which included
readings for only a few months.25
From a methodological point of view, enlarging our perspective by also tak-
ing into consideration manuscripts that belong to related manuscript cultures
helps us to better understand the complex phenomena of transmission. This is
the case, for instance, with manuscripts transmitting the Śivadharma corpus,26 a
collection of eight texts that is present only in Corpus-Organizer MTMs and ex-
clusively in Nepal. Two individual texts (textual units or discrete units) of the
corpus, however, circulated in other regions of the Indian subcontinent and
most often in different arrangements, with a prevalence of STMs. The Nepalese
Śivadharma manuscripts, which are the earliest evidence of these texts, attest
both a possible first stage in the formation of the corpus (four texts in manu-
script Kathmandu, National Archives of Kathmandu, 6-7, paleographically dated
to the tenth–eleventh century) and a mature stage (eight texts in the manuscript
Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Add. 1645, dated to 1139–1140 CE).
That Śivadharma MTMs were produced and used until the twentieth century is
evidence of their success.27
The perception of the Śivadharma texts as a corpus in Nepalese manuscript
culture is confirmed by a number of colophons, some of which explicitly state
the label (or maybe the title?) of the corpus: (a) ‘a book [named] Śivadharma’

||
24 The two-volume format was most likely adopted as a solution to the difficulties of handling
very large and heavy manuscripts, which had to be transported from the storage house (ʿəqā
bet) to the church to be read on the particular saint’s memorial day. These storage houses are
often located above ground level or in rock-hewn rooms to prevent fire or flood from damaging
the manuscripts.
25 Bausi 2002, 12–14; Bausi 2019; and Brita (forthcoming).
26 De Simini 2016.
27 De Simini 2016, 233–350. Regarding the hypothesis that double foliation in later STMs
indicates that they originally belonged to MTMs, see De Simini 2016, 260–262, esp. 262.
470 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

(‘pustakaṃ śivadharmam’);28 (b) ‘the eight sections of the Śivadharma’ (‘śiva-

dharmāṣṭakhaṇḍa’);29 (c) ‘the supreme book consisting of the 12,000 stanzas of
the Śivadharma, made of one hundred chapters [divided] into eight sections’
(‘śivadharmadvādaśasāhasrikagra • nthaṃ aṣṭo (sic!) khaṇḍaśatādhyāyam
uttamapustaka<m>’);30 (d) ‘thus [is concluded] the great treatise titled Śivadharma’
(‘śivadharmo nāma mahāśāstram iti’).31

6.2 Petrified MTMs

Petrified MTMs display features that reveal a high degree of stability acquired in
the course of time. These features are shared by other manuscripts and are the
outcome of an accomplished project. Petrified MTMs contain a clearly defined
set of texts that is the result of a careful selection process and is perceived as
one work. The process by which these MTMs reach their peculiar configuration
can (but need not) last for centuries. The set of texts transmitted in Petrified
MTMs is always identified by a title that, by extension, is also assigned to the
entire manuscript. Only the sequence in which the texts appear in the MTM may
vary, to a degree, as long as the order reflects a pattern recognized in the respec-
tive manuscript culture. Most important is that these MTMs, with their content
and titles, are recognized or accredited by an institution or by a community.
The manuscripts that contain the four canonical gospels constitute an ex-
ample of Petrified MTMs. Written in the Greek language, the Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were originally transmitted independently in
STM-papyri dated to the second and third centuries.32 The documentation avail-
able also attests the presence of fragmentary manuscripts that contain two of
the four gospels, but there is no evidence of MTMs containing the four gospels
in the second century. Although some of the four gospels were more famous

||
28 Asiatic Society of Calcutta, G4077 (1035–36 CE); cf. De Simini 2016, 251 (this manuscript
does not contain the Śivadharma corpus).
29 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Or. B 125 (1187 CE); cf. De Simini 2016, 254.
30 Kathmandu, National Archives of Kathmandu, 5-737 (Nepal-German Manuscript Preserva-
tion Project A 3/3) (1201 CE); cf. De Simini 2016, 255.
31 Kathmandu, National Archives of Kathmandu, 1-882 (Nepal-German Manuscript Preserva-
tion Project A 62/10); cf. De Simini 2016, 262. The manuscript is an STM, but according to De
Simini (2016, 262), ‘This manuscript is […] plainly a severed codicological unit originally be-
longing to an MTM.’
32 On the history of the circulation of the gospel manuscripts and the emergence of MTMs, see
Crawford 2019 (esp. 111–113), on which the present section is largely based.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 471

than others, they were regarded like many similar texts that spread during that
period. It is only from the mid third century that we have the first evidence of a
Petrified MTM containing the four gospels. However, manuscripts transmitting a
fewer number of gospels (or single gospels) continued to be produced on occa-
sion during that period and later. Finally, from the fourth century onwards,
four-gospel MTMs became widespread across all Christian cultures, exhibiting a
high degree of uniformity.
The selection and inclusion of these four texts in the canon of Holy Scrip-
ture is the reason why the four-gospel MTMs started to display such a degree of
stability, in spite of some variation in the order of the gospels themselves. As
Crawford underlines,

[t]he only significant deviation across our surviving four-gospel codices from this period is
that these four texts were ordered in two alternate sequences that competed with one an-
other for supremacy for a short time. Modern Bibles print them in the order Matthew-
Mark-Luke-John, and most surviving copies from Late Antiquity onwards reflect this same
sequence. However, this was not the only order and may not have been the earliest. 45,
[…] the earliest surviving four-gospel codex, follows the sequence Matthew-John-Luke-
Mark, and copies of the Old Latin translation of the gospels usually also have this order.
However, this alternate sequence died out in the Latin world as Jerome’s new Latin trans-
lation won favour from the late fourth century onwards, and it eventually faded away in
the Greek world as well. Hence, in contrast to the variability exhibited by some MTMs con-
temporaneous with the manuscripts we have been considering, the four-gospel collection
achieved at an early stage a distinct stability attesting to its conceptual status as an au-
thoritative corpus of texts. 33

We consider these manuscripts Petrified MTMs because they received official

recognition in their specific configuration, including the oscillation in the se-
quence of the four texts. In manuscripts, none of the four canonical gospels has
ever been assembled together with other gospels that were not accepted in the
Christian ritual canon.34
Petrified MTMs can originate from Corpus-Organizer manuscripts. This hap-
pens when, due to specific circumstances, only a certain number of texts from
Corpus-Organizers are selected and included in Petrified MTMs. In the case of
small corpora, it is certainly possible that all texts of the corpus turn into Petri-
fied MTMs. In these cases, very often, the label of the Corpus-Organizer MTMs
becomes the title of the Petrified MTMs.

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33 Crawford 2019, 113.
34 See Crawford 2019, 113.
472 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

For instance, one may wonder whether Śivadharma has been considered the
title and not the label of this set of texts and, consequently, whether the Nepa-
lese MTMs circulating from the twelfth century onwards may be considered
Petrified MTMs originating from Corpus-Organizer MTMs. Starting from this
period, indeed, all Śivadharma MTMs transmit a clear, defined, and stable set of
eight texts that in the colophons are named aṣṭakhaṇḍa, or ‘sections’,35 rather
than pustaka, or ‘books’, as in pre-twelfth-century attestations.36 Besides the
title and the idea of a unitary work as conveyed by the colophons, what is inter-
esting is that these manuscripts were read during ritual performances, both in
sacred and private spaces, and also worshipped.37 This ritual use indicates that
Śivadharma MTMs might have obtained the status of officially recognized man-
uscripts in practices of Śiva veneration, which not only included the transmis-
sion of behavioural rules to the lay Śaiva community, but also responded to the
need of manuscript donors to accumulate merit.38
The shift from Corpus-Organizer MTMs to Petrified MTMs is, by definition,
limited to manuscripts. Nevertheless, by expanding our view to include print,
we can observe similar developments taking place. For instance, until the mid
twentieth century some Alevi religious communities had Corpus-Organizer
MTMs with the label Buyruk, in which they collected central texts of their tradi-
tion. The label Buyruk does not appear in the manuscripts but is first attested in
Alevi oral lore from the mid nineteenth century. Today, various sub-labels and
even manuscript names exist. This situation invites thorough investigation,
since academic work on the subject is exerting increasing influence within the
community. But we can see a clear trend among Alevis to revise texts of such
manuscripts and publish them under the title Buyruk.39 In this way, the contents
of some Corpus-Organizer MTMs become petrified, though in print, and their

||
35 Cf. De Simini 2016, 254 and 256, where De Simini, with reference to the colophon of manu-
script Kathmandu, National Archives of Kathmandu, 5-737, states: ‘The brief mention of “su-
preme book […] of the Śivadharma” given in this colophon is truly remarkable, since here the
corpus is regarded as one single work, for which the scribe gives a rough total amount of stan-
zas and chapters and which he depicts as divided into eight sections, which actually corre-
spond to the eight works.’
36 The current state of research in Sanskrit studies and, above all, our lack of expertise, do not
allow a definitive answer here, but scholars working on Śivadharma MTMs in ‘The Śivadharma
Project’ (ERC Starting Grant Project), led by Florinda De Simini at the University of Naples
‘L’Orientale’, may soon delve into such issues.
37 De Simini 2016, 256–259.
38 See De Simini 2016, 269–270.
39 See Karolewski 2021.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 473

label is transformed into a title. An analogous phenomenon can be observed in

the Ethiopian manuscript culture with the Gadla samāʿtāt. A selection of the
Gǝʿǝz texts of the corpus (the readings for the months of maskaram, ṭǝqǝmt, and
ḫǝdār) has been recently published by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawāḥǝdo
Church, with an Amharic translation. The label Gadla samāʿtāt has been turned
into the title of the printed book (Fig. 4).40

6.3 Intertwined MTMs

Intertwined MTMs are manuscripts transmitting two or more texts that are related
with respect to content. These texts can still have an independent transmission,
but when they are transmitted together in an Intertwined MTM each of them
serves the other, and together they fulfil the function of the MTM. Intertwined
MTMs include, for instance, manuscripts transmitting the Qurʾān and its com-
mentary (tafsīr), when the two texts are laid out as core content in the manu-
script, rather than as core content and paracontent, respectively.41 On the
contrary, when the layout of an MTM displays an arrangement of the type core
content and paracontent, with the latter written in the margins or in the interco-
lumnar space, this manuscript cannot be considered an Intertwined MTM but is
instead a Repurposed MTM, a category which we discuss below. Intertwined
MTMs are designed to carry different texts that are relevant in their mutual in-
teraction; their visually twined organization is planned accordingly, from the
inception of their production. The layout of these manuscripts ranges between
standard forms, with texts disposed one after the other, and more complex
forms, such as framed manuscripts (see below).42
Manuscripts that contain works in multiple languages, such as the Harley
Trilingual Psalter (Fig. 5), most likely produced in Palermo between 1130 and
1153, are an example of the Intertwined MTM.43 The visual organization of this
MTM consists of three parallel columns containing the text of the Psalms (a) in
Greek (Septuagint), (b) in the Latin Vulgate, and (c) in the eleventh-century
Arabic translation of Abū al-Fatḥ ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Faḍl ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Muṭrān

||
40 Gadla samāʿtāt 2010 AM.
41 See Ciotti at al. 2018.
42 See Andrist 2018, 141.
43 London, British Library, Harley 5786; cf. British Museum 1808, no. 5786. For a more de-
tailed description, see British Library, Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, ‘Detailed Record
for Harley 5786’. For digitised copies of the manuscript, see British Library MS Viewer, ‘Harley
MS 5786’.
474 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

al-Anṭākī.44 After examining the manuscript, Cillian O’Hogan came to the con-
clusion that several scribes were involved in the manuscript production. Both
the layout and the ruling pattern suggest that the writing in the three languages
took place seriatim. Each time one of the scribes completed the copying of the
column assigned to him in one of the three languages, he passed the quire to
the next scribe who copied the next column in the other language. This Inter-
twined MTM was produced in a scriptorium, most likely the royal scriptorium of
Roger II, where the presence of scribes able to master different languages
reflects the rich multicultural and multilingual environment of mid-twelfth-
century Sicily.45 Scribal notes in Arabic referring to the Latin liturgy, which are
written in the margins and relate to manuscript performance, suggest that the
manuscript was used by Arabic-speaking Christians to follow along with the
Latin service in Palermo.46
Another example of Intertwined MTMs is manuscripts containing texts and
their commentaries arranged a cornice (‘in the shape of a frame’); in such cases
the text is often placed at the centre of the page and framed by commentary all
around.47 For texts with commentaries, translations and other related works,
this layout was common in many manuscript cultures. For instance, Greek
manuscripts transmitting the Iliad and its commentary are an example of these
MTMs. Marilena Maniaci stresses that this peculiar layout exhibits the skill of
the commentators and scribes in handling the two texts in parallel on the same
page. They presented the texts and their related commentary according to pat-
terns that enable the eye of the reader to follow and navigate between the texts.
Interestingly, two of these manuscripts, which Maniaci calls Marc. gr. 45348
(Fig. 6) and Escor. υ.I.149, are independent copies of a common Vorlage.50 This
example may show that once these elaborate Intertwined MTMs were produced,
they could serve as models for other manuscripts whose copyists replicated not

||
44 O’Hogan 2015.
45 O’Hogan, ‘Multilingualism at the Court Scriptorium of Roger II of Sicily: The Harley Trilin-
gual Psalter’.
46 O’Hogan 2015.
47 Cf. Maniaci 2006, 213 n. 5; and Maniaci 2016.
48 Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Gr. Z. 453 (=821), described in Mioni 1985, 235–236.
For digitised copies of the manuscript, see Internet Culturale, ‘Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana, Gr. Z. 453 (=821)’.
49 El Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo, y. I. 1., described in de Andrés
1965, 178–179. For digitised copies of the manuscript, see The Homer Multitext Project, ‘Escorial
Y 1.1 (294 = Allen E3)’.
50 Maniaci 2016.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 475

only the text but also the layout. It is therefore possible that in some manuscript
cultures specific layouts or formats prevailed and became dominant patterns for
Intertwined MTMs.
At variance with the other types of MTM described above, the production of
an Intertwined MTM can occur in different stages. The layout of these manu-
scripts is arranged in predetermined slots, or preliminarily defined areas on the
page, that are supposed to host the different texts and are planned from the first
stage of the production, regardless of when they are filled in. These predeter-
mined slots are the main feature that distinguishes an Intertwined MTM with a
text and its commentary from, for example, a Repurposed MTM with the same
texts, since the latter is made from an existing codicological unit without such
predefined areas.

6.4 Open MTMs

Open MTMs are manuscripts that were prepared in order to be kept and progres-
sively filled with texts that are not predetermined in detail but certainly are in
broad outline. In many cases, the codicological unit of these MTMs was a blank
book, either ready-made or self-made,51 but we also consider cases in which
someone continued to copy various texts on unbound quires for years, with the
finalisation of the Open MTM taking place only when the quires were bound by,
for instance, a bookbinder.52 Adding a codicological unit between the book and
its cover did not necessarily complete the Open MTM, because its makers could
still endeavour to add further blank leaves or quires, even opening the binding,
or they could continue the project in another blank volume.
Among the frequently produced Open MTMs are personal collections of
notes and recipes, or of texts such as poems or daily records, which the MTM-
makers themselves composed, or collections of works by others, or excerpts
from such works. Today, one often refers to these manuscripts with English
labels such as ‘notebook’, ‘organizer’, ‘scrapbook’, ‘diary’, or ‘commonplace
book’, but they were often named differently in their respective cultural con-
texts – if named at all. Indeed, the contents of such MTMs can be diverse, so

||
51 For Gumbert, making a manuscript followed more or less determined stages. He saw the
formation of the quires at the beginning, followed by layout and ruling, writing, and decora-
tion. But Gumbert also mentioned the example of pre-ruled paper that was sometimes used as a
base for quires (Gumbert 2004, 22–23); following Gumbert, we see the use of ready-made blank
books as another possible beginning of manuscript-making.
52 Cf. Endress 2016, 178, second type in the list, for instance.
476 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

that at times they are a notebook, scrapbook, and account book in one volume.53
Other common Open MTMs are manuscripts for non-personal use, which may
include different kinds of records for social groups and families, or institutions
such as religious congregations and court houses. These manuscripts often bear
modern labels such as ‘logbook’ and ‘journal’, or ‘register’ and ‘ledger’; we will
explain below the extent to which we include such manuscripts in this MTM
category.
In general, personal Open MTMs remained with the people who kept them
and filled the manuscript pages with writing. But there are cases in which the
project of a personal Open MTM included the participation of makers other than
its keeper. The English poet Thomas Wyatt (c. 1503–1542), for instance, had a
commonplace book,54 the texts of which were partly written out by his secretary
(Fig. 7). Later, Wyatt reworked some of these texts, including his own poetry
and works of other poets.55 In the case of another Open MTM,56 from the court of
Henry VIII, Mary Howard (1519–1557) and her friends wrote down poems. First,
the manuscript was with Mary Howard, who then passed it on to her friend
Margaret Douglas (1515–1578), who left her own verses in it. Some marks by
Mary Shelton even hint at the use of this book in performances, including sing-
ing.57 To what extent the initial MTM project had envisioned this manuscript
circulating among the three women is difficult to determine.
The practice of scholars, or many other professionals, of collecting their
own notes is common among almost all manuscript cultures. In Islamic scholar-
ship, for example, the custom of keeping notebooks was an early one, though
often frowned on, and many scholars requested that their lecture notes and
other types of notes be destroyed after their death.58 Students also collected
lecture notes, sometimes for their masters and other times for their own ends.59

||
53 For these kinds of MTMs, one may fall back on evocative, but nevertheless vague descrip-
tions such as ‘one-volume library’, coined by the Arabist Franz Rosenthal, and ‘working library
within one cover’, introduced by the historian of medieval science Lynn Thorndike (cf. Friedrich
and Schwarke 2016, 1–3).
54 Now usually called the Egerton Manuscript (London, British Library, Egerton MS 2711). For
short descriptions of this manuscript see British Library, Digitised Manuscripts, ‘Egerton MS 2711’
and Bowles 2019, for example. For digitised copies of the manuscript, see British Library MS
Viewer, ‘Egerton MS 2711’.
55 Murphy 2019, 6–7.
56 Now usually called the Devonshire Manuscript (London, British Library, Add MS 17492).
57 Murphy 2019, 26–28.
58 Schoeler 2006, 60, 70, 78–80, and 113.
59 Endress 2016, 177–178; Schoeler 2006, 113.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 477

Some of these notebooks, however, were copied and gained popularity, while
many others are stored in libraries, and still others have remained little known
items, occasionally mentioned in secondary sources.60 Such is the case with the
notebook by ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (d. 684), Companion of Prophet
Muhammad, in which he recorded traditions of the Prophet and the Compan-
ions. The notebook, which ʿAbdallāh named aṣ-Ṣādiqa (‘the truthful’), was
passed on in his family and became a debated source among the traditionists.61
What started as a personal Open MTM for ʿAbdallāh turned into a record book of
utmost importance for early Islamic scholarship.
Most obviously, record-keeping is closely linked to the making of Open
MTMs, since most records evolve with time and are unpredictable in detail.
Consequently, such MTMs started as production units whose individual projects
were impossible to outline in each and every respect. For instance, we have no
detailed information about the making of ʿAbdallāh’s notebook, but it is certain-
ly possible that he assembled it quire after quire before he or someone else had
them bound or somehow fastened together, when his recording came to an end.
The later binding of previously written and stored quires was also a common
archival practice. The registers of Ottoman qadis, for example, included various
kinds of records, which were most probably preserved on loose quires in the
court houses before they received a binding after one or two years.62 We suggest
that these registers can be interpreted as Open MTMs, planned by an institution
and written by several qadis and their clerks. For some readers, our suggestion
to consider archival material and record books as examples of Open MTMs
might seem to extend the category too far. Still, we believe that it is worth con-
sidering whether some of these manuscripts can be classified as Open MTMs.
The qadi registers, for instance, contain at least two different sorts of texts:
court-related records at the beginning of the volumes and copies of imperial
orders, starting from the end of the volumes; some registers even contain per-
sonal notes by the qadis.63 While the size of the registers, the page layout, and
even the formulaic style of some entries were surely pre-determined, one could
not predict the number and length of the decrees from the sultan’s council or of
the legal cases and transactions. Therefore, these MTMs had to remain open.

||
60 Schoeler 2006, 32 and 176, n. 100.
61 Schoeler 2006, 127–128.
62 Uğur 2010, 9.
63 Uğur 2010, 9.
478 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

6.5 Repurposed and Recycled MTMs

Makers of Repurposed and Recycled MTMs used an existing, text-carrying codi-
cological unit to which they added texts not previously intended to be included.
If the new texts relate to the contents that were previously written down, then
we can speak of a Repurposed MTM.64 By adding writing to empty margins or
pages and inserting additional empty folios or quires in order to accommodate
more text, an STM was turned into an MTM, or an existing MTM was incorpo-
rated into a new MTM project. If the texts added to an existing codicological unit
do not relate to the previous contents, we may speak of a Recycled MTM. For
such an MTM project, its makers merely used a manuscript’s ‘empty surfaces’,
such as margins and empty pages.65 In some cases, the same codicological unit
was repurposed or recycled several times. At the beginning of each repurposing
or recycling stands a new MTM project, changing or adding a function to the
manuscript. In the case of Repurposed MTMs, their previous functions can re-
main, whilst many Recycled MTMs lose their previous purpose, as we explain
below.
Returning to the notebook of Thomas Wyatt, we see that it did not fall into
oblivion after his death. Its later owners repurposed and recycled the manu-
script: John Harington the Elder (c. 1517–1582), for instance, wrote in the book,
adding material including a poem by Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who
praises Wyatt for his translation of the Penitential Psalms.66 Since his additional
texts and notes are clearly linked to the previous contents, namely, to Wyatt’s
poetry, we classify John Harington the Elder’s book as a Repurposed MTM. The
same can be said about what his son Sir John Harington (bap. 1560, d. 1612) did
with the book, namely, adding his own metrical paraphrases of the Penitential
Psalms.67 Then, however, Sir John Harington’s son John Harington MP (1589–
1654) inherited the manuscript and used it in a different way. He recorded his
daily business, wrote math problems, and gave the book to his young son
William for writing exercises.68 These extensive entries were possible because
the poems sometimes took up only half of a page, and several pages were still
blank. Peter Murphy interprets John Harington MP’s attitude towards the manu-

||
64 In a narrow sense, this category is discussed as ‘re-made books’ in Andrist 2018, 144 and
145.
65 The recycling or reuse of manuscripts was generally discussed at the workshop ‘Sec-
ond(ary) Life of Manuscripts’, 11–13 July 2013, CSMC, Hamburg.
66 Murphy 2019, 51–55.
67 Murphy 2019, 56.
68 Murphy 2019, 55–68.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 479

script as follows: ‘To Harington the book was just bound paper he wrote on. He
probably wished its previous owners had not written so much into it, especially
the poet with the questionable morals and a prodigal disregard for the expense
of paper.’69 Indeed, John Harington MP’s project was that of using his father’s
manuscript in order to make a Recycled MTM. This utilitarian purpose is appar-
ent not only in that he added texts unrelated to Wyatt’s poetry, but also in that
he made a clear statement by overwriting some poems and even crossing out
others (Fig. 7).70
In a Repurposed MTM, the relationship between the previous contents and
the texts added later is not always as straightforward as in the case of Wyatt’s
manuscript, when John Harington the Elder inserted the poem by Henry
Howard and made other related additions. In Ethiopian manuscript culture, for
example, the so-called Wangela Warq (or Wangel za-Warq, ‘golden gospel’)71
codices exhibit a pattern of repurposing that relates to the previous text in a
different way. In its double acceptation, which refers both to production and to
content, the label Wangela Warq identifies four-gospel manuscripts with a gold-
like, silver, or metal cover.72 They are normally regarded as the most precious
copies of the gospel books that are kept in churches and monasteries. Besides
the text of the four gospels, they also contain texts such as the following: acts
and grants declaring rights of land exploitation or inheritance, usually in favour
of the monastery or church where the book is preserved; historical records;
monastic genealogies and rules; and prayers. These additional texts are added
by later hands on blank pages, protective leaves, or on leaves or fascicles insert-
ed into the manuscript at a later time. Their connection with the text of the gos-
pels does not refer to specific passages but rather to the sacred aura that the
four gospels emanate and to their value as officially recognized holy books.73
The aforementioned examples of Repurposed MTMs evolved on the ample
space left in the margins, on some pages, and even on the protective leaves. But
there are cases in which the makers of Repurposed MTMs added empty leaves
and folios to the codicological unit in order to accommodate their texts. The
practice of interfoliating, or interleaving, books for handwritten additions, for

||
69 Murphy 2019, 57.
70 Today, Egerton MS 2711 is even used as an example of how John Harington MP thoughtless-
ly overwrote Wyatt’s verses. Cf. Moulton 2000, 43, for instance.
71 Bausi 2010b.
72 Over time, this label was also used for gospel manuscripts without metal covers.
73 Patrick Andrist describes similar phenomena in Greek Bible manuscripts, classifying them
as ‘post-production side-content’, or ‘sacred book paratexts’; see Andrist 2018, 145.
480 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

instance, was most common with volumes printed in the Early Modern Era,74 but
the practice can be also observed with manuscripts. The Danish orientalist
Theodor Petræus (c. 1630–1672), for example, had a manuscript copy of the
versed Persian-Turkish dictionary ‘Tuḥfe-i Şāhidī’; on interfoliated blank leaves
he compiled short texts on several words.75 What Petræus made is not to be
confused with an Intertwined MTM, since the dictionary manuscript was not
prepared to host a commentary or another text.
The purpose that a codicological unit had before it was turned into a Repur-
posed MTM usually remained intact. For instance, one could still consult the
Persian-Turkish dictionary, ignoring the texts added by Theodor Petræus, and
the Wangela Warq manuscripts still served their liturgical purposes without
constraint by the acts recorded in them. In the case of Recycled MTMs, however,
we sometimes observe that the books could no longer easily serve their previous
purposes. After the recycling project of John Harington MP, for example, some
of the poems in Wyatt’s manuscript could only be read with effort because they
disappeared almost entirely under cross-outs and other text. Of course, we can
even think of extreme cases when MTM-makers tore the previously written
pages out of the codicological units they recycled.

7 Complete and incomplete MTM projects

In the case of Corpus-Organizer MTMs, Petrified MTMs, and Intertwined MTMs,
we suppose that their makers had a rather concrete idea about which texts were
to be part of these manuscripts. Judging from individual cases, we can say with
some certainty whether the respective projects were completed. Very often, this
judgement is easier in the case of codex MTMs than it is in the case of loose-leaf
paper MTMs, palm-leaf MTMs, or multi-slip bamboo MTMs. While the latter
three manuscript forms are either unbound or bound by easily removable
threads, and therefore rather effortlessly open to additions, the binding of codex
manuscripts usually marks the finalisation of an MTM project, when the previ-
ously prepared quires are put into a tightly closed codicological unit. Examples
here are the existing four-gospel MTMs or the Gadla samāʿtāt MTMs, which
illustrate how the quires and the page layout were prepared to accommodate a

||
74 Nyström 2014, 120.
75 Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky, Cod. orient. 195.
See Zimmermann 2016.
 Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts | 481

concrete number of texts held together by the final binding. Having said that,
we would like to point out that it was still possible to reopen the binding of
some books in accordance with the project. MTM-makers could realize that
missing texts had to be inserted on single fresh folios, or they might wish to
renew the protective leaves or covers of their manuscripts.
With codex-MTMs that are made of blank books, however, the assessment
can be more difficult, especially when a considerable number of folios remain
empty. In such cases, we cannot be sure whether the makers of these manu-
scripts had actually planned to add more text in the future or whether they left
blank those pages that exceeded the needs of the project. When possible, an
analysis of how texts from such blank-book MTMs were transmitted elsewhere
can help us understand whether these manuscripts are complete or incomplete
projects. In the many cases in which blank books were kept to be filled as Open
MTMs, we have difficulty in determining whether blank pages indicate an in-
complete project, unless paratextual notes provide evidence regarding the com-
pletion of a notebook or a register, for example.

8 Final remarks
In order to assign specific manuscripts to the categories proposed here, it is
necessary to gain a deep understanding not only of the MTMs in question but
also of the circumstances of their production and use. In addition to that, it is
necessary to consider their cultural and historical setting. Surely this is only
possible when one has sufficient access to historical evidence and is able to
consult a considerable number of manuscripts in order to conduct a compara-
tive analysis.
The categories suggested here are not exhaustive and do not cover each
single manuscript from the wide variety of MTMs. Furthermore, in the same
codicological unit two or more categories can coexist, as is usually the case
when a manuscript is repurposed, and as is sometimes the case when the same
manuscript is recycled with the previous content still usable.
In finalizing this article, we have remembered again and again what J. Peter
Gumbert wrote in his ‘Codicological Units’ of 2004: ‘Practice will have to show
how well this terminology does in reality. And reality is always more complicat-
ed and surprising than the best theory can predict.’76 In agreement with

||
76 Gumbert 2004, 37.
482 | Antonella Brita, Janina Karolewski

Gumbert, we wish to conclude with his statement. Now we too must wait and
see to what extent the proposed categories are usable or will encourage others
to further unravel the ‘MTM net’.

Acknowledgements
We wish to offer this contribution to Michael Friedrich as a souvenir of our
joint work over the last years, in which our different thoughts and ideas about
multiple-text manuscripts have resembled the tangle of texts in some MTMs
themselves. We also thank Alessandro Bausi, Universität Hamburg, and Hülya
Çelik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, for reading and commenting on an earlier
version of this paper. In addition, we are grateful to Florinda De Simini, Univer-
sity of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, who supported us with her expertise on Śivadharma
manuscripts.

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Imre Galambos
Chinese Character Variants in Medieval
Dictionaries and Manuscripts
Abstract: This paper compares variant characters in large-scale dictionaries
from the pre-modern period with actual writing habits using a special subset of
variants known as ‘semantic compounds’ (huiyi 會意) as a case study. The re-
sults show that despite their prominent presence in traditional dictionaries,
only a fraction of such variants were in everyday use. Most of the forms record-
ed in dictionaries were preserved and handed down as part of the lexicographic
tradition, to some extent irrespective of genuine writing habits. Going one step
beyond recognising that only some of the documented forms were at any given
time in common use, the analysis presented here measures the discrepancy
between dictionaries and manuscripts as a percentage.

Large Chinese dictionaries abound in orthographic variants.1 In fact, it is com-

monly remarked that the majority of characters in large dictionaries, which
contain in excess of forty or fifty thousand entries, are historical variants no
longer in common use. The profusion of variants in medieval dictionaries cre-
ates the impression that they were relatively common in the pre-modern period,
but when we look at surviving manuscripts, such as those from Dunhuang or
Turfan, we do not necessarily see that the same character was written in several
different ways. We only find two or three forms at most, rather than an abun-
dance as suggested by traditional dictionaries. The question arises whether
there is indeed a discrepancy between the lexicographic tradition and actual
usage. After all, one would expect dictionaries to record character forms that
were in daily use, even if one understands that they often had their own agenda.
This paper uses a special subset of variants known as huiyi 會意 (‘semantic
compound’) characters as a case study, to show that despite their prominent
presence in traditional dictionaries, only a fraction of them were in everyday
use. Most of the forms recorded in dictionaries were preserved and handed
down as part of the lexicographic tradition, to some extent irrespective of genu-
ine writing habits. The main issue is how representative pre-modern dictionaries

||
1 The initial idea behind this paper was published as a brief research note in Japanese; see
Galambos 2012. I am grateful to Gábor Kósa for his valuable suggestions.

Open Access. © 2021 Imre Galambos, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-025
492 | Imre Galambos

were of contemporary writing habits. Going one step beyond recognising that
only some of the documented forms were at any given time in common use, the
analysis presented here measures the discrepancy between dictionaries and
manuscripts as a percentage.

1 Semantic compounds
This paper is primarily concerned with character forms consisting of two or
more components, the semantic value of which is indicative of the meaning of
the word written with the character in question. In traditional Chinese usage,
these are usually labelled using the term huiyi, one of the six principles of char-
acter formation articulated as early as the first century CE. The scope of meaning
of this principle and its historical role in the development of the Chinese writing
system has been the subject of heated debate in anglophone scholarship for
almost a century.2 The debate, however, has been primarily concerned with the
formative stage of the script, long before the development of the ‘modern’ script.
This paper focusses on the medieval period when the primary medium of writ-
ing was paper, and the script had been in use for at least two millennia. The
focus is not on how certain characters had been initially created but what per-
mutations they underwent at a much later stage of their existence.
David P. Branner makes the distinction between ‘real’ huiyi characters, the
components of which ‘contribute abstractly to the overall meaning of the word
represented’, and the category he calls ‘portmanteau characters’, the compo-
nents of which can be read ‘as connected words to form a phrase that defines or
denotes the word’.3 Typologically, such portmanteau characters form a distinct
subset of semantic compounds, most of which came into being long after the
Qin-Han 秦漢 unification of the script. In fact, the character forms examined in
this paper are mostly, although not exclusively, of such portmanteau type. Chi-
nese scholars working on Dunhuang manuscripts call them ‘newly created huiyi
characters’ 新造會意字, revealing that they see them as analogous to the origi-
nal huiyi characters.4 In this paper, the notion of semantic compounds encom-
passes both Branner’s portmanteau characters and those that contribute to the
meaning of the word more abstractly (i.e., ‘real’ huiyi characters).

||
2 For an overview of the problem, see Lurie 2006, Handel 2006 and Galambos 2011, 398–399.
3 Branner 2011, 73. Modern examples include characters such as wai 歪 (‘askew, crooked’), the
components of which ‘spell out’ the phrase buzheng 不正 (‘not straight’).
4 Zhang Yongquan 2015, 144 and Huang Zheng 2005, 30.
 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 493

Often there is distinction between the structure of the standard character

and its variant. A point in case is the character jia 假 (‘false, fake’), the standard
form of which is a combination of the semantic component ren 亻 (‘man’) and
the phonetic component jia 叚 (‘borrow’). By contrast, its variants include the
form , a combination of the components bu 不 (‘not’) and zhen 真 (‘true’),
neither of which plays a phonetic role but, together, the two of them gloss the
meaning of the word (i.e., bu zhen 不真, ‘not real’).5 Therefore, even if the
‘mother’ character has an ordinary xingsheng 形聲 (‘form and sound’) structure,
in which one of the components plays an obvious phonetic role, in the variant
form both components have a semantic function.
By focussing specifically on variants that appear in manuscripts, I intend to
move away from a perspective that sees characters as abstract units of the script
and view them in light of the writing habits of the people who wrote them in
their daily routine. It is an approach that favours concrete archaeological evi-
dence over derivative forms of data. The basic premise of the current study is
the comparison of manuscript evidence with data preserved in pre-modern
dictionaries. As commonly recognised, comprehensive dictionaries often treat-
ed variants found in earlier dictionaries as part of an inherited tradition, adapt-
ing them wholescale, but also further decontextualising them. Yet there is little
understanding of the extent of this phenomenon, of the proportion of variants
transmitted primarily in the lexicographic tradition.
The justification for choosing huiyi-type variants (as opposed to other types
of variants) for the current exercise is threefold. First, huiyi characters are a
category that has generated a considerable amount of discussion in English-
speaking academia and are therefore already in the focus of attention. Second-
ly, they are highly visible forms which stand out among other variants with their
inspired structure. In comparison with other types of variants, where the differ-
ence to the standard form may lie in the addition or omission of a stroke or a
cursive simplification of parts of the character, the huiyi-type variants exhibit a
wealth of fanciful and curious forms. Thirdly, it is certain that people at the time
were very much aware of the creative possibilities in interpreting the structure
of characters. The various traditional methods of dissecting and interpreting
characters (e.g., cezi 測字, chaizi 拆字) show how prominent such kind of
approaches were.6

||
5 Unsurprisingly, this gloss is a close match to the definition of the character 假 in the Shuowen
jiezi 說文解字, which explains it as fei zhen 非真 (‘not real’).
6 On the phenomenon of ‘character manipulation’, see Schmiedl 2020.
494 | Imre Galambos

2 Huiyi-type variants in dictionaries

Pre-modern dictionaries include a plethora of huiyi-type character forms, even if
they are not necessarily identified as such. For the sake of the current exercise,
a pool of variants is selected from four pre-modern dictionaries: 1) Sisheng
pianhai 四聲篇海; 2) Longkan shoujian 龍龕手鑑; 3) Jiyun 集韻; and 4) Yupian 玉
篇.7 All are large-scale compilations in excess of 20,000 characters, which also
means that they record many non-standard variants. In fact, the larger the dic-
tionary, the higher the percentage of such variants, as the core pool of standard
characters remains approximately the same. The reason for choosing more than
one dictionary is to obtain a snapshot of the lexicographic tradition in general,
rather than exploring the idiosyncrasies of a particular work.
The variants in the sample pool were chosen randomly, by combing
through the dictionaries and identifying relevant forms. Although this is an
admittedly subjective process of selection, it results in a repertoire of largely
random examples. A comprehensive coverage of all relevant variants in
available dictionaries would have been a monumental task and is not the aim
here. Instead, the objective is to rely on a smaller body of sample data to assess
the differences between dictionaries and manuscripts. A criterion when
selecting the variants was that only the variants have a huiyi structure but not
the mother character. Thus, I did not include characters such as fei 朏 (‘light of
the crescent moon’), with variants such as (月+小+生 ‘moon-small-born’),
because the standard character 朏 itself is an unmistakable huiyi-type combina-
tion in which the two components (月+出) are indicative of the meaning of the
word. I did select, however, several borderline cases in which the variants could
be interpreted as having both a huiyi and xingsheng structure, as long as their
standard character included a clearly articulated phonetic component (e.g., 仙,
妃, 念, 妊 and 聽).
Table 1 lists the sample group, which contains 37 variants of 27 characters.
The rightmost column indicates their source, even if many of them appear in
more than one dictionary. While the exact distribution of such variants in vari-
ous dictionaries may be of interest with regards to the sources utilised by

||
7 For the Sisheng pianhai, I am using the Chenghua dinghai chongkan gai bing wuyin leiju
sisheng pianhai 成化丁亥重刊改併五音類聚四聲篇海 edition (1467); for the Longkan shoujian,
the Xu guyi congshu 續古逸叢書 edition with a preface from 997; for the Jiyun, the Zhiyuan
gengyin chongkan gai bing wuyin jiyun 至元庚寅重刊改並五音集韻 (1290); for the Yupian, the
Ming-dynasty edition of the Daguang yihui Yupian 大廣益會玉篇 in the collection of the Har-
vard Yenching Library.
 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 495

individual lexicographers, from the point of view of the current study it is

sufficient to know that they occur in at least one of the four dictionaries.

Table 1: Examples of huiyi variants in the four dictionaries.

Standard character Variant Components Source

大 ‘great’ 不+小 ‘not-small’ Sisheng pianhai

思 ‘think’ 用+心 ‘use-mind’ Sisheng pianhai

老 ‘old’ 先+人 ‘prior-man’ Sisheng pianhai

吹 ‘blow’ 口+風 ‘mouth-wind’ Sisheng pianhai

洟 ‘nasal mucus’ 弟(<涕)+鼻 ‘mucus-nose’ Sisheng pianhai

齋 ‘fast’ 不+食 ‘not-eat’ Sisheng pianhai

假 ‘fake’ 不+真 ‘not-real’ Sisheng pianhai

仙 ‘immortal’ 人+大+山 ‘man-great-mountain’ Longkan shoujian

人+大+止 ‘man-great-recess’ Longkan shoujian

人+止 ‘man-recess’ Longkan shoujian

入+山 ‘enter-mountain’ Longkan shoujian

光 ‘light’ 日+火 ‘sun-fire’ Longkan shoujian

火+化 ‘fire-transform’ Longkan shoujian

帆 ‘sail’ 舟+風 ‘boat-wind’ Longkan shoujian

風+舟 ‘wind-boat’ Longkan shoujian

計 ‘plan, scheme’ 供+言 ‘provide-words’ Longkan shoujian

(人+共+言 ‘men-together-talk’)
蠶 ‘silkworm’ 天+虫 ‘heavenly-worm’ Longkan shoujian

天+天+虫 ‘heavenly-heavenly- Longkan shoujian

worm’
496 | Imre Galambos

Table 1 (continued).

Standard character Variant Components Source

神+虫 ‘divine-worm’ Longkan shoujian

聽 ‘listen’ 耳+忍 ‘ear-endure’ Longkan shoujian

耳+用 ‘ear-use’ Longkan shoujian

爌 ‘bright light’ 大+明 ‘great-bright’ Longkan shoujian

念 ‘recite’ 言+心 ‘speak-mind’ Longkan shoujian

娠 ‘pregnant’ 女+身 ‘woman-body’ Longkan shoujian

些 ‘some’ 少+大 ‘few-large’ Jiyun

炒 ‘fry’ 取+火 ‘take-fire’ Jiyun

飢 ‘hungry’ 食+乏 ‘food-shortage’ Jiyun

衄 ‘nosebleed’ 血+鼻 ‘blood-nose’ Jiyun

飲 ‘drink’ 冷+水 ‘cold-water’ Jiyun

妊 ‘pregnant’ 任+女 ‘undertake-woman’ Jiyun

女+任 ‘woman-undertake’ Sisheng pianhai

任+身 ‘undertake-body’ Sisheng pianhai

辯 ‘eloquent’ 巧+言 ‘artful-speech’ Yupian

妃 ‘concubine’ 肥+女 ‘plump-woman’ Jiyun

長 ‘chief’ 上+人 ‘above-person’ Yupian

嚏 ‘sneeze’ 至+鼻 ‘reach-nose’ Yupian

期 ‘period of time; 大+日 ‘great-day’ Yupian

expect’
 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 497

The table shows that in many cases the components can be read together into
meaningful phrases, glossing the meaning of the word written with the charac-
ter. To take the first three entries from the table, the word da 大 (‘great’) is
glossed by the variant’s components as ‘not-small’ 不小; the word si 思 (‘think’)
as ‘use-mind’ 用心; and the word lao 老 (‘old’) as ‘prior-man’ 先人. For this
reason, the location of components in the overall composition matters, as it
determines the sequence in which they are to be read.
The four dictionaries list many more similar variants in addition to the ones
showcased here. Note that the components in many cases do not define the
meaning of the word unambiguously and the structure only works if the reader
is aware of what it intends to represent. For example, the components 不+食
(‘not-eat’) in the variant of the character zhai 齋 (‘fast’) could theoretically signi-
fy other possible meanings (e.g., ‘starve’, ‘hungry’, ‘ill’). Therefore, the semantic
value of the components is only one of the factors that contribute to the
legibility of the variant. Just as important is the graphic semblance to the refer-
ent character, the preservation of its overall shape and symmetry. In addition,
syntactic context and even social setting play a role in ensuring that readers
recognise the variant.
As mentioned above, some of the variants can be interpreted as both huiyi
and xingsheng structures. Although modern scholarship prefers to explain these
as xingsheng combinations, the phonetic motivation of a component does not
automatically disqualify it from also playing a semantic role. In many character
forms, one of the components may perform a double function, even if one of
these is more pronounced. Of the three variants of the character xian 仙 (‘im-
mortal’) attested in the Longkan shoujian (Table 1), (人+大+山 ‘man-great-
mountain’) and (入+山 ‘enter-mountain’) include the component shan 山
(‘mountain’), which is the phonetic component in the standard character. But
the phonetic component is absent altogether from the form (人+大+止 ‘man-
great-recess’), making it a pure huiyi composition. In contrast, the two variants
that include the component 山 can be considered a xingsheng and huiyi struc-
ture at the same time. It is not hard to notice, however, the graphic link between
the variants, demonstrating the role of the overall shape of the mother character
in constraining the scope of possible variation.
In other cases, the variant may introduce a phonetic element that is not part
of the standard character. For example, according to the Shuowen jiezi 說文解字,
the phonetic component in the character nian 念 (‘recite’) is jin 今 (‘now’). The
Longkan shoujian, however, records the variant 悥 (言+心 ‘speak-mind’), in
498 | Imre Galambos

which the component yan 言 (‘speak’) plays a weak phonetic role, at the same
time also having an evident semantic function.8 In some cases, a component in
a huiyi-type variant enhances the phonetic structure of the character, as it can
be seen in the form 仧 (上+人 ‘above-person’) listed in the Yupian as a variant
for the character zhang 長 (‘chief’). Although the two components work well
together as a gloss, the component shang 上 (‘above’) also plays a phonetic role,
improving the phonetically opaque structure of the standard character.
Similarly, the Shuowen jiezi identifies the component chen 辰 (‘celestial bod-
ies’) as the phonetic component in the character shen 娠 (‘pregnant’), but the
Longkan shoujian lists the variant 㛛 (女+身 ‘woman-body’), which replaces 辰
with the component shen 身 (‘body’). This new component improves the stand-
ard character’s phonetic transparency, compensating for the shift in pronuncia-
tion over time, but at the same time introduces a semantic dimension absent
from the original component. As a result, it could be argued that in this variant
the component 身 plays both a semantic and phonetic role.
There are, however, cases where the function of the component is less
transparent. For example, traditional dictionaries record the variants 姙, and
for the character ren 妊 (‘pregnant’). While in the standard character the
component ren 壬 (‘ninth heavenly stem’) clearly plays a phonetic role, in the
variants it appears as ren 任 (‘undertake a task’), and in this context its semantic
value ‘bear, undertake’ is surely relevant. This is also likely to be the reason for
using 任 rather than the purely phonetic 壬. At the same time, the words written
with the characters 壬, 任 and 妊 have long been recognized as being related.9
Accordingly, the component 任 in the variants merely highlights the existing
semantic function of the component 壬 and thus the standard character itself
could also be regarded as having both a xingsheng and a huiyi structure.
Despite these examples, it is just as common that the variant does not retain
the xingsheng structure of the standard character. Even though the characters
chui 吹 (‘blow’), zhai 齋 (‘fast’), jia 假 (‘fake’), chao 炒 (‘fry’), ji 飢 (‘hungry’) and
nü 衄 (‘nosebleed’), to name just a few, are all stereotypical xingsheng configu-
rations, their variants listed in Table 1 feature a semantic-only structure with no
phonetic motivation. The example of the variant of the character nü 衄

||
8 Interestingly, the structure 悥 is also attested in the Ming-dynasty dictionary Zhengzi tong 正
字通 as a variant of the character yi 意 (‘intention’), although here the component 言 plays no
phonetic function.
9 The Shuowen jiezi, for example, links 壬 with the other two characters. With regards to the
character 妊, it notes that the component 壬 had a phonetic function as well, suggesting that it
also had a semantic one.
 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 499

(‘nosebleed’) is particularly interesting because it replaces the phonetic compo-

nent chou 丑 (‘second earthly branch’), which had lost some of its transparency,
with the semantically relevant 鼻 (bi ‘nose’). This is a complete shift from a
xingsheng combination to a semantic-only structure.
Naturally, the structure of medieval huiyi-type variants is not directly indic-
ative of the historical development of the characters. Encoding accurate histori-
cal information from earlier stages of the script’s history was clearly not an
objective. Instead, the variant forms are creative interpretations exploiting the
graphic possibilities inherent in the orthography and playfully reordering the
characters’ structure. Huiyi-type variants are invariably derivatives of more
mainstream forms, whether those were officially recognized standard characters
or merely popular forms in common use. In most cases there is a graphic con-
nection with the mother character and the huiyi combination preserves a resem-
blance to the shape and overall symmetry of the original character.

3 Huiyi-type variants in manuscripts

Extracting examples of huiyi-type structures from medieval manuscripts is a
time-consuming task. Even though manuscripts abound in non-standard forms,
huiyi-type variants in particular are not easy to find. A pragmatic way to accel-
erate the search is to use dictionaries of variant characters based on pre-modern
manuscripts. A straightforward choice for locating variants in Dunhuang manu-
scripts is the Dunhuang suzidian 敦煌俗字典, a dictionary of non-standard vari-
ants in the Dunhuang corpus.10 Without question, this is an extremely useful
tool, although unfortunately not large enough to paint a comprehensive image
of contemporary scribal habits. As it references about 280 manuscripts, it only
documents the most common variants. For this reason, even if a particular form
is not attested in the dictionary, it does not necessarily mean that it does not
occur in the manuscripts.
A significantly larger collection of variants is the Koryŏ Taejanggyŏng ichʻe
chajŏn 高麗大藏經異體字典 (hereafter: Koryŏ chajŏn), a massive dictionary of
character variants from the Korean Buddhist Canon.11 Although the dictionary is
based on texts printed in Koryŏ (Goryeo) in the first half of the thirteenth centu-
ry and is thus removed from the manuscript tradition of medieval China in both

||
10 Huang Zheng 2005.
11 Yi Kyu-gap et al. 2000.
500 | Imre Galambos

time and space, the woodblocks versions ultimately (through several incarna-
tions) derive from Buddhist manuscripts copied in China prior to the Mongol
period. Even though, as a dictionary, the Koryŏ chajŏn cannot be taken as di-
rectly representative of the Chinese manuscript tradition, in practical terms it is
the best available resource for locating variants used in pre-modern Buddhist
manuscripts. The utility of the dictionary derives from its breadth, as it includes
all non-standard variants in a vast corpus. In sum, the Dunhuang suzidian is
more relevant for our examination but is limited in its scope, whereas the Koryŏ
chajŏn is statistically more reliable but several steps removed from medieval
Chinese manuscript culture.
Both the Dunhuang suzidian and the Koryŏ chajŏn document concrete ex-
amples of variants from medieval manuscripts and prints, rather than data ex-
tracted from earlier dictionaries. They are purely descriptive in their approach,
in contrast to the prescriptive agenda of many pre-modern dictionaries. This
makes them especially valuable for comparing variant forms used in medieval
scribal culture with those preserved in the lexicographic tradition. Using these
two resources considerably speeds up the process of locating examples of huiyi
structures. Of the original 37 variants in Table 1, only 13 can be found in the
Dunhuang suzidian or the Koryŏ chajŏn; see Table 2.12 The table records the loca-
tion where the variant occurs: for the Korean Canon, it is the letter ‘K’ followed
by the number of the text in the canon (e.g., K-1257); for the Dunhuang manu-
scripts, it is the pressmark.13

||
12 In some cases, we also find huiyi-type variants which are not in our original list (Table 1).
For instance, under the character ting 聽 (‘listen’) the Dunhuang suzidian lists a variant consisting
of the components er 耳 (‘ear’) and e 惡 (‘bad’), neither of which serves a phonetic function. Al-
though this variant does not occur in any of the four traditional dictionaries, similar forms are
attested in other early dictionaries; for example, the Southern Song scholar Lou Ji’s 婁機 (1133–
1211) Hanli ziyuan 漢隸字原 records the same form occurring in Han-period stone inscriptions.
13 ‘DY’ stands for Dunyan 敦研 (i.e., Dunhuang Research Academy 敦煌研究院); ‘DB’ for
Dunbo 敦博 (i.e., Dunhuang Museum 敦煌博物館); ‘S’ for the Stein collection at the British
Library; ‘P’ for the Pelliot chinois collection at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 501

Table 2: Huiyi-type variants from Table 1 featuring in the Koryŏ chajŏn and the Dunhuang suzidian.

Standard Variant from Koryŏ chajŏn Dunhuang suzidian

character Table 1

老 ‘old’
K-1257 DY.234 DY.302

DY.042
洟 ‘nasal mucus’
K-1498
仙 ‘immortal’

K-1257 DY.029

K-1498 S.6825

S.388
帆 ‘sail’
K-1063 K-1498

蠶 ‘silkworm’
K-1257

K-1257 P.3833 S.134

K-0801 S.3491

K-0391 S.388
聽 ‘listen’
S.388
炒 ‘fry’
K-1063 K-1498
飲 ‘drink’
K-1498
辯 ‘eloquent’
K-0394 S.530 S.779
嚏 ‘sneeze’
K-1498

K-1063
502 | Imre Galambos

Not all variants aligned in the table are identical. For example, in the case of the
character xian 仙 (‘immortal’), the top component of the fourth variant in the
Longkan shoujian is ru 入 (‘enter’), whereas in the Korean and Dunhuang exam-
ples it is ren 人 (‘man’). But the graphic similarity of the forms across the col-
umns is undeniable. In general, the table demonstrates that whenever we find
analogous matches, they are structurally very similar, regardless of the type of
script or hand in which they appear. This attests to the stability of variant forms
through time and space, as some of them emerge centuries apart in geograph-
ically distant regions (e.g., Dunhuang vs. Korea). The remarkable thing about
this phenomenon is that most of the huiyi-type variants do not represent the
usual way of writing a given character, as it is somewhat counter-intuitive that
scribal cultures would sustain and transmit idiosyncratic forms that do not
serve a practical function. Some of them have more strokes and thus take longer
to write than the original characters (e.g., writing 䶏 in place of 洟), revealing
that the formation of variants was not necessarily motivated by convenience.
Taking a step further and examining the source of the variants recorded in
Table 2, we can see that even within the pool of forms ostensibly collected from
manuscripts, some examples derive from dictionaries. The 23 variants from the
Korean Tripitaka in Table 2 are extracted from the following texts:

10 examples K-1498 Yiqie jing yinyi 一切經音義, in 100 juan, compiled by

Huilin 慧琳 during 788–807
7 examples K-1257 Xinji Zangjing yinyi suihan lu 新集藏經音義隨函錄,
in 30 juan, by Kehong 可洪 during 931–940
3 examples K-1063 Yiqie jing yinyi 一切經音義, in 25 juan, compiled by
Xuanying 玄應 after 649
1 example K-0801 Zhengfa nianchu jing 正法念處經, in 70 juan, tr. by
Gautama Prajñāruci during 538–541
1 example K-0391 Guoqu zhuangyan jie qianfo ming jing 過去莊嚴劫千
佛名經, in 1 juan, tr. by unknown translator during
the Liang 梁 dynasty (502–557)
1 example K-0394 Wuqian wubai Foming shenzhou chuzhang miezui
jing 五千五百佛名神呪除障滅罪經

Three of these six texts are in fact dictionaries included in the Buddhist Canon
and transmitted along with other texts. All three feature in their title the term
yinyi 音義 (‘sound and meaning’), referring to a type of work that provides pho-
netic and semantic glosses for words and terms found in Buddhist scriptures. Of
 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 503

these, Huilin’s Yiqie jing yinyi (K-1498) is a monumental work in 100 juan that
takes up two large volumes in the modern edition of the Korean Canon. Al-
though the thousands of variants assembled in such dictionaries supposedly
derived from the medieval manuscript tradition, they also include a cumulative
repertoire of forms which may not have been in common use.
Overall, we can see that out of the 23 variants from the Koryŏ chajŏn, only
three (i.e., 蝅 from K-0801, 䗝 from K-0391 and 䛒 from K-0394) come from non-
lexicographic texts. Two of these are variants of the character 蠶 and consist of the
components 天+虫 (‘heavenly-worm’) and 神+虫 (‘divine-worm’). Most of the Ko-
rean variants in Table 2, however, come from various yinyi-type Buddhist diction-
aries and thus should not be taken as representative of pre-modern writing habits.
Unfortunately, removing variants attributed to yinyi-type dictionaries does not
fully solve the problem because we can never be sure that a given variant does not
also occur in a non-lexicographic text. As the Koryŏ chajŏn only records one
source for each variant form, the inclusion of data from pre-modern lexicographic
works potentially conceals examples of the same form occurring in other texts.
Seen in the rightmost column in Table 2 are the 13 variants occurring in the
Dunhuang corpus. These come from the following manuscripts:

3 examples S.388 Zhengming yaolu 正名要錄, etc.; d. u.

1 example S.6825 Laozi daode jing 老子道德經 with the Xiang’er 想爾
commentary; c. 6th c. copy
1 example S.134 Shijing 詩經, ‘Qiyue’ 七月; d. u.
1 example S.3491 Pinposaluo wanghou gong cainü gongde yi gongyang
ta shengtian yinyuan bian 頻婆娑羅王后宮綵女功德
意供養塔生天因緣變; 9–10th c. copy
1 example P.3833 Poems of Wang Fanzhi 王梵志; dated bingshen 丙申
year (936?)
1 example DY.042 Miaofa lianhua jing 妙法蓮華經, tr. by Kumārajīva;
4–5th c. copy
1 example DY.234 Daban niepan jing 大般涅槃經, tr. by Dharmakṣema
曇無讖; 4–5th c. copy
1 example DY.302 Weimojie suo shuo jing 維摩詰所說經, tr. by Kumārajīva;
4–5th c. copy
1 example DY.029 Daban niepan jing 大般涅槃經, tr. by Dharmakṣema;
4–5th c. copy
504 | Imre Galambos

1 example S.530 Da Tang Shazhou Shimen Suo falü Yibian heshang xiu
gongde ji bei 大唐沙洲釋門索法律義辯和尚修功德
記碑
1 example S.779 Da Fan Shazhou Shimen jiaoshou heshang Hongbian
xiu gongde ji 大蕃沙洲釋門教授和尚洪辯修功德

The two last items in the list record two forms of the character 辯, both of which
essentially consist of the components 巧+言 (or 功+言 ‘merit-speak’), matching
the form recorded in Table 1 as coming from the Yupian. These last examples are
from manuscript copies of commemorative inscriptions and occur in the names
of high-ranking monks Suo Yibian 索義辯 (793–869) and Hongbian 洪辯
(d. 868). Indeed, their names feature frequently in the Dunhuang corpus and
are consistently written with this variant. In addition, the same variant is also
commonly, but not always, used in other names. There are, however, also ex-
amples where the same variant is used to write the word bian 辯 (‘eloquent;
debate’).
In the above list, three forms derive from manuscript S.388 with the
Zhengming yaolu. In reality, this work is only one of several lexicographic lists
copied onto the same scroll. One of our examples comes from the Zhengming
yaolu, whereas the other two come from a short list of huiyi-type variants. Thus,
once again, these three examples are based on dictionaries, rather than ordi-
nary texts, and should be excluded from our pool of ‘genuine’ cases. The re-
maining 10 forms come from 10 different texts. Some of these forms, however,
effectively have the same orthographic structure, which is why they represent
only five orthographically distinct structures of four characters:14

老 (lao ‘old’) (先+人 ‘prior-man’)

仙 (xian ‘immortal’) (人+止 ‘man-recess’)
仚 (人+山 ‘man-mountain’)
蠶 (can ‘silkworm’) 蝅 (天+天+虫 ‘heavenly-heavenly-worm’)
辯 (bian ‘eloquent’) 䛒 (巧+言 ‘artful-speech’)

Observing the dates of the manuscripts which contain the variants, we can see
that variants , and 仚 all come from manuscripts pre-dating the Tang period

||
14 The reason for this is that the Dunhuang suzidian often includes forms that differ from each
other in terms of their calligraphic traits (e.g., balance, stroke width) but not necessarily in
orthographic structure.
 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 505

(i.e., DY.029, DY.042, DY.234, DY.302 and S.6825). The variant 蝅, however,
appears in later manuscripts, probably dating to the ninth or tenth century. Of
these, S.134 is possibly the earliest but not earlier than the beginning of the
Tang. As expected, the variant 蝅 also appears in the Korean subset, which is
closer in time to the majority of Dunhuang manuscripts. The overlap corrobo-
rates that this specific variant was indeed in common use in pre-modern scribal
culture and is not a dictionary-only form. The only Korean variant not in the
Dunhuang set is 䗝, a variant of the character 蠶. Overlaying the two sets from
Korea and Dunhuang, we end up with six variants of only four characters:

老
仙 ,仚
蠶 蝅, 䗝
辯 䛒

Therefore, of the 37 huiyi-type variants listed in Table 1 at the beginning of this

paper, only these six can be linked with actual writing habits, while the rest
appear to be chiefly perpetuated in the lexicographic tradition. In other words,
six out of 37 (i.e., 16%) of the variants randomly chosen from traditional dic-
tionaries are likely to have been in common use.

4 The control group

Naturally, the analysis presented above has its limitations. One of these is that
the 37 variants (of 27 characters) are only a small subset of the total number of
variants preserved in pre-modern dictionaries. It is likely that some variants not
included in Table 1 may have been relatively common. To correct the bias of our
original data set, another set of 37 variant forms was chosen as a control group,
hoping to improve the accuracy of the results of the above analysis. To obtain a
different set of random variants, I went through the initial lines of the Qianziwen
千字文 (Thousand Character Text), looked up the variants of each character in
the four pre-modern dictionaries and selected the ones consisting of compo-
nents which together were indicative of the meaning of the word normally writ-
ten by the given character. From the point of view of the dictionaries, the
sequence of characters in the Qianziwen is entirely random, but the characters
are all commonly used ones.
506 | Imre Galambos

As before, the chosen variants did not have to belong exclusively to the
huiyi category, they could also be interpreted simultaneously as xingsheng com-
binations. Among the criteria for selecting variants was that their components
had to contribute to the semantic value of the character unambiguously. An-
other criterion was to exclude variants which contained the entire mother char-
acter and thus the added other component merely disambiguated or amplified
the meaning of the word (e.g., 㦂 < 常, < 悲). Table 3 lists the 37 variants of 21
standard characters chosen sequentially from the Qianziwen.

Table 3: Control group of 37 additional huiyi-type variants from the four dictionaries.

Standard character Variant Components Source

天 ‘heaven’ 一+先 ‘one-prior’ Yupian

佛+國 ‘Buddha-kingdom’ Sisheng pianhai

地 ‘earth’ 山+水+土 ‘mountain-water-soil’ Yupian

土+水+山 ‘soil-water-mountain’ Sisheng pianhai

水+土 ‘water-soil’ Jiyun

洪 ‘flood’ 水+山+竝(=並) ‘water-mountain- Longkan shoujian

merge’
水+生+生+竝(=並) ‘water-grow- Longkan shoujian
grow-merge’
歲 ‘year; harvest; 山+火+火 ‘mountain-fire-fire’ Sisheng pianhai
Jupiter’
山+木+山 ‘mountain-tree- Longkan shoujian
mountain’
山+收 ‘mountain-harvest’ Longkan shoujian

陽 ‘Yang, sun, 阜+火 ‘abundance-fire’ Sisheng pianhai

southern slope’
騰 ‘gallop’ 炎+頁+馬 ‘flame-head-horse’ Longkan shoujian

雨 ‘rain’ 宀+水 ‘cover-water’ Longkan shoujian

水 ‘water’ 井+泉 ‘well-spring’ Sisheng pianhai

 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 507

Table 3 (continued).

Standard character Variant Components Source

昆 ‘mass, many; 四+弟 ‘four-younger brothers’ Sisheng pianhai

brothers’
豕+豕+虫+虫 ‘pig-pig-worm-worm’ Sisheng pianhai

岡 ‘mountain ridge’ 山+四 ‘mountain-four’ Longkan shoujian

山+四+止 ‘mountain-four-stop’ Sisheng pianhai

珍 ‘precious’ 西+玉 ‘western-jade’ Sisheng pianhai

國 ‘kingdom’ 囗+王 ‘enclosed-king’ Longkan shoujian

囗+八+方 ‘enclosed-eight- Jiyun

directions’
囗+八+土 ‘enclosed-eight-lands’ Yupian

罪 ‘crime’ 自+辛 ‘self-painful’ Jiyun

自+卒 ‘self-die’ Longkan shoujian

愛 ‘love’ 心+及 ‘heart-reach’ Sisheng pianhai

體 ‘body’ 身+本 ‘body-foundation’ Yupian

身+豊(<豐) ‘body-plentiful’ Jiyun

身+骨 ‘body-bones’ Sisheng pianhai

歸 ‘return’ 去+來 ‘leave-come’ Longkan shoujian

四 ‘four’ 二+二 ‘two-two’ Yupian

五 ‘five’ 又+一 ‘another-one’ Longkan shoujian

惟 ‘think’ 佳+心 ‘good-mind’ Longkan shoujian

得 ‘gain’ 見+寸 ‘see-inch’ Jiyun

信 ‘trust’ 人+口 ‘person-mouth’ Yupian

言+心 ‘speak-heart’ Jiyun

言+小 ‘speak-small’ Jiyun

子+心 ‘child-heart’ Sisheng pianhai

508 | Imre Galambos

As before, comparing the variants of the control group with data in the Koryŏ
chajŏn and Dunhuang suzidian results in a significantly smaller set of variants.
If, in addition, we exclude lexicographic data, then we are left with six variants
of only four characters occurring in similar form in either, or both, of these two
sources.15 Table 4 shows these variants along with their sources.

Table 4: Huiyi-type variants from Table 3 matching non-lexicographic variants in the Koryŏ
chajŏn and the Dunhuang suzidian.

Standard character Variant from Koryŏ chajŏn Dunhuang suzidian

Table 3

地 ‘earth’
K-0934 P.2151

K-1058
岡 ‘mountain ridge’
K-0648
國 ‘kingdom’
K-0056 F-96

K-0934 P.2151
體 ‘body’
K-0549 F-96

Dunyan-119

Zhedun-027

The variants 囯 (<國) and 躰 (<體) are similar, although not identical, to the
modern simplified forms 国 and 体, currently in use in Mainland China and
Japan. The reason for this is that such forms, and other similar ones, remained
popular for many centuries over a vast geographical area and were eventually
chosen as substitutes for their more complex standard characters. That both

||
15 I also excluded as lexicographic data the so-called guwen 古文 (‘ancient script’) variants
handed down as part of the Liguding Shangshu 隸古定尚書 (S.799). The reason for this is that
this text transcribes pre-Qin (i.e., pre-221 BCE) character forms into the ‘modern’ script and
effectively preserves them as a specialised set of palaeographic data. The guwen variants cer-
tainly did not represent the way people normally wrote at the time when the manuscripts were
written.
 Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts | 509

Japan and then China – independently – chose the same forms attests to them
having been in widespread use throughout East Asia.
It is conspicuous that two of the six variants are character forms introduced
during the reign of Wu Zetian 武則天 (r. 690–705). These are 埊 (山+水+土),
used in place of the character di 地 (‘earth’), and 圀 (囗+八+方), a variant of the
character guo 國 (‘kingdom’).16 As these forms had a political and religious mo-
tivation and, at least initially, were primarily used within her reign, it is ques-
tionable whether they can be taken as representative of everyday writing habits
in the medieval period. They did not, however, disappear altogether and were
transmitted to other parts of East Asia, including Korea, Japan and the Nanzhao
南詔 kingdom, where some of them remained part of written culture for centu-
ries. If we include the Wu Zetian forms in the results, then the portion of vari-
ants in actual use comprises 16% of the control group, matching the results
obtained from our initial group. If we exclude them, we are left with only four
variants, representing 11% of the group. In either case, the control group’s re-
sults are entirely consistent with those of the initial group.

5 Conclusions
This paper assessed to what extent character variants documented in traditional
dictionaries reflected actual writing habits in the medieval period. As part of the
exercise, 37 huiyi-type variants were chosen from four pre-modern dictionaries.
These were then matched against the Dunhuang suzidian and the Koryŏ chajŏn
to evaluate the degree of overlap between data preserved in traditional diction-
aries and roughly contemporary scribal habits. Although a portion of the vari-
ants had corresponding forms in the Koryŏ chajŏn and the Dunhuang suzidian,
many of the matches occurred in dictionary-type works that had been incorpo-
rated into the Buddhist Canon or transmitted along with other types of manu-
scripts. Naturally, these variants were not directly representative of the way
people wrote in real life. After eliminating such ‘lexicographic noise’, only six
variants of four characters (i.e., 老, 仙, 蠶 and 辯) remained. Consequently, of
the original 37 variants, only six (16%) seemed to have been in actual use.
In the second step, to validate the results of the above analysis, I assembled
a control group of another 37 variants. This second analysis similarly yielded six
variants (16%) of four characters (i.e., 地, 岡, 國 and 體). As two of these vari-

||
16 On the origin of each character, see Bottéro 2013.
510 | Imre Galambos

ants (i.e., 埊<地 and 圀<國) were character forms introduced during the reign of
Wu Zetian, they primarily occurred in manuscripts and inscriptions dating to
the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth centuries, when she was on
the throne. They did not fully disappear, however, but remained in use in vari-
ous parts of East Asia, which is why they should not be dismissed outright. If we
exclude these two forms from the results, we are left with only four variants,
comprising 11% of the initial pool of variants in the control group. Whether we
go with 11% or 16%, the results of the control group are fully in accord with
those obtained from the first group of variants, attesting to the statistical relia-
bility of the data.
In sum, the analysis presented in this paper shows that only a fraction
(11%–16%) of the huiyi variants preserved in traditional dictionaries were in
daily use. Other types of variants are likely to exhibit a similar pattern, even if
specific percentages may be slightly different. Clearly, lexicography had its own
tradition, and large dictionaries, aspiring to gather a comprehensive set of
character forms ever in existence, relied just as much on earlier dictionaries as
on epigraphic and manuscript sources. A variant featuring in an influential
dictionary became part of the lexicographic tradition and from there on was
likely to be included in large dictionaries. Lexicographic knowledge was cumu-
lative and precedence-based, gradually incorporating even relatively rare vari-
ants.

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Conrad Heingarter and the Manuscript
Paris, BnF latin 7295A
Abstract: Late medieval astronomical manuscripts produced in Europe attest to
different kinds of historical practices. Computations are one such practice and the
focus of this contribution. My hypothesis is that a detailed analysis of the manu-
scripts and a deep understanding of what computation was for late medieval
astrologers or astronomers in Europe are mutually beneficial. By concentrating on
one of the manuscripts associated with the late fifteen-century astrologer Conrad
Heingarter, I show that the document has specific characteristics of a slowly
assembled personal toolbox for computation. I also argue that the multigraphic
properties of the document are fundamental to understanding calculations that
values comparing multiple computation paths among astronomical quantities.

1 Introduction
The manuscript evidence on which historians of late medieval astronomy in
Europe rely was essentially shaped by the historical actors who used those
manuscripts in scientific practices. These documents are contemporaneous to
the practices they attest.1 In some cases, it is even possible to examine autograph
manuscripts of important astronomers and astrologers of the period.2 Some of
the practices attested by these sources may be closely linked to the actual pro-
duction of manuscripts (e.g., when astronomical material is adapted to a specific
dedicatee or when a student copies a manuscript in order to learn astronomy);
other practices relate to the use of manuscripts to achieve specific tasks such as
computation. In this contribution, I want to investigate this second kind of
practice. My hypothesis is that a progressive unravelling of the complexity of
manuscripts will allow a deeper and more contextualised understanding of what
computation, understood as a form of mathematical reasoning, was for late

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1 See, for instance, the list of manuscripts in Chabás 2019, 413–423; or the manuscript descrip-
tions in Pedersen 2002, 87–214.
2 Husson and Saby 2019, 205–234.

Open Access. © 2021 Matthieu Husson, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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514 | Matthieu Husson

medieval astrologers or astronomers in Europe. Reciprocally, the analysis of these

manuscripts’ material, graphical, and intellectual features and of their interac-
tions will be enlightened by an increasing comprehension of the computations.
About a dozen manuscripts are now identified as having been, in the sec-
ond half of the fifteenth century, part of a collection assembled by Conrad
Heingarter.3 Conrad Heingarter’s manuscripts can be identified because he an-
notated, or in some cases even copied, parts of them himself.4 Together, these
manuscripts form an exceptional archive from which much can be learned
about Heingarter’s biography.5 Born in Horgen by Lake Zürich, he studied arts
and medicine in Paris between the early 1450’s (licence in arts, 1454) and 1466
(master in medicine). He was an astrologer and physician in the service of Jean
II de Bourbon and his wife, Jeanne de France (sister of Louis XI), from 1464
onward. He also served as a physician and ambassador to King Louis XI and
maybe to his successor Charles VIII. Most of Heingarter’s manuscripts relate to
his practice as a physician and astrologer. He authored commentaries on
Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and Ps.-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium.6 He also wrote several
treatises mixing dietary recommendations and astrological considerations.7
Beside astrology and medicine, four Heingarter manuscripts contain material
dealing with mathematical astronomy.8 Among them, Paris, Bibliothèque natio-
nale de France, latin 7295A can be described as a ‘toolbox’ manuscript dedicat-
ed to astronomical computations.9 This manuscript, one among many similar
manuscripts produced in Europe during the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, is
the subject of this article.10
Heingarter copied between half and two thirds of the manuscript.11 The
annotations, rubrication, and punctuation introduced by Heingarter in the

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3 Paris, BnF, lat. 7197, 7273, 7295A, 7305, 7314, 7333, 7347, 7432, 7446, 7450, and 11232.
4 Many of these ‘Heingarter manuscripts’ were already identified about a century ago by Lynn
Thorndike, who devotes two chapters to Heingarter in his History of Magical and Experimental
Sciences (Thorndike 1934, 357–385). Thorndike describes Heingarter as an ‘astrologer’ and a
‘physician’. Here I consider Heingarter’s astronomical computation practices.
5 Nicoud 2007, <doi.org/10.4000/books.efr.1448>; Jacquart 1979, 57.
6 The Tetrabiblos with an original commentary from Heingarter is found in Paris, BnF, lat. 7305.
The Centiloquium and the Tetrabiblos in Paris, BnF, lat. 7432.
7 Paris, BnF, lat. 7446 and 11232.
8 Husson 2019, 247–274.
9 Kremer 2021.
10 A high-resolution colour digitalisation of the manuscript can be consulted at <gallica.bnf.fr/
ark:/12148/btv1b10027322j> (accessed in Jan. 2021).
11 Heingarter copied the main text on fols 1r–32r, 35r–45r, 49r–93r, 145r–142r, 179v–193v.
Heingarter annotated, for instance, fols 99r, 100r, 164r.
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 515

manuscript are interesting but of secondary importance for our purpose. Such
features have a local interest for specific astronomical topics, but they do not
disclose the structure of the computation. Therefore, it is by describing the
manuscript itself that I propose to grasp the kind of computation practices that
Heingarter envisioned when composing this manuscript. I will thus focus in
turn on the manuscript’s material and graphical features as well as its content.

2 Material aspects: A composite manuscript

The manuscript binding is modern (Lefebvre 1828).12 It gathers 193 folios in 17
paper quires of various sizes (212;110;16;18;112;114;212;116;113;112;15;110;112;114;113). On two
occasions, folios are glued: fol. 115 is glued so that a quire of 14 folios is turned
into one of 13 folios; fol. 139 is glued so that a quire of 4 folios is turned into one
of 5 folios. These features show that the manuscript was not composed with a
great deal of attention to the uniformity of its material structure. Rather these
features indicate a collection of various elements produced on different occa-
sions by different means. Such features are quite characteristic of toolbox man-
uscripts, which are often ‘opportunistic’, and content-oriented rather than the
result of a carefully planned production process that is attentive to the physical
harmony of the codex.
Six different watermarks are present in the manuscript.13 Four of them point
to paper produced in Paris between 1451 and 1461. The two other watermarks
point to Chateaudun 1463 and Pont-à-Mousson 1459. The distribution of the
various types of paper in the different quires does not exhibit any clear pattern.
This fact again indicates that the manuscript itself was composed with no par-
ticular attention to uniformity in material used. The different quires of this
manuscript were probably copied in Paris during the latter part of Heingarter’s
stay at the university while he was mostly a student in medicine and beginning
in the service of Jean II de Bourbon. This chronological indication is important:
when he composed this manuscript, Heingarter was for the most part already a
trained astronomer, at least on the basic topics.14

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12 See the online catalogue notice by Laure Rioust (2018) at <archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/
ark:/12148/cc664943> (accessed in Jan. 2021).
13 Briquet 1548 on fols 10, 26, 34; Briquet 9167 on fol. 47; Briquet 1527 on fols 50, 55; Briquet
1683–1684 on fols 64, 67, 181; Briquet 15067 on fols 76, 79, 95; Briquet 11475 on fols 100, 127.
14 Heingarter learned liberal arts and more specifically astronomy in Paris (see Paris, BnF,
lat. 7197).
516 | Matthieu Husson

A small flyleaf is added between fols 131–132 and 135–136 isolating a subset
of a larger 12-folio quire. This feature suggests that the different quires of the
manuscript had a life prior to being bound. This insight is reinforced by a sup-
plementary observation. The last two folios of the third, fifth, ninth and four-
teenth quires are left blank. In each of these four cases, the last blank page and
the following one from the next quire exhibit traces of use that seem to indicate
independent circulation as a booklet before binding. This life before binding is
also characteristic of toolbox manuscripts. Such manuscripts were likely to exist
in a pre-codex format, allowing for different ordering of the quires and booklets,
easier simultaneous consultation of different parts of the manuscript and a
process of slow accumulation and selection of different elements. In order to
understand how the manuscript can be used in astronomical computations, it is
very important to keep in mind that the physical configuration of the manu-
script was, in its early stages, in a pre-codex, pre-binding form. This recognition
has at least two consequences. First, the current ordering of the different book-
lets in the manuscript must be relativized even though, when the booklets were
assembled in a codex, a specific ordering was chosen. Second, before binding, it
would have been possible to open several of these booklets simultaneously in
front of a reader.

3 Visual aspects: A multigraphic manuscript

The main visual feature of the manuscript, shared by most contemporaneous
European astronomical manuscripts, is its use of three different types of con-
tents: texts, numerical tables, and diagrams (Fig. 1). Diagrams and tables have
specific kinds of paratexts such as table headings or textual-diagram labels. The
paratexts are an important unifying element between the three kinds of con-
tents. These texts, tables, and diagrams are the working tools with which one
computes astronomical phenomenon. Their distribution in the manuscript re-
veals core features of the computation practices that were supported by this
document. I describe first this distribution and then each of the elements in
turn.
The codex comprises 386 pages, 35 of which are blank (Fig. 2). There are 190
pages inscribed with text, 173 pages inscribed with tables, and 58 pages in-
scribed with diagrams. Only 3 pages are inscribed with all three types of graph-
ical elements, while 14 pages have both text and tables (i.e. a little under 10 per
cent of the tables are found with text), and 51 have text and diagrams
(i.e. around 90 per cent of the diagrams are found with text). In this manuscript,
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 517

there is no instance of diagrams and tables on the same page without text. How-
ever, diagrams are found alone on 6 pages while text is found alone 124 times
and tables 156 times. The first two booklets of the codex comprise 125 pages with
text, 58 with tables, and 46 with diagrams. The last four booklets of the codex
comprise 115 pages with tables, 65 with text, and 12 with diagrams. Thus, there
is also a general distribution of these elements in the codex: texts usually come
first, while tables come after.

Fig. 2: Combination of text, tables, and diagrams in the pages of the manuscript.

Tables and text share almost an equal portion of the pages in the document, but
tables are, by far, the most autonomous element. Diagrams are in most cases
dependent on text. In between these two extremes, text is complemented by
diagrams or tables on about a third of the pages where text is inscribed. Finally,
tables and diagrams seem to require text in order to be combined on the same
page: a direct confrontation of both elements does not seem to have been easily
meaningful for late medieval astronomers.
The layout of text in the manuscript is that of the late medieval European
manuscript cultures to which the codex belongs. From folio 1 to 98, the pages
are mostly organised in one large column. In this first section, comprising the
first two booklets, the ruling alternates between around 42 lines (first booklet)
and around 45 lines (second booklet). These first two booklets are also unified
by some text-structuring decorative elements: a hierarchy of illuminated fif-
teenth-century Parisian-style letters (four red and blue illuminated letters in the
first booklet, one red and brown in the second booklet); alternate red and blue
capital letters (not all of them realised; see fols 2r–8v, 35r–45r, 49r–62r); and
518 | Matthieu Husson

alternate red and blue pieds de mouche. These first two booklets are also copied
in Heingarter’s hand. From folio 99 to the end, the page layout is in two col-
umns (the only exception is fol. 181v). The ruling is mostly of 45 lines, but sec-
tions of 50 lines (fols 182–193) or even 62 lines (fols 174–181) do occur. The
structuring of the text by means of decorative elements is also more diverse and
generally less polished in these last four booklets of the manuscript. Illuminat-
ed letters are absent. Two different styles of red capital letters are used in two
different sections (fols 115r–144v and 174r–180v, respectively). Black and red
pieds de mouche are used in various places (mostly fols 101r–111v, 174r–180v),
along with more refined punctuation marks (virgulae). Among the eight quires
of this second part, Heingarter copied only two (quire 14 and quire 17). Inter-
vention by Heingarter is nevertheless apparent in each of these quires via margi-
nalia of different types, including several manicula. These elements strongly
imply that Heingarter copied the first half of the manuscript. In the second part
of the manuscript, Heingarter’s interventions are those of a compiler and atten-
tive reader (adding, for instance, rubrication and punctuation), except for two
quires. Qualitatively, the first half of the codex, copied by Heingarter, mostly
contains text, while the second half, mainly collected and read but not copied
by Heingarter, mostly contains tables. The document thus attests a situation
where texts and tables share a balanced amount of page space but exhibit dif-
ferent levels of engagement by Heingarter. He interacts more intimately with
texts that he mostly copied himself, as opposed to the tables for which Heingar-
ter mostly trusted other copyists.
In a discussion of the visual aspects and distribution of numerical tables in
the manuscript, it is important to introduce a distinction. I use the word ‘grid’ to
refer to a particular ruling of the page that displays lines and columns. A grid
can be used for many different purposes on a page, one of which is to display
numerical tables. ‘Numerical tables’ are mathematical objects defined by a se-
ries of relations between argument and entries. Numerical tables can be dis-
played in different ways, via prose, within different kinds of graphs and
diagrams, or within grids. To some extent, the visual features of a grid share the
properties of other kinds of non-discursive diagrammatic representations in
numerical tables.
When tables are displayed along with text or diagrams on the same page,
the grid used is simple and of small dimensions (Fig. 1). Such grids are often
used to display numerical information in relation to a diagram (e.g. fols 16r and
30r). Most of the 14 small grids found on pages with text only are also directly
related to a diagram found on the previous or following page of the manuscript.
These small grids can be considered direct paratexts to the diagrams or an ex-
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 519

tension of their labelling system. In one instance, on fol. 182v, the relation be-
tween the diagram and the table is inverted: the diagram is used to display in a
geometrical way the relations displayed in the tables. Small grids sharing the
page with text are also used to display other kinds of tables that provide
information about the mean motions of celestial objects (e.g. fols 38v, 39r, 40r,
40v). The meaning of these tables is not directly dependent on a diagram or a
text. Grids for these kinds of tables tend to be a little larger than the first kind.
They can be also a little more complex, since one grid, for instance, can be used
to display two different tables concomitantly sharing their argument column
(e.g. fols 40r or 40v).
In this respect, these small grids share some features of the larger series of
grids filling most of the second half of the manuscript (see Fig. 3). These larger
grids often fill the full space of the page, though in some cases with comfortable
marginal areas (up to about a third of the page, on fol. 120r for instance). On the
other hand, a given page can have more than one grid. The most frequent situa-
tion is to have two grids on one page, but three grids are not rare and fol. 116r,
for instance, has four grids. Each of these grids can be quite complex and dis-
play more than one numerical table. The numerical tables displayed in these
grids are often long and require several grids on several pages for their presen-
tation. In many cases red and black ink are used in order to enhance readability
and distinguish different tables in a given grid, or the arguments from the en-
tries, or the heading of the tables from their values, etc. (e.g fol. 120r). Finally,
graphical aspects also include broken lines cutting across the grid. These lines
are embedded with different meanings. For instance, in Fig. 3 such broken lines
dividing the grid can be seen. They mark a separation between meridional and
septentrional values of the latitude of Mercury (i.e. to some extent, this line is a
projection onto the grid of the celestial ecliptic).
Grids of numerical tables are a fundamental tool for astronomical computa-
tions. Their visual characteristics and distribution in the manuscript reflect the
complexity and intended precision of these computations. Grids running for
multiple pages allow the display of a large amount of numerical information in
long and precise numerical tables. Moreover, these tables often share the same
series of grids, indicating that astronomical computations require the concomi-
tant consideration of sets of relations between astronomical quantities rather
than a more pedestrian path going successively from one relation to the next.
These large and complex tables are the majority, but smaller tables appearing in
simpler grids related to diagrams through text are also important as they illus-
trate the intervention of numerical tables in a different context, less ‘frontline’
with respect to computation.
520 | Matthieu Husson

In many ways, diagrams are distributed in the codex along the same pat-
terns as these small numerical tables in simple grids. About 30 per cent of these
diagrams appear in connection with one of these small tables on the same, pre-
vious, or following page. About 60 per cent of the diagrams appear in a textual
context but are not associated with any tables. The last 10 per cent are diagrams
filling an entire page. A portion of them appear on their own (Fig. 4), inde-
pendently of any direct relation to a text (or a table). These cases indicate that
diagrams possess an autonomy and can generate meaning on their own.
Diagrams in the manuscript all rely on a very simple repertoire of geometric
shapes involving circles and straight lines. However, they can be distinguished
according to some of their visual properties, especially with respect to the way
they use different kinds of lettered, textual, or numerical/graduation labels
(Fig. 5). Diagrams using lettered labels are the majority, with 51 cases. Textual
labels (i.e. nouns or nominal groups mostly) are present as well in 43 cases.
Graduations and/or numbers labels appear in 31 cases. Graduation and num-
bers never appear alone as labels. They are always coupled with at least one
other kind of label. Texts are also quite rare as a stand-alone label for a diagram,
only 3 cases. Letters, on the other hand, are the only label in 15 cases. The com-
bination of text and letters is the most frequent type of label with 10 cases. Text
and graduations/numbers are attested in 5 cases. The combination of gradua-
tions/numbers with letters is very rare, only 1 case.15 There are 25 diagrams com-
bining the three kinds of labels.

Fig. 5: Repartition of types of diagram’s labels.

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15 This is the specific situation of fol. 182v, mentioned above in relation to a small grid of
numerical tables.
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 521

Lettered diagrams are the majority. Actually, direct mentions of Euclid’s Ele-
ments in relation to some of these diagrams are rare but not absent from the
manuscript. In most cases, however, lettered diagrams are supplemented either
with textual labels or with graduation and numbers. Small tables are also used
in some cases to complement the lettered labels. Thus, lettered labels must be
used in different ways than in the Elements. Moreover lettered labels were not
sufficient to cover a range of uses that appears to be much broader for diagrams.
It is interesting, for instance, with respect to the relation of diagrams to quanti-
fication, that graduations/numbers labels require the presence of at least one
other kind of label (in 80 per cent of the cases in fact, graduations/numbers
labels appear with lettered and textual labels).
Other visual features of astronomical diagrams in the manuscripts, al-
though they are more difficult to quantify, are of importance. Some diagrams
(e.g. fol. 183v) seem purely mathematical. None of their elements represents,
even indirectly, an astronomical quantity. The geometrical reasoning expound-
ed in this part of the manuscript relies on a series of 3 diagrams (all to be found
on fol. 183v). Diagrams, like tables, can be organised in series. On the other
hand, a cosmological diagram such as that of fol. 191v represents some aspects
of solar eclipses with moon shadow coloured in black ink. Like the mathemati-
cal diagrams of fol. 183v, the eclipse diagram of fol. 191v initiates a broader series
of 4 diagrams that are to be found in the following folios. These diagrams dis-
play relations between astronomical quantities by representing directly astro-
nomical objects (here the sun and the moon). Obviously, these two kinds of
diagrams rely on quite different modes of representation. Instrument diagrams
(e.g. fol. 50r–v) are yet another kind of diagram with quite distinctive features.
They appear in series, which shows the ‘construction’ process of the instru-
ments or different details of the object. These diagrams represent, through an
instrument, specific relations between astronomical quantities. Such diagrams
do rely in some cases on a direct representation of astronomical objects (notably
the stars on the rete of the astrolabe) but this is not systematic. Some of these
instrument diagrams are even metrically exact, and thus can be used as ’paper’
instruments for some kinds of computational use. Theorica planetarum dia-
grams are yet another way to display sets of relations between astronomical
quantities. They are often much closer to the representation chosen by numeri-
cal tables. For instance, they provide geometrical representation of interpola-
tion coefficients (minuta proportionalia) which are typical artefacts of numerical
tables’ computation practices (Fig. 4).
522 | Matthieu Husson

The manuscript has several instances of variations among versions of the

‘same’ diagram.16 Some of these instances (Fig. 4) are part of a stand-alone
series of diagrams that are meaningful on their own, independent of any direct
relation to text or tables, while others diagrams are inserted into a text. These
possibilities are grounded in the fact that these diagrams, like most of the
diagrams in the manuscript, are found in many other manuscripts. They are
elements of a shared epistemic visual culture in mathematical astronomy where
meaning is likely to arise even from these small variations.
In spite of the fact that they rely on a very simple geometrical repertoire of
shapes, diagrams appear to have a broad visual range, including a complex use
of different kinds of labels and different modes of representation for the rela-
tionship between astronomical quantities. Like grids for numerical tables, dia-
grams generally show sets of relations between astronomical quantities rather
than each relation one by one. Different types of diagrams, with respect to their
labelling systems and their modes of representation, will generally also select
different sets of relations between astronomical quantities. Like grids for numer-
ical tables, diagrams are organised in series that can display different kinds of
processes or analysis. Finally, variations on ‘same’ diagrams provide slightly
different representations of identical sets of relations between astronomical
quantities. Thus, together diagrams produce a robust and nuanced set of tools
for identifying and analysing pertinent astronomical quantities and their rela-
tions in the study of celestial phenomenon. Diagrams, and more generally geo-
metrical insights, have a thick and diverse role in the mathematical practice
attested by this manuscript.
Inspection of the manuscript’s visual aspects confirms that Heingarter was
deeply engaged with the manuscript. This engagement is different with respect
to text and tables. Moreover, analysing the visual organisation of diagrams and
grids of numerical tables provides important information about the nature of
the computations supported by the manuscript. Consideration of the various
sets of mathematical relations between astronomical quantities, presented in
diagrams or in grids of numerical tables, is at the centre of this mathematical
practice. It is also important to remember that these two types of graphical ex-
pressions for sets of relationships between astronomical quantities can appear
together on a page only if they are supplemented by a text. Indeed diagrams and
tables share a common terminology used in table headings and in diagram la-
bels. Thus, it is likely that various texts and more deeply a specific subset of

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16 Compare Fig. 4 with fol. 188r, both connected with Mercury.
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 523

expressions shared by the different graphical modes used in the manuscript

have a central role in articulating the computation.

4 Intellectual aspects: A multiple-text manuscript

Twenty-three works can be identified in the manuscript. Ten of them cover 307
pages, about 90 per cent of the inscribed pages of the codex. On the other hand,
the remaining 13 works share only 44 pages, that is, a little more than 12 per
cent of the inscribed pages. A few works, which constitute the core of the manu-
script, are copied down in full. These core works are accompanied by about the
same number of shorter works, to which very little space is devoted. These
smaller pieces are often fragments of larger works (only a portion of a larger
work is copied, or several portions are compiled, or the original work is
abridged by other means). The shorter pieces can also be complete and inde-
pendent but nevertheless small works. It is often very difficult to identify these
fragments and short works because parts of unedited works are almost impossi-
ble to detect, especially if the wording, in case of a text, has been slightly
adapted or variant. While difficult to identify, these fragments and short works
indicate the type of complementary and auxiliary material that Heingarter felt
was necessary to handle the larger texts. Thus, the relationship between the
core works and the fragments or short works is an important aspect of the as-
tronomical computations attested by the manuscript.
The first booklet (quires 1 to 5) is a perfect illustration of this situation. It
contains four works. The first one is Campanus de Novara’s Theorica plane-
tarum.17 It takes up 64 pages (fols 1r–32v) with an intricate combination of text,
diagrams, and tables. The text describes planetary models qualitatively in their
geometrical and cosmological dimensions. It also proposes an instrument for
representing these different models and relies on the instrument to explain the
rationale of the astronomical tables. The second text is the De armilis of
Profatius Judaeus. This text also describes an instrument for displaying the
geometrical planetary models.18 It is 12 pages (fols 35r-40v) long, with the same
kind of combination of text, diagrams, and tables as the previous work. The
following two works are much smaller units. De horologio is 3 pages (fols 41r–42r)

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17 Benjamin and Toomer 1971, 83.
18 Poulle 1980, 66.
524 | Matthieu Husson

long, with text and diagrams.19 It deals with the topic of water clocks. Moreover,
a small text on proportions with the incipit Incipit arithmetica de rerum ac nume-
rorum proprietationibus takes up 6 pages of text (fols 42v–45r).20 The last 7 pages
of the quire and booklet are left blank so that the choice of this work, near the
end of the booklet, is probably not explained by an optimisation of page space:
Heingarter did not select small works to fill empty pages near the end of a quire.
The second booklet (quires 6 to 9) has a similar organisation of large and
small works. Two small, unidentified works dealing with proportions take up
3 pages. The first work, with the incipit Si vis scire quantitatem cuiuslibet linee,
occupies fol. 49r. The second, with the incipit Notandum quod habendo aliquid
de modo proferendi, occupies fols 92v–93r. The last 11 pages of the booklet are
left blank (almost half of quire 9). Two large works fill the remaining 86 pages.
Ps.-Messahala’s De astrolabio takes up 31 pages (fols 49r–64r), with a combina-
tion of texts, tables, and diagrams. Like the works found in the first booklet, this
one also treats the topic of an instrument. However, the astrolabe is an instru-
ment devoted to the astronomy of daily motion and to spherical astronomy.
Interestingly, an autonomous series of diagrams extracted from the Theorica
planetarum Gerardi is inserted at the end of this treatise. The second large work
of this booklet takes up 51 pages, 43 of which are tables and 8 are text. This
work is a German adaptation of the Six Wings by Immanuel Bonfils, a mid-
fourteenth-century treatise on eclipse computation that was originally written
in Hebrew.21 No other copies of this version have been identified.
The third booklet coincides with quire 10 and with the second half of the
codex, where Heingarter’s intervention is mainly that of a reader and compiler
and less that of a copyist. This quire’s central work (fols 101r–111v) consists of
John of Saxony’s canons to the Parisian Alfonsine tables with the incipit Tempus
est mensura motus. This work takes up only 22 pages, all text. The work ex-
pounds different procedures for computing planetary positions in longitude and
syzygies with the Parisian Alfonsine Tables. It is without any doubt the most
copied work of the whole Alfonsine tradition with hundreds of extent copies.
Heingarter devoted special attention to the topic of syzygies, which he annotat-
ed on fol. 109r. In this booklet, two supplementary works complement John of
Saxony’s canons. One is an ascension table for Toledo (45°) on fols 112r–113v.
This table is extracted from a larger set known as the Toledan Tables.22 The last

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19 Thorndike and Kibre1963, 949, incipit: Notandum pro horalogiis in trunco faciendis.
20 Thorndike and Kibre1963, 1437.
21 Solon 1971, 1–20; Lévy 2003, 283–304; Goldstein 2007; Goldstein and Chabás 2017, 71–108.
22 Pedersen 2002, 1066–1070.
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 525

work of this booklet is 3 pages long, all text. This work, with the incipit Ad intel-
ligendum tabulas astronomie necessario opportet scire quid sit, defines different
concepts of mathematical astronomy that are necessary to work with the table.23
Here the fragment or small work provides a basic vocabulary helpful for reading
the core and larger work of the booklet. The small definitional text is cut into
two sections. A first part is found on fol. 99r–v, and a second part is found on
fol. 114r.
The fourth booklet (quires 11 to 13) comprises 6 works. The first extends to
38 pages (fols 115r–127r, 128r–134v) and contains the Parisian Alfonsine Tables.24
John of Saxony redacted Tempus est mensura motus for this set of tables. This
set of tables, computed on the longitude of Toledo, provides the elements for
computing planetary longitude. Heingarter added, in marginalia to these tables,
two sets of radices for Paris and Vienne (France). These additions make the
tables directly useful for two meridians where Heingarter is known to have
worked (fols. 117v-123r). Apart from these marginalia, many other smaller works
supplement the Parisian Alfonsine Tables in this booklet. They are mostly taken
from the larger corpus of the Toledan Tables. Heingarter copied in his own hand
a planetary latitude table on fol. 127v. Four other fragments or small works, deal-
ing, respectively, with planetary stations, planetary aspects, Solar and lunar
velocities, and finally spherical astronomy fill the last 20 pages of the booklet
(including one final blank page). In this booklet the fragments or short works
complement the large, core work of the booklet by addressing topics that are not
addressed by the Parisian Alfonsine Tables.
Heingarter copied the fifth booklet himself (quire 14). It contains only one
work (fols 145r–152r). The Planetary latitude tables of Oxford fill 10 pages.25 They
address the issue of planetary latitude in a fundamentally different way than
the small tables copied on fol. 127v in the preceding booklet. The last 5 pages of
the booklet are left blank.
The sixth booklet (quires 15-16) contains two works linked to John of
Lignères. The first (fols 155r–171v) is 34 pages of tables. It is known in the litera-
ture as John of Lignères’s Tables of 1322.26 It is a set of astronomical tables com-
piled by John of Lignères in Paris, dealing mainly with spherical astronomy and
eclipse computations. Many of those tables are directly linked to the Toledan
tradition, but a few of them also relate to the Alfonsine tradition. Part of the

||
23 Thorndike and Kibre 1963, 48.
24 Chabás 2019, 237–276.
25 Chabás 2019, 227–236.
26 Chabás 2019, 175–199.
526 | Matthieu Husson

content of this set is redundant, for instance, with respect to planetary latitude,
and to what is found in the preceding booklet. This set of tables closes the tabu-
lar section of the codex that was engaged in booklet four. After four blank
pages, the second work of this booklet is found (fols 174r–180v), occupying the
remaining 14 pages, all text. It is the Priores astrologi by John of Lignères, a text
probably written in connection with the Tables of 1322 and addressing planetary
longitude, latitude, and eclipse computation.27 Heingarter devoted close atten-
tion to the topic of planetary latitude in this text. This is evident from the way he
rubricated and punctuated the portion of the Lignère’s work devoted to this
topic (fol. 178r)
The last booklet of the manuscript (quire 17), mostly copied by Heingarter,
begins with two short works. The first, which occupies only a part of fol. 181r,
may be a fragment on eclipse by John of Lignères.28 The following one (fol. 181r–v)
includes text and diagrams. It discusses theoretical issues that have to do with
planetary motions and eclipses, drawing on al-Farghani and Ptolemy. The last
work of the manuscript, with the incipit Arabes maxime secudum motum lune
(fols 182r–193v), includes texts, diagrams, and small tables on 24 pages.29 It ad-
dresses in a theoretical way many aspects of mathematical astronomy, from
trigonometry to eclipses, with reference to Ptolemy, Euclid, al-Farghani, the
canons to the Toledan Tables, and the Parisian Alfonsine tables.
Core works and short works interact in two mains ways in the manuscript.
In some cases, fragments and short works complement the core works by pro-
posing alternatives to astronomical topics that have already been addressed or
by covering entirely different topics. In other cases, fragments and short works
provide foundational information, such as definitions or basic arithmetical
techniques. Independent of this distinction between core works and short
works, a different distinction between works appears. It bears on the way they
rely on different combinations of graphical expression. Some works are text
only: these are in general procedural texts expounding the use of astronomical
tables in computing different kinds of astronomical quantities. Other works
consist only of tables. They collect table sets as described above. Finally, a third
class of works combines texts, diagrams, and small tables. They address instru-
ments and contain theoretical reflection on planetary models and computation
procedures. These works are placed at the start and at the end of the codex,
while works that consist only of tables or text are the core of the codex. These

||
27 Saby 1987, 173–277.
28 Pedersen 2002, 535.
29 Thorndike and Kibre 1963, 124.
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 527

more theoretical works provide meaning and guidance to the long and tedious
astronomical computations supported by the manuscript.
Almost each of the main areas of astronomical computation (longitude, lati-
tude, eclipse, spherical astronomy) is addressed many times and through differ-
ent means with the three types of works distinguished above (in some cases
even in a single booklet). Thus, the computation practices under scrutiny here
are not only about the consideration of sets of mathematical relations between
astronomical quantities, they are about multiple paths among these relations
and multiple ways to group and consider them. The result is a thick and flexible
computational practice.

5 Conclusion
This survey through the different works of the manuscript, their distribution in
the material units of the codex, and their relation to the different graphical ex-
pressions teaches many things with respect to the features of toolbox manu-
scripts and the type of computation practices they support.
From this case study, this toolbox manuscript appears to have a complex
material organisation reflecting of the life that the different booklets and quires
had before binding. The process of production is opportunistic and strongly
linked to a given individual who copies, selects, and organises different ele-
ments. This individual interacts differently with the different parts of the manu-
script, and the visual organisation of the codex reflects this production process.
The hand of the individual responsible for the codex is found throughout, but
other hands are found as well. There is no uniformity in ruling, decoration,
rubrication, or punctuation marks. Finally, the intellectual organisation of the
codex establishes a set of large, core works that are placed in dialogue with
many shorter or fragmentary works.
The long and personal production process of the manuscript, certainly at
least partly concomitant with Heingarter’s student years in Paris, reflects the
training required by the computation practices that the codex attests. The dif-
ferent works found in the manuscript are, in the majority of cases, well-
established elements in a corpus of mathematical astronomy shared in universi-
ty and courtly milieus, where Heingarter evolved. By selecting his own set of
tools, Heingarter inscribed himself in this tradition. Thus, to some extent this
computation practice is also a social practice that is evaluated by peers with
respect to the way it is inscribed in a tradition. Finally, the complexity and re-
flexivity of this computation practice appeared from two distinct features. First,
528 | Matthieu Husson

on the visual level, diagrams and grids of numerical tables display different sets
of relations between astronomical quantities. Second, the importance of redun-
dancy and variation in how works of different types are assembled indicates
that the exploration of multiple computational paths among astronomical quan-
tities is an important value for historical actors.

Acknowledgements
I thank Camille Bui, Eleonora Andriani, Samuel Gessner and Nicholaus Jacobson
for the very fruitful collective analysis of this manuscript we have done together
in 2019–2020. I am also grateful to the referees for their helpful comments and
suggestions on earlier draft of the work. The efficient and professional contribu-
tion of the language editor and copy-editor deserve also mention. All remaining
inaccuracies are mine. Research presented in this article was supported by the
ERC project ALFA (CoG 723085, PI Matthieu Husson).

References
Benjamin, Francis S. and Gerald J Toomer (1971), Campanus of Novara and Medieval Planetary
Theory (Publications in Medieval Science, 16), Madison: The University of Wisconsin
Press.
Chabás, José (2019), Computational Astronomy in the Middle Ages: Sets of Astronomical Tables
in Latin (Estudios sobre la Ciencia, 72), Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cien-
tíficas.
Goldstein, Bernard R. (2007), ‘Bonfils, Immanuel Ben Jacob’, in Michael Berenbaum and Fred
Skolnik (eds), Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 62, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
Goldstein, Bernard R. and José Chabás (2017), ‘Analysis of the Astronomical Tables for 1340
Compiled by Immanuel Ben Jacob Bonfils’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 71: 71–
108.
Husson, Matthieu (2019) ‘Mathematical Astronomy and the Production of Multiple Texts Manu-
scripts in Late Medieval Europe: a Comparison of BnF lat. 7197 and BnF lat. 7432’, in
Alessandro Bausi, Michael Friedrich and Marilena Maniaci (eds), The Emergence of Multi-
ple-Text Manuscripts (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 17), Berlin: De Gruyter, 247–274.
Husson, Matthieu and Marie-Madeleine Saby (2019), ‘Le manuscrit Erfurt F. 377 et l’astronomie
Alphonsine parisienne’, Micrologus, 27: 205–234.
Jacquart, Danielle (1979), Supplément [au] Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France
au Moyen Age [d’Ernest Wickersheimer], Geneva: Droz.
Kremer, Richard L. (2021), ‘Exploring a late Fifteenth-Century Astrologer’s Toolbox: British
Library Add Ms 34603’, in Richard L. Kremer, Matthieu Husson and José Chabás (eds),
Alfonsine Astronomy: The Written Record, Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming.
Lévy, Tony (2003), ‘Immanuel Bonfils (XIVe s.): Fractions, décimales, puissances de 10 et opé-
rations arithmétiques’, Centaurus, 45: 283–304.
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 529

Nicoud, Marilyn (2007), Les régimes de santé au Moyen Âge: Naissance et diffusion d’une
écriture médicale en Italie et en France (XIIIe–XVe siècle), Rome: Publications de l’École
française de Rome, <doi.org/10.4000/books.efr.1448>.
Pedersen, F. S. (2002), The Toledan Tables: A Review of the Manuscripts and the Textual Ver-
sions with an Edition (Historisk-filosofiske Skrifter, 24), Copenhagen: Det Kongelige
Danske Videnskabernes Selskab.
Poulle, Emmanuel (1980), Les instruments de la théorie des planètes selon Ptolémée: équatoires
et horlogerie planétaire du XIIIe au XVIe siècle, Geneva: Droz.
Saby, Marie-Madeleine (1987), Les canons de Jean de Lignères sur les tables astronomiques de
1321, PhD thesis, Paris, École Nationale des Chartes.
Solon, Peter (1971), ‘The Six Wings of Immanuel Bonfils and Michael Chrysokokkes’, Centaurus,
15: 1–20.
Thorndike, Lynn (1934), A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. 4 (History of Science
Society Publication, New Series, 4), New York: Columbia University Press.
Thorndike, Lynn and Kibre, Pearl (1963), A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings
in Latin (The Mediaeval Academy of America Publication, 29), London: William Clowes and
Sons.
530 | Matthieu Husson

Fig. 1: The layout of texts, tables and diagrams (Paris, BnF, lat. 7295A, fol. 30r). © Bibliothèque
nationale de France.
 The Art of Astrological Computations | 531

Fig. 3: Third grid for the true latitude of Mercury (Paris, BnF, lat. 7295A, fol. 152r). © Biblio-
thèque nationale de France.
532 | Matthieu Husson

Fig. 4: Figure for the motion of Venus and Mercury (Paris, BnF, lat. 7295A, fol. 64r). © Biblio-
thèque nationale de France.
Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri
Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection
of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek
Hamburg: Observations on Cod. hebr. 252
Abstract: The Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg holds several Hebrew
multiple-text manuscripts of Jewish magic that until now have received only occa-
sional scholarly attention. This paper focusses on Cod. hebr. 252, a seventeenth-
century manuscript of Jewish magic from the Hamburg collection. The codex is
in a fragmentary state, making a reconstruction of its history difficult. Evidence
suggests that the codex was originally produced in Northern Italy and later
came to the German lands. The manuscript’s original, main content consists of
magical recipes and instructions, magical-mystical names, cosmological dia-
grams, and astronomical drawings. This content has then been supplemented
with additional magical texts as well as with various items of paracontent and
guest content.

1 Introduction
The collection of Hebrew manuscripts held by the Staats- und Universitäts-
bibliothek ‘Carl von Ossietzky’ in Hamburg (Stabi) is one of the three most im-
portant collections of Hebrew manuscripts in Germany, with regard to both the
quantity and the cultural significance of the manuscripts.1 In this respect the
Stabi’s collection is of equal standing with the collections of the Staatsbiblio-
thek zu Berlin and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. The vast majority
of the manuscripts already belonged to the library when the Stabi emerged from
its predecessor, the Stadtbibliothek Hamburg, in 1921. Most of the Hebrew man-
uscripts held by the Stabi are divided into two groups of shelf marks: ‘Cod.
hebr.’2 and ‘Cod. Levy’.3 Most of the items bearing the ‘Cod. hebr.’ shelf mark

||
1 For a more extensive history of the collection, see Stork 2014; Steinschneider 1969, V–XIII;
and Róth and Striedl 1984, IX–XIX.
2 Codices hebraici, ‘Hebrew manuscripts’. The manuscripts up to Cod. hebr. 337 have been
catalogued by Moritz Steinschneider; see Steinschneider 1969 (originally published in 1878).
This shelf-mark group, which remains open for new acquisitions, today comprises more than
350 manuscripts.

Open Access. © 2021 Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri, published by De Gruyter. This work is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-027
534 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

came to the Stadtbibliothek from the manuscript collection of Johann Christoph

Wolf (1683–1739).4 Wolf had bought several collections of Hebrew manuscripts,
the largest being the collection owned by Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach
(1683–1734).5 The manuscripts bearing the ‘Cod. Levy’ shelf mark were bought
as a whole by the Stadtbibliothek from the private collection of Heyman Baruch
Levy in 1906.6
Both shelf-mark groups of Hebrew manuscripts comprise various items that
contain kabbalistic texts as well as material that can be classified as magical or
as practical Kabbala.7 In many cases it may be difficult to speak of ‘manuscripts
of magic’ or ‘magical manuscripts’: often purely magical texts are included in
manuscript that contains kabbalistic treatises or other genres. Or magic is only a
side note in the manuscript, such as when magical recipes are added in empty
spaces or on blank pages at the end of a manuscript, thus giving such recipes
the status of guest texts. Generally speaking, manuscripts that contain only
magical texts in the strict sense, from beginning to end, are a minority.
In research on written artefacts of Jewish magic, a general distinction be-
tween ‘finished products’, which are attributed a direct magical efficacy (i.e.
amulets), and ‘instructional texts’ has been established.8 The latter are recipes,
formulas to be recited, instructions for the preparation of amulets, or model
forms to be copied in the production of an amulet. Instructional texts, usually
termed segullot in Hebrew,9 are often part of a larger collection of magical texts

||
3 Codices Levy, catalogued by Róth and Striedl 1984.
4 On Johann Christian Wolf, see Mulsow 2005; on Wolf and Hebrew literature, see especially
pp. 97–99. Wolf was the author of the bibliographical work Bibliotheca Hebraea, which was
published in four volumes from 1715 to 1733 (Wolf 1727).
5 On Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach and his collections, see Friedrich and Müller 2020. A
catalogue of 141 Hebrew manuscripts in Uffenbach’s collection was published by Mai 1720, 1–416.
6 See Róth and Striedl 1984, IX–XIX.
7 The distinction between Kabbala as a mystical or theosophic discipline on the one hand and
magic on the other is not in every case easy to make clear. See Harari 2019 on the relationship
between magic and Kabbala and on the concept of magic as practical Kabbala. We stick to the
term ‘magic’ since it has become established as a heuristic concept in the scholarly community
working on these phenomena in the context of Judaism; see, e.g. Bohak 2008 and Harari 2017.
‘Magic’ designates a group of practices that, while they share certain family resemblances, are
not amenable to a common definition; nevertheless the proposals for such a definition usually
involve relationships of cause and effect; cf. Otto and Stausberg 2013, Veltri 1997, 18–22 and
Veltri 2012, 237–240.
8 See Harari 2017, 207–216 and Bohak 2008, 143–148.
9 Segulla (plural segullot), lit. ‘(precious) property’; in the context of Jewish magic, the term
segullot originally designated inherent properties of objects or materials (such as plants or
gemstones) that induce an efficacy that could be utilized for magical purposes. The word
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 535

contained in a multiple-text manuscript (henceforth MTM).10 Although there are

some established and commonly known text collections of magic or practical
Kabbala, many Jewish MTMs that concern magic are more or less individual
compilations of often rather short textual units, arranged by the scribe accord-
ing to his individual needs and interests. In such cases, cataloguers often could
not do more than label these passages or complete manuscripts as segullot or
refu’ot.11 Cataloguing down to the level of individual recipes is usually not the
purpose of a catalogue of a manuscript collection. The academic study of magic,
on the other hand, would profit tremendously from more detailed accounts of
magical texts in manuscript catalogues.
Scholarly research on the magical manuscripts in the Hamburg Hebraica
collection started at the end of the nineteenth century. Max Grunwald (1874–
1953), who served as a rabbi in Hamburg from 1895 until 1903 and who was a
scholar of Jewish folklore (‘Jüdische Volkskunde’), was familiar with the manu-
scripts in what was then the Stadtbibliothek, and he refers to them in several
publications.12 In the 1990s and 2000s, two Hamburg manuscripts were studied
in research projects on Jewish magic conducted at the Freie Universität Berlin:
Cod. hebr. 136 was included by Rebiger and Schäfer in their edition of the magi-
cal manual Sefer ha-Razim;13 and the manuscript Cod. hebr. 156 was identified
as an important textual witness to the transmission of another magical hand-
book, the Sefer Raziʾel ha-Malʾakh.14 And in 2014, in cooperation with the Centre
for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg, the Stabi
assembled seventy-eight items from its collection of Hebrew manuscripts for an

||
segulla then developed into a technical term for ‘magical recipe’ or ‘magical instruction’ in
general.
10 A multiple-text manuscript (MTM) contains more than one main textual unit. An MTM can
consist of one or more codicological units, in which case it is termed a composite manuscript.
We use the term MTM instead of the ambiguous expressions miscellany or Sammelhandschrift.
On MTMs and their phenomenology, see Friedrich and Schwarke 2016, in particular the intro-
duction by the editors 1–26, and Bausi, Friedrich and Maniaci 2019.
11 Refu’ot ‘healings’ are segullot for the purpose of healing illnesses and ailments.
12 For instance, Grunwald refers to Cod. hebr. 222, 296, and 318 in Grunwald 1898, 80 in the
context of childbirth amulets; and to Cod. hebr. 135, 166, 175, 251, and 296 in Grunwald 1900.
On Max Grunwald, see Daxelmüller 2010; on Jüdische Volkskunde in general, see Johler and
Staudinger 2010 and Veltri 1997, 11–12.
13 See Rebiger and Schäfer 2009, vol. 1, 19 et passim.
14 See Rebiger 2005 and the extensive discussion about the broader context of the transmis-
sion of Sefer Raziʾel ha-Malʾakh in Leicht 2006, 187–294.
536 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

exhibition.15 Besides two amulets, the section on Kabbala and magic featured
seven MTMs with magical recipes and mystical-kabbalistic treatises as well as
mystical prayer books.16 Apart from this small number of publications, however,
the Hebrew manuscripts from the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg
have not been a focus of scholarship on Jewish magic and ought to be regarded
as a treasure that awaits discovery.

2 Cod. hebr. 252

With this paper, we would like to contribute to discovering this treasure by tak-
ing a closer look at one specific MTM of Jewish magic: Staats- und Universitäts-
bibliothek Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 252. Before it came to the library via Johann
Christoph Wolf, the manuscript was part of the collection of Zacharias Konrad
von Uffenbach and was described by Johann Heinrich Mai in his catalogue of
the Uffenbach collection.17 A Latin description of the content of the manuscript
and the exlibris of von Uffenbach, depicting an ideal library that covers all the
arts and sciences, have been pasted on the inner front cover (Fig. 1). In Ham-
burg the manuscript was catalogued in the 1870s by Moritz Steinschneider,
whose entry on it is the only existing scholarly account of this codex.18 We are
not aware of any other published research dedicated to this manuscript.19 Inter-
estingly, the entry – about a page long – occupies more space than many other
manuscripts in Steinschneider’s catalogue. Starting from Steinschneider’s entry
and considering the various manuscriptological features of Cod. hebr. 252 –
namely, codicology, paracontent, core-content, and guest content – we intend
to shed more light on the history of the manuscript – which Steinschneider, on
palaeographic grounds, dates to the seventeenth century20 – as an example of

||
15 ‘Tora – Talmud – Siddur. Hebräische Handschriften der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek
Hamburg, 18. September–26. Oktober 2014’. See Wandrey 2014 for the accompanying cata-
logue.
16 See Wandrey 2014, 281–308.
17 Mai 1720, 408–416, no. CXLI. The description of the manuscript by Johann Christoph Wolf in
his Bibliotheca Hebraea (see Wolf 1727, 799–800, no. 24) is to a large extent, as Steinschneider
1969, 99 notes, a direct excerpt from Mai.
18 See Steinschneider 1969, 99–100, no. 248.
19 Except for brief mentions by Grunwald, Trachtenberg, and Scholem; see below. The refer-
ences by Trachtenberg and Scholem are apparently based on their study of Steinschneider’s
catalogue only.
20 Steinschneider 1969, 99.
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 537

early modern Jewish MTMs with magical content. However, due to limitations of
space, we will have to restrict ourselves to selected aspects of this codex.

2.1 Codicology
In its current state, Cod. hebr. 252 comprises 33 folios made of paper and
measures 20.1 centimetres in height and 15.5 centimetres in width. Because Mai
reports the number of folios as 57,21 we must recognize that a substantial loss of
folios has occurred. Moreover, the original quire structure of the manuscript has
been destroyed in the course of time. The manuscript begins with two bifolia.
The first bifolium (fols 1–2) contains a page with probatio pennae and biblical
quotations (fol. 1a) (Fig. 1), a poem alluding to Sabbatai Zevi (fol. 1b) (Fig. 2),
and a page containing a title (fol. 2a). The second bifolium (fols 3–4) contains
on fol. 3a–b texts that are numbered from 86 to 95 and on fol. 4 a childbirth
amulet on the recto and a segulla against a storm on the verso, both added later
by hand C. The first actual quire, a senion, begins with fol. 5, which is blank
(fols 5–16). It can be supposed that this quire retains its original structure and
that the entire manuscript originally composed of senions.22 From folios 6a to
18a, the texts are numbered from 191 to 226. So at least two additional senions
must have come before what is now the first senion. The senion which is still
extant is followed by a single bifolium (fols 17–18).23
The only continuous foliation is in a modern hand and was added in 1876 in
the process of cataloguing, maybe by the cataloguer Moritz Steinschneider him-
self during his stay in Hamburg in July of the same year.24 The folio numbers
that we cite in our paper refer to this nineteenth-century foliation in Arabic
numerals, with pencil. On three pages, remains of an older foliation in Arabic

||
21 See Mai 1720, 408. Mai prints excerpts from what were then fols 10b, 11a, 14a, and follow-
ing.
22 Among medieval Hebrew paper manuscripts until 1500, one quarter of the Italian and
almost half of the Sephardic codices were composed of senions; see Beit-Arié 2020, 321. As the
research on the codicology of early modern Hebrew codices is still at its beginnings, we do not
know to what extent senions are typical for this era.
23 We have been unable to determine the exact quire structure after this bifolium. A thorough
autopsy of the manuscript in situ was impeded by the Corona pandemic. Mai 1720, 409, men-
tions that after the last numbered text (on today’s fol. 17b), eleven folios without text number-
ing followed.
24 See Steinschneider 1969, VIII, XII n. 11, and XIV.
538 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

numerals in ink can be found (Fig. 7).25 Most of this older foliation probably
became the victim of page trimming.
Several verso pages of the collection are blank or were once blank before a
different hand added text to them. Interestingly, mostly versos of folios that
contained some kind of diagram or drawing on their recto side were originally
left blank.26 Other parts of the manuscript contain a number of blank pages
(fols 20b–23a and fols 25b–31a).

2.2 General content and palaeography

The manuscript’s primary content consists of a collection of segullot (i.e. magi-
cal recipes and instructions), magical-mystical names, cosmological diagrams,
and astronomical drawings by an Italian hand (hand A).27 The texts of this col-
lection are numbered by Hebrew letters in the margins and extend, with gaps,
from fol. 3a through fol. 18a. Inserted between these texts or added after them,
there are magical texts by different Sephardi hands; these inserted texts are not
included in the Hebrew numbering of the primary texts.28 Folios 23b–25a con-
tain an alchemical text in Spanish written in Hebrew characters by another,
distinct Sephardi hand (hand F). Additional content includes poems referring to
Sabbatai Zevi and lists with names of towns and persons; presumably both the
poems and the lists are by the same hand.29 Codex hebr. 252 thus represents
different geo-cultural variants of Jewish manuscript cultures, especially with
regard to palaeography.30 From the mere type of script, however, one cannot
always directly infer the geographic provenance of a manuscript.31 Throughout
the codex, the various hands use Hebrew square script or semi-square script for
writing magical or angelic names, whereas all other parts of the texts,
e.g. passages with instructions, are written in a cursive or semi-cursive script.

||
25 Folios 19–21 (new) are marked as 49–51 (old).
26 This concerns fols 7, 9, 12, and 13. Folio 8b was also originally empty; its content was added
later by hand D. The recto features a cosmological diagram, which was part of the original
production plan and is labelled as text no. 193.
27 Besides Italian palaeographic features, hand A also exhibits Sephardic traits, though it
differs significantly from all the unambiguously Sephardic hands in the manuscript.
28 Hand C: fols 4a–b; hand D: fols 6b (lower half of page); 8b, 18b–19a; hand E: fol. 16b.
29 Hand B: fols 1b, 32b, 33b. The hands B, C, and E are possibly the same scribe.
30 On the geo-cultural variants of Jewish-Hebrew manuscript culture (Ashkenazic, Italian,
Byzantine, Sephardi and Oriental), see Beit-Arié 1993a, 25–37.
31 Script type and style are usually individual characteristics that persist when a scribe mi-
grates to other regions. See Beit-Arié 1993b, 34–35.
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 539

This way of highlighting magically effective textual material is common for

most manuscripts that contain Jewish magical material.

3 Paracontent
3.1 Folio 1a: Probatio pennae
Folio 1a gives the impression of having been used for writing exercises or proba-
tio pennae (Fig. 1). The writing is mostly executed in square script, some of it
quite large, and some of the text on the bottom of the page is vertically aligned.
In places, the square script used here bears features of the ktav stam, i.e. the
variants of the Hebrew script that are used to write sacred and liturgical manu-
scripts such as Tora scrolls, tefillin, and mezuzot.32 Only a small number of other
notes on the page are in cursive script.33 There are no columns and no defined
areas for writing.
The uppermost line consists of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, including
the allographs for five letters that have a different final form. Directly below we
find a short quote from a Talmud passage that extensively discusses the shapes
of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the meaning and importance of their
divergent final forms.34 A number of biblical verses are cited on this page.35

||
32 Among these features are the tagin ‘crowns’, which are added on the top of certain letters
and the ‘broken’ upper bar of the letter ḥet, making the ḥet look like two joined zayyin letters.
On this folio only few words are written with these features, e.g. the name Ahasuerus and
‘Hear, O Israel!’ These tagin are not executed in the correct, traditional way. Neither is every
letter that would require it written with tagin; nor is the number of tagin per letter correct. On
tefillin and mezuzot, see below.
33 This includes, for instance, the short segulla ‫להצליח בכל דבר יזכור שם ָתיו א׳ ועשרים פ׳‬
‫‘ בדוק ומנוסה‬To succeed in everything: Say the name tav twenty-one times. Tested and tried.’
Further scientific material analysis is required to determine whether some of the cursive writ-
ing is from a different scribe than the scribe responsible for the square script. Also, the cursive
inscriptions themselves are most likely from two different hands.
34 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 104a: ‫‘ מנצפך צופים אמרום‬the seers [i.e., prophets]
called them Mem, Nun, Tsade, Pe, and Kaf [i.e., the final forms of these letters]’.
35 As is common in the Jewish tradition, not the whole verse but only a single word or a few
words are cited. The verses cited are (from top to bottom and from left to right): Psalm 17:7
‫[‘ ממתקומים‬Display Your faithfulness in wondrous deeds, You who deliver with Your right
hand those who seek refuge] from assailants.’; Esther 1:1 ‫ויהי במי אחשורש הוא אחשורש‬
‫‘ המולך מהודו ועד כוש‬It happened in the days of Ahasuerus — that Ahasuerus who reigned
[over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces] from India to Ethiopia.’; Deuteronomy 6:4
540 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

Although they appear to be probatio pennae, the verses that the one or more
owners or scribes chose to cite are surely not arbitrary. The biblical and talmud-
ic citations gathered on this initial page of the manuscript reveal three aspects
of Judaism which seem to have been of importance for the scribe(s). The first is
the Hebrew alphabet, the Hebrew script, and the writing of sacred manuscripts.
The Talmud passage about the final forms of five letters of the Hebrew alphabet
and the citation of Psalm 45:2 directly invoke writing practices. Secondly, some
of the verses cited relate to central symbols of Judaism: Deuteronomy 6:8–9 is
the basis for several mitsvot, commandments from the Tora, that observant Jews
are obligated to fulfil. These mitsvot explicitly involve manuscripts and were
already mentioned above: the use of tefillin, phylacteries worn on the left arm
and on the forehead during the morning prayer, and the mezuza, a small oblong
container attached to doorposts.36 These first two aspects of Judaism highlight
the importance of writing – or manuscript practices in general – in the practice
of Judaism. Thirdly, the initial page cites biblical verses that, on the one on
hand, allude to Jews or the Jewish people in distress, such as when they were
threatened by persecutors (Book of Esther) or by famine (Book of Ruth) and, on
the other hand, emphasize God’s everlasting grace and protection for the people
of Israel (Psalm 121:4). This dual focus might reflect dangers that the scribe
sensed for himself, his family, or the Jews of his time and region.
The content of this page thus evinces an interest in legitimization and self-
assertion. The scribe – who is not necessarily identical with the scribe of the
manuscript’s primary texts – presents himself as a pious Jew. The allusions to
religious practices and manuscripts (by citing biblical verses) and the features
of the ktav stam (the script that is used for sacred writings) extend their sacred-
ness to the magical texts found in this manuscript. The page serves as a

||
‫‘ ישראל שמע‬Hear, O Israel! [The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.]’; Psalm 121:4 ‫שומר‬
‫[‘ ישראל‬See,] the guardian of Israel [neither slumbers nor sleeps!]’; allusions to Deuteronomy
6:8–9 ‫[‘ לטוטפות בין עיניך; מזוזות; וכתבתם ובשערך‬Bind them as a sign on your hand and
let them serve] as a symbol on your forehead [;] inscribe them [on the] doorposts [of your
house] and on your gates.’; Ruth 1:1 ‫[‘ שפוט השופטים‬In the days when] the chieftains ruled [,
there was a famine in the land ….]’; the Aramaic word ‫‘ אחשדרפנים‬Satraps’ as found in, e.g.,
Esther 8:9; Psalm 45:2 ‫[‘ אומר אני מעשי למלך‬My heart is astir with gracious words;] I speak
my poem to a king; [my tongue is the pen of an expert scribe.]’ All English translations of bibli-
cal verses are based on Tanakh 1985.
36 Both the tefillin and the mezuza contain small slips of parchment with short passages from
the Tora, including Deuteronomy 6:4, which is also found on our page and which is the begin-
ning of the Shema Yisrael, one of the central Jewish prayers, with a fixed place in the Jewish
liturgy.
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 541

reassurance that the scribe as well as potential readers are pious and observant
and that reading and using these texts is well within the permitted realms of the
Jewish religion.37

3.2 A new title page

Because it contains lower text numbers (86–95) than the senion consisting of
fols 5–16 (beginning with text no. 19 on fol. 6a), we may conclude that the sec-
ond bifolium (fols 3–4) was once part of one of the quires preceding this senion.
The original position of what is now the first bifolium is less clear. Folio 2a fea-
tures a supposed title ‫ספר הקבלה מהרב רבי משה בר נחמן צז״ל‬, ‘Book of
Kabbala by the teacher Rabbi Moshe bar Naḥman, may the memory of the right-
eous be blessed’ (Fig. 2).38 As already noted by Steinschneider, this title obviously
was once an explicit, or the final words of a work: right before the word ‫ספר‬
‘book’, the word ‫‘ נשלם‬finished [is]’ has been erased, with resulting damage to
the paper. What was originally a closing formula has been turned into a title
and is therefore placed slightly off-centre on the page. Since the explicit is still
quoted as such by Mai, the reworking of the codex must have been done at some
time after Mai wrote and before Steinschneider got hold of the manuscript.
Maybe the page with the explicit was shifted to a front position (now fol. 2) as a
means of coping with the removal of a vast number of folios and the destruction
of the original structure of the codex. In the stage of the manuscript as de-
scribed by Mai, however, this folio was already placed not at the end of the co-
dex but in the middle, as fol. 15.39

||
37 A comparable page with quite similar functions can be found in the sixteenth-century
manuscript of Yoseph Tirshom’s compendium of magical and mystical texts, Shoshan Yesod
ha-Olam, Geneva, Library of Geneva, Comites Latentes 145, p. 21; see Kohs 2016 on this manu-
script.
38 Moshe b. Naḥman, (1194–1270), also RaMBaN or Naḥmanides, lived in Spain and was one
of the most renowned Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages. The attribution of this ‘Book of
Kabbala’ to him is, of course, pseudepigraphic. Such an ascription, which is by no means an
isolated case, is stimulated by Naḥmanides’ interest in mysticism and theurgy; see Schwartz
2005, 56–90 on these aspects of his authentic work.
39 Mai 1720, 408, comments on the position of the explicit: ‘Sic enim legimus folio XV. quod
ultimum esse debet totius libri, sed a bibliopeia traiectum est’.
542 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

3.3 Text numbering and an index on fol. 20a

Just as the manuscript does not contain an original title page, neither does it
feature an index or a table of contents. Nevertheless, the Hebrew numbering of
the texts, i.e. the structure provided by the arrangement of the segullot them-
selves, was probably part of the original production plan. This numbering re-
sembles hand A and only appears with texts written by hand A. The numbering
of texts in the main parts of the manuscript suggests that a navigation system
using the text numbers as references, such as an index, was present in the orig-
inal stage of the manuscript yet is now lost. Folio 20a, however, contains a short
list of purposes for segullot and their respective text numbers. The folio itself
has only half the width of the other folios of the codex. The list, which was writ-
ten by an Ashkenazi hand that is not identical with any other hand in the codex,
contains eleven items. Only one entry refers to a text that is still to be found in
the manuscript: ‫‘ לשתות ולא ישתכר בסימן צ״א‬To drink without getting
drunk: at sign [i.e. number] 91’. The text referred to is found on the top of fol. 3b,
although here it is assigned the number 90 (Fig. 3). The list may thus be a trace
of an owner or user of the manuscript who singled out those texts from the
manuscript that were of interest to him. Besides ‘drinking and not getting
drunk’, he chose segullot for success, especially in business matters, and
against forgetfulness.

3.4 Abraham Mercado

On fol. 9b, which is otherwise empty, we find the name Abraham Mercado in-
scribed in vocalised square script: ‫רהם ֵמ ְר ָקדוֹ‬
ָ ‫ ָא ַב‬.40 This inscription seems to
be secondary, i.e. later than the main text. Steinschneider lists Abraham Mercado
as a manuscript owner of Cod. hebr. 252 in the index of his catalogue.41 The
name Mercado could be a family name: Mercado or de Mercado has long been a
common Spanish family name among Jews.42 However, a verifiable identifica-
tion of the name Abraham Mercado with a specific person, for instance with the

||
40 The vocalisation of the name Abraham, however, is anomalous and would have to be pro-
nounced Avarham. The standard form would be ‫ ַא ְב ָר ָהם‬Avraham.
41 Steinschneider 1969, 209.
42 See Guggenheimer and Guggenheimer 1992, 189.
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 543

well-known, seventeenth-century Sephardi physician Dr Abraham de Mercado

or his family,43 seems rather unlikely.
Alternatively, if taken literally, according to its meaning in Spanish as
‘market’ or ‘purchased’, the name Mercado may be evidence of an apotropaic
custom: when a mother lost a child, it was assumed that bad fortune was cling-
ing to her. In order to protect the children that would be born to her later, they
would be sold symbolically to other parents and receive a byname relating to
this sale. Among the Sephardim, the Jews in the Spanish tradition, Mercado or
Mercada was the common byname connected with this practice.44 Because the
codex offers no further paratextual information about the name, we cannot
decide whether Mercado is to be taken as a family name or as evidence of this
apotropaic custom.

4 Core-Content
4.1 A bilingual Italian-Hebrew spell
On fol. 17b, at the very end of the passage with numbered texts, we find at the
bottom of the page a bilingual love spell, presumable written by hand A (Fig. 4).
In the text, Italian in Latin script and Hebrew in Hebrew script are used alter-
nately:

Transcription45 Translation

‫ שאין כמוהו קח‬46‫להאבה‬ For [Love/struggling]. There is none like it. Take
filo che non sia tento a hair which is neither black
47
Ni bianco di una putta Vergiene nor white from a virgin girl.

||
43 On the Mercado family, whose members lived in Dutch Brazil, various places in Europe,
and Barbados, see, e.g. Schreuder 2019, 150, 185–186, 192.
44 See Ben-Ami 2003, 185; Guggenheimer and Guggenheimer 1992, XVII–XVIII, 509; and
Kaganoff 2005, 103–104. On an actual case of this apotropaic practice, see below, chapter 4.4.
45 The transcription offered by Steinschneider 1969, 100 is erroneous. We thank Saverio
Campanini (Bologna) for his help in reading this segulla.
46 ‫ להאבה‬is probably a scribal error and a metathesis of ‫‘ לאהבה‬for love’. One could also
read ‫‘ להאבק‬for struggling’. Steinschneider reads ‫ לקאבק‬which makes no sense.
47 See Malavasi 2005, 198, where another putta vergiene, ‘virgin girl’, is mentioned in Italian
magic.
544 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

‫ועשה ל״ג קשרים בידך לאחור‬ And make thirty-three knots in your hand backwards
[or: behind your back?]
‫ובכל קשר וקשר תאמר אלו דברים‬ and with every knot and knot say the following
words:

Lo stringo e lego nel nome di ‫עז‬ ‫שטן‬ I tighten it and bind in the name of the mighty devil
il core di Tala filia di la tala The heart of N.N., daughter of N.N.
Come ela stenta fin’a che mio cor non How she struggles as long as she does not make my
contenta heart happy.
‫ובחון ומנוסה‬ [It is both] tested [and] tried.

This kind of code-switching within one segulla, code-switching that includes a

both a change of language and a change of script, is the only such case within
this codex and is quite rare among magical manuscripts.48 Code-switching
without changing the script, however, can be observed more often: it may
happen that the instructional part of a segulla is, for instance, in Aramaic or
Yiddish, while the spells to be pronounced or written down are in Hebrew. The
Italian of the love charm in Cod. hebr. 252 points to the Northern Italian region
of Veneto. With regard to content, it should be conceded that terming such
spells ‘love charms’ might be regarded euphemistic, as they are mainly con-
cerned with the unilateral exercise of power over another human being.49

4.2 Astronomical and cosmological diagrams

Apart from magical texts, the original compilation executed by hand A includes
a number of diagrams and drawings, some of a more scientific nature, some of a
more mystical-cosmological nature. Folio 12a, for example, contains an astro-
nomical diagram that illustrates the four phases of the moon (Fig. 5). On top the
sun is depicted with a face, whose rays of light strike the four moons in four
different positions relative to the earth, which is right in the centre of the page.
Below the diagram four spheres are labelled: ‫‘ שמים‬heaven’, ‫‘ ארץ‬earth’, ‫מים‬
‘water’, and ‫‘ תהום‬abyss, underworld’. On earth and below the heavens we can

||
48 A different type of bilingual and multi-script manuscript can be found in Italian-Hebrew
codices that contain every segulla in a Hebrew as well as an Italian version, e.g., the manu-
scripts Tel Aviv, Gross Family Collection, IT.011.016 (formerly 325) and New York, Jewish Theo-
logical Seminary, MS 1729; on the former see Bellusci 2018.
49 Such spells can thus be termed ‘aggressive erotic magic’; cf. Bohak 2008, 123–135 and 153–
158. For a comprehensive account of Jewish love magic, see Saar 2017.
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 545

make out what look like stylized humans. An almost identical diagram – though
without the anthropomorphism of the sun – can be found in the much earlier
geographical-astronomical work Tsurat ha-arets ‘The form of the Earth’ by
Abraham bar Ḥiyya (c. 1070 – c. 1136), who was the first Jewish mathematician
and astronomer to write scientific treatises in the Hebrew language.50
In contrast to the diagram on fol. 12a, the scheme on fol. 8a delineates a
broader cosmological notion (Fig. 6). This folio displays the different spheres of
the cosmos with their respective celestial bodies: at the very top – four spheres
potentially symbolizing four aspects of divine creation (from the top): ‫אצילות‬
‘nobility’, ‫‘ בריאה‬creation’, ‫‘ יצירה‬formation’, and ‫‘ עשיה‬making’. Below them
– the ‫‘ גלגל חוזר‬returning wheel’ with the twelve signs of the Zodiac spanning
to the left and the right, and directly beneath them is the sphere of the fixed
stars. Below the fixed stars we find, in descending order, the planets and the
sun and at the very bottom there are the four elements, fire, wind, water, and
earth. The scheme has slightly anthropomorphic features, with the ends of the
uppermost four spheres giving the impression of the curls of a wig and with the
spheres of the zodiac signs and the fixed stars reaching out like arms.

4.3 ‘Non-Jewish’ magic

On fols 6b and 8b, hand D has added material that caught the attention of
Moritz Steinschneider as well as that of rabbi and folklorist Max Grunwald. On
fol. 6b, the scribe has written down two magical triangles or ‘vanishing acts’51
against fever; these triangles use the names ‫אברקולס‬, possibly ‘Abraqolas’,
and ‫‘ אברקלוע‬Abraqaloa’. The second is labelled by the scribe as an alternative
version to the first: ‫‘ או על דרך זה‬or this way’. The triangles are accompanied
by an incantation formula in the style of a liturgical supplication. The formula
makes direct reference to the magical triangle and the way the magical formula
is supposed to work:

||
50 E.g. the manuscript Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 36, which contains
Tsurat ha-arets, has the diagram on fol. 113a; cf. Busi 2005, 73–75. On Abraham bar Ḥiyya, see
Wigoder 2007.
51 In a magical triangle or vanishing act (in German Schwindeschema), a magic word or formu-
la is written down, and in each line the word is repeated but subsequently reduced by one
letter until only one letter is left. By symbolically erasing the word, an illness, typically fever, is
believed to become eradicated from a sick person. See, e.g. Faraone 2012 on vanishing acts in
Greek magical texts.
546 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

‫יהי רצון מלפניך יהוה אלהי ואלהי אבותי רבון העולמים כשם שהשם הזה הולך‬
52
‫ומתמעט כן יהא הקדחת הזה הולך ומתמעט מיפלוני בן פלוני אכי״ר‬

The formula is written in square script, which again indicates its efficacy, and is
accompanied by a magical square.53 On fol. 8b, the same scribe noted a segulla
for a woman having difficulties during birth (Fig. 6). The instructions demand
that magical names be written on kosher parchment as an amulet. What is re-
ferred to as names here is the so-called Latin Sator square ‘sator arepo tenet
opera rotas’,54 but written in Hebrew letters, inserted directly beneath the in-
structions. As with the magical triangles on fol. 6b, the scribe gives an alterna-
tive version of the Sator square which also includes other instructions. The
instructions and the second square are separated from the first by a thin line.
The letters of the second square are written in a tabular grid, while the first
square, written without a grid, is designed more in the shape of a column, with
a vertical size larger than its horizontal size. The accompanying instructions do
not demand the production of an amulet: ‫או על זה הדרך או תלחוש באזנה‬
‫‘ השמלית‬Or in this way. Or whisper in her left ear’. The only textual difference
between the two squares is the spelling of the last letter of the fourth line or
word, which in the Latin version of the palindrome is opera. The second square
has an Aleph, while in the first square it seems that the Aleph was later altered
to a He. This alteration, however, breaks the symmetry of the palindromic
square. In his catalogue entry for the manuscript, Steinschneider lists the con-
tent of these pages and adds ‘auch sonst erkennt man den nichtjüdischen
Ursprung sofort’.55 The remark refers not only to these two pages but also to
other parts of the manuscript and reflects Steinschneider’s apologetic stance

||
52 Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 252, fol. 6b. ‘May it be your will,
Lord, our God and God of our fathers, ruler of the worlds: Just as this name is diminishing, so
shall the fever of N.N. diminish. Amen! Let it be your will’ [or: ‫‘ אבי״ר‬Our Lord, our creator, our
maker, our healer’].
53 On magical squares, see, e.g. Comes 2016. The defining feature of a magical square is that
the sums of all its columns and all its rows (and usually also the diagonals) are equal.
54 The palindromic phrase, which is usually written in the form of a square, goes back to
Roman Antiquity. It is ascribed hidden mystical meaning and magical efficacy; see Hofmann
1978.
55 Steinschneider 1969, 100: ‘also elsewhere the non-Jewish origin is immediately apparent’.
Scholem 1984, 97 n. 142, too, resolutely und unequivocally insists on the non-Jewish origin of
the phenomenon of magical squares. Trachtenberg 1939, 296 n. 14, mentions our Cod. hebr. 252
as providing an example of magical squares in a Jewish manuscript. He also posits a non-
Jewish background for these squares, claiming that Jews adopted them from Christians, in
particular from Agrippa von Nettesheim (see p. 143).
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 547

with regard to Jews and magic. He regularly describes magical texts and prac-
tices both as ‘non-Jewish’ in origin and character, and as the result of Christian
and Muslim influences on the Jews during the Middle Ages.56 The folklorist
Grunwald also mentions the magical triangles on fol. 6b of Cod. hebr. 252.57 In
contrast to Steinschneider, it seems that he does not intend to single out non-
Jewish elements in Jewish magical texts. On the contrary, he appears to
acknowledge the syncretistic nature of magic and a potential Jewish influence
on the formation of the magical name Abrasax that is also the supposed origin
of ‫‘ אברקולס‬Abraqolas’, as found in our manuscript.

4.4 A childbirth amulet containing the story of Elijah and Lilith

On fols 18b and 19a, we find a well-known text for a Jewish childbirth amulet
(Fig. 7).58 This version of the text, however, contains a passage near the end that
is not to be found in most printed versions of this amulet, as they are known to
us from Central Europe. Introduced by the description ‘Poem for women in la-
bour and [against] the evil eye. True and tried’, the legend about an encounter
of the prophet Elijah with the child-murdering demoness Lilith and her demonic
entourage follows.59 Lilith tells the prophet that she is on her way to a woman
and her newborn child to kill the infant. When Elijah threatens to bind Lilith
with a ban, Lilith begs Elijah to let her go. She promises not to go after the
woman and her child. In addition Lilith agrees to reveal her secret names to
Elijah, and she swears that whenever in the future someone uses her names,
neither she nor her minions will be able to harm the newborn or its mother. On
fol. 19a, we see the fourteen names of Lilith, written in square script. At this
point, the printed amulets usually go on with standard magical formulas for

||
56 See Steinschneider 2012, 591 and Veltri 2012.
57 Grunwald 1902, 122–123 n. 1. In the same article (p. 140), Grunwald also mentions Cod.
hebr. 252 as containing an example of magical squares in a Jewish manuscript, though he does
not remark on the supposed non-Jewish origin of the squares.
58 Printed Jewish childbirth amulets containing the story of the encounter between the proph-
et Elijah and the demoness Lilith, a story which is also found in our manuscript, Cod. hebr. 252,
were ubiquitous in early modern Central Europe. On such amulets, see, e.g. Sabar 2002, 681–
682 and Folmer 2007. A comprehensive study of this type of printed Jewish amulet has yet to be
written.
59 The myth of the demoness Lilith was fed by various sources. From the Middle Ages on,
Lilith was established in Jewish folklore as the legendary first wife of Adam that is now roam-
ing around as a demoness to strangle newborn children. On Lilith, see Scholem and Heschel
2007; on Lilith’s threat to children, see Naveh and Shaked 1998, 111–122 and Veltri 2001.
548 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

childbirth amulets and Psalm 121. Our manuscript, however, continues with an
adjuration of Lilith by the prophet Elijah. This augmented textual version of the
encounter is also known from other sources, though its evidence is rather scarce
when compared to the version that lacks the adjuration. The adjuration is first
found in print in a 1710 edition of David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida’s ‫ספר סוד ה׳‬
‘Book of the Secret of the Lord’.60 The text can also be found in print in some
nineteenth-century editions of the Psalms that include a treatise Mishpat
Tsedeq.61 Our text furthermore appears in Montgomery’s volume on Aramaic
incantation texts from Nippur.62 Naveh and Shaked were able to identify the
name of a beneficiary in Montgomery’s text: ‘Mercada, known as Vida’.63 The
use of a name instead of a placeholder indicates that the text published by
Montgomery derives from an amulet; the Spanish name itself points to a Se-
phardi context. And the names Mercada ‘sold’ and Vida ‘life’ likely point to the
very same custom that might be attested by the name Abraham Mercado in our
Cod. hebr. 252 on fol. 9b.64 Another full text of the Elijah-Lilith encounter,
i.e. with Elijah’s adjuration of Lilith, can be found in the collection of the Smith-
sonian National Museum of Natural History in a handwritten amulet from nine-
teenth-century Tunisia.65 All in all, we find that the printed Ashkenazi amulets
usually do not feature the adjuration by Elijah as a second part of the amulet

||
60 David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida 1710, 20a. Kaspina 2014, 190, points to this source. David ben
Aryeh Leib of Lida’s (c. 1650–1696) Book of the Secret of the Lord deals with circumcision and
customs associated with it. The amulet text including the adjuration is found on fol. 20a as the
last part of a section of segullot and refu’ot. This section seems to have been appended to the
main text of the book only in this specific Berlin edition of the book. It is neither part of the
editio princeps (Amsterdam 1694) nor of any later edition that we were able to consult.
61 E.g. in Tehillim ʿim sefer mishpat tsedeq 1830, 307 and Sefer tehillim […] ve-gam sefer
mishpat tsedeq 1877, 148b(?). Here an instruction says that the text should be written on
parchment with ktav ashurit, lit. ‘Assyrian script’. This term usually designates the Hebrew
square script and occasionally even the ktav stam, the variant of the square script used for
sacred writings such as Tora scrolls, tefillin, and mezuzot.
62 Montgomery 1913, 258–264 (no. 42). He had received the text from his colleague Richard
Gottheil and sensed that it was not likely to come from an incantation bowl. However, he might
not have been aware that he was dealing with a rather late, post-medieval text; see Scholem
1948, 166, n. 25.
63 Naveh and Shaked 1998, 118, n. 18.
64 See above, chapter 3.4. The presumable background of the name ‘Mercada, known as Vida’
was not addressed by Naveh and Shaked 1998, but it was addressed by Kaspina 2014, 198, who
cites the lecture ‘When Elijah Met Lilith–Magic Healing Incantations in Judeo-Spanish’, which
was delivered by Tamar Alexander at the Sixteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies in 2013.
65 Washington, DC, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, 217693. See Cohen
Grossman 1997, 154–156.
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 549

text,66 while we have some evidence for the text in Ashkenazi printed books and
in Sephardi or Mediterranean manuscript amulets. The manuscript Cod. hebr.
252 has a slightly abridged version of the adjuration (fol. 19a):

‫והשיב לה אליהו הנביא ז״ל הנני משביעך ולכל כת דילך ביי׳ ובשם שכינתו הקדושה‬
‫ובכח ד׳ שרפים ואופנים וד׳ כרובים וחיות הקדש וי׳ ספרי תורות ובשם אלהי צבאות‬
‫שלא תלך לא את ולא כת דילך להזיקה היולדת או בנו ולא ליגעת בה ברמ״ח אבריה או‬
‫שס״ה גידיה וערקיה כמו שאינך יכולה לספור את כוכבי השמים ולא להוביש את מי‬
‫הים ובשם קרע שטן אמן סלה מכשפה לא תחיה לא תאונן ו״כ‬

And Elijah replied to her [i.e. Lilith], I adjure you and all of your class, by the Lord and by
the name of his holy Shekhina, and by the power of the four Serafim and Ofanim and the
four Cherubs and the Holy Beasts, the ten books of teaching, and in the name of the Lord
of Hosts: that you will not go, neither you nor those of your class, to harm the woman in
labour or her child, and that you will not afflict her, her 248 limbs, and her 365 tendons and
bands, as you are able neither to count the stars in the sky nor to dry the waters of the sea.
With the name qeraʿ satan. Amen, sela. ‘You shall not let a sorceress live’ (Ex 22:17) […].

With the inclusion of the Elijah and Lilith episode, Cod. hebr. 252 features an
expanded version of one of the most prominent amulet texts of Jewish child-
birth magic. This expanded version is attested much less frequently than the
standard version, and in particular appears only rarely in actual amulets. The
expanded version’s general transmission history invites more thorough inspec-
tion by future researchers.

5 Guest content, with a Sabbatean background

Besides the magical and mystical-cosmological texts, which are the core-
content of the manuscript, Cod. hebr. 252 contains additional material, which
can be considered guest content, namely, the poetic texts on fols 1b (Fig. 2) and
33b, and the lists of towns and people on fol. 32b (Fig. 8), the latter being writ-
ten upside-down.67 The poems use a variant of the acrostic: certain lines are

||
66 Kaspina 2014, 201, ascertains the same finding for Eastern European amulets from the
nineteenth century.
67 On the terms ‘guest text’ or ‘guest content’, see Gumbert 2004, 32 and 42 and Ciotti et al.
2018, 1 and 3. Gumbert’s definition of a guest text as content that has been ‘added, as an en-
richment into an existing codicological unit’ is mostly temporal and structural. As understood
by Ciotti et al. guest content can be distinguished from core-content and especially from
paracontent by not being linked or related at all to the manuscript’s core-content and by not
550 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

marked by thin strokes. On fol. 1b, the initial letters of the marked lines spell out
‫שבתי חז‬, understood by Steinschneider as standing for ‫‘ שבתי חזק‬Sabbatai is
strong’. In the poem on fol. 33b, the marked lines spell out ‫‘ שבתי חי‬Sabbatai
lives’. Steinschneider interpreted this notation as referring to Sabbatai Zevi, an
alleged Jewish messiah.68 His appearance and activities in 1665 and 1666 caused
an uproar in all major Jewish communities in Europe and the Mediterranean
area. After being imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities, his subsequent con-
version to Islam left most of his followers in shock. The Sabbateans, i.e. those
adhering to the belief in Sabbatai even after his death in 1676, interpreted his
apostasy as part of a mystical plan for the redemption of the world and were
regarded as heretics by mainstream Judaism.69 Because of the acrostic referring
to the name Sabbatai, Steinschneider supposed that the scribe of this guest
content was such a Sabbatean.70 As the lists of towns and names found on
fol. 32b seem to have been written by the same hand as the poems,
Steinschneider speculated the possibility that a Sabbatean traveller had noted
down Sabbateans that were living in various places.71 The page contains four
lists of towns. The lists are divided from each other by lines drawn with ink. The
first list represents a journey down the Rhine starting in Frankfurt am Main and
ending in Kleve in the Lower Rhine region. The second list consists mostly of

||
providing any substantial data on the manuscript. In this respect, content that was added to a
manuscript later can be part of the core-content, if it thematically matches the original core-
content. The texts added to the manuscript Cod. hebr. 252 by hands C (fol. 4a–b: a childbirth
amulet and a segulla to calm a storm at the sea) (Fig. 3) and E (fol. 16b: instructions for the
preparation of a ritual) concern magic and can therefore be considered core-content. The con-
tent added by hand B (fols 1b, 32b, 33b: the poems and lists of towns with names of persons)
does not relate to magic nor does it provide specific data on the manuscript itself. This content
is therefore to be regarded as guest content. This determination would still be true if hands B, C
and E were all the same scribe, which may be the case, as these hands are quite similar.
68 On Sabbatai Zevi, see Scholem 1973.
69 In the Jewish history of Hamburg, there is a particularly noteworthy episode concerning
Sabbateanism. During his time as the chief rabbi of the triple community Altona–Hamburg–
Wandsbek, Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz (1690–1764) faced accusations by his adversary Jacob
Emden (1697–1776) that certain amulets Eybeschütz had issued were of Sabbatean origin and
that he himself was a Sabbatean. In the course of what is now known as the Emden-Eybeschütz
controversy, Emden even had to leave Altona for some time since Eybeschütz was popular
among the Jewish community. Even the Christian authorities, wishing to prevent any upheav-
al, tended to act in favour of Eybeschütz. On this controversy, see, e.g. Maciejko 2017. Our
manuscript Cod. hebr. 252, however, most likely is not to related to these Hamburg events.
70 Even though Sabbatai Zevi was the most prominent one, he was certainly not the only
bearer of this name.
71 See Steinschneider 1969, 100.
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 551

towns in Franconia but ends with Frankfurt. The fourth list also contains four
towns in Franconia, but more to the south-east of those in the second list. We
have not yet been able to precisely identify the places of the third list. Some
names of towns are followed by the name of a person, all male except for one.
The names are given names only, without patronym. Often, they are preceded
by ‫ ר׳‬for rav ‘master, teacher, rabbi’, and sometimes by ‫ ח׳‬for ḥakham ‘sage,
wise man’. In some cases, a name is followed by the adjectives ‫‘ עשיר‬wealthy’
or ‫‘ זקן‬old, esteemed’. A query for these names with their respective places in
the Epidat Research Platform for Jewish Epigraphy did not produce a match
with existing entries in the database.72
While at this point the purpose of the lists and the circumstances under
which they were written must remain a matter of speculation, these lists do add
a local and personal dimension to the manuscript Cod. hebr. 252, a dimension
that is not often found in magical texts. We are nevertheless unable to deter-
mine whether these lists stand in any relation at all to the magical strata. If
these lists, as supposed by Steinschneider, were indeed written by the same
hand as the Sabbatean poems (and if these poems are indeed Sabbatean), a
terminus post quem for the lists and the poems would be 1666, the year of Sabba-
tai Zevi’s dramatic rise and fall.

6 Conclusion: A short history of Cod. hebr. 252

The presumably Sabbatean guest texts help to contextualize Cod. hebr. 252 in a
time and locale, especially since the manuscript does not feature substantial
paracontent, such as a colophon, that might otherwise provide such infor-
mation. But what else can we ascertain about the life of the manuscript, its pro-
duction, and use?
Based on the script and, above all, on the linguistic features of the Italian in
the bilingual spell on fol. 17b, the parts of the manuscript that belong to the
original production plan and were executed by hand A can be located in North-
ern Italy, probably Veneto. It can be supposed that the original manuscript was
produced in this region. Analysis of the codex does not reveal any concluding
features that would allow us to date these original parts of the manuscript more
precisely than to the seventeenth century, as already suggested by Steinschneider.
Based on the contents written by hand A, it is obvious that the project of the

||
72 <http://www.steinheim-institut.de/cgi-bin/epidat> (accessed on 14 Dec. 2020).
552 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

original scribe was not to compose a mere handbook or manual of magic that
would contain only practical knowledge. Rather, these parts of the codex mirror
the broad, multifaceted interests of this owner-scribe and his ambition to create
a universal compendium that was not limited to esoteric knowledge. Besides
noting down magic proper, i.e. recipes and instructions for specific purposes
such as protection, finding lost items, or against fever – which still makes up
the largest part of the manuscript – the scribe arranged magical names in dia-
grams, made mystical-cosmological drawings, and copied scientific-astronomi-
cal illustrations.
Because the scribe included text numbers in the margin, it is highly likely
that he produced (or at least intended to do so) some kind of table of contents or
index. Although he numbered the manuscript’s texts – which would make the
overall structure of its content less open to additions – he left a lot of pages
blank, both in between items as well as, presumably, at the end of the original
manuscript. These blank pages were an invitation for additional content, a phe-
nomenon that can be viewed as an affordance. We do not know if the creation of
this affordance was intended by the scribe. Nevertheless he must have been
aware that later owners could fill these spaces with content, or he may even
have intended to do so himself on occasion. Subsequently, later Sephardic
hands added material that matched the topics of the existing texts, e.g. the
childbirth amulets for protection against Lilith; the result of this process is a
temporally layered manuscript. It cannot be determined where the manuscript
was when the various additions of magical texts by Sephardic hands were
made, since Sephardim lived and travelled in various parts of Europe. At some
point in its history, however, the manuscript was brought from Northern Italy to
the German area. The guest content, i.e. the lists of towns located mostly in the
Middle Rhine area and Franconia in combination with the Sabbatean poems by
the same hand, indicates that the manuscript was in the German lands when
this guest content was incorporated into the manuscript. The references to
Sabbatai Zevi would date this incorporation to the second half of the seven-
teenth century. But the manuscript was still in Jewish hands then.
In the list of towns on fol. 32b, Frankfurt is mentioned twice and is situated
quite centrally amidst the other towns that we could identify. This proximity to
Frankfurt could then be the next step in the manuscript’s life, i.e. the acquisi-
tion by the Frankfurt-based collector Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach. We may
suppose that Uffenbach bought the manuscript in the early eighteenth century,
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 553

as it is included already in Mai’s catalogue, which was published in 1720.73 At

some point in time between becoming part of Uffenbach’s collection and being
catalogued by Moritz Steinschneider in the 1870s, the manuscript lost many of
its folios, though the precise number of them cannot be determined. The re-
working of a former explicit into a new title page can be interpreted as an
attempt to heal these wounds.
As unique as Cod. hebr. 252 is in the specific compilation of its primary con-
tent, paracontent, and guest content, the manuscript can nevertheless be con-
sidered a rather typical case of a Jewish magical MTM from early modern
Europe: this manuscript started as the project of a single scribe, most likely for
his own purposes. In the course of time, further layers of content accumulated,
added by later owners and users. Our manuscript illustrates that Jewish manu-
scripts – and Jewish magical manuscripts in particular – often have a rich histo-
ry of migration. The syncretistic, magical-mystical content comprises ‘genuine’
Jewish magic as well material that is common to the magical traditions of many
Jewish and non-Jewish cultures in Europe and the Mediterranean. At the same
time, the manuscript’s fragmentary state and the scarcity of hard facts deduci-
ble from its paracontent makes it currently impossible for us to draw a definitive
picture of the manuscript and its history. That said, our examination of Cod.
hebr. 252 was also intended to illustrate that scholarly research on magical He-
brew manuscripts from the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg as a
whole is still in its beginnings, and there is much more to be discovered.

Acknowledgements
The research for this article was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein-
schaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy
– EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Trans-
mission in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796, and prior to that in the
SFB 950 ‘Manuscript Cultures in Asia, Africa and Europe’. The research was
conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
(CSMC) at Universität Hamburg. We thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as
Jörg B. Quenzer (Hamburg), Caroline Macé (Hamburg), and Ulrike Hirschfelder
(Potsdam) for their comments on the earlier drafts of this paper.

||
73 On Uffenbach’s acquisition of Hebraica, see Franke 1967, 62–69. Uffenbach’s correspond-
ence does not reveal the name of the Jewish manuscript dealer from whom he received large
parts of his Hebrew manuscript collection.
554 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

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Fig. 1: Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 252, inner front cover (right)
and fol. 1a (left). All pictures (Figs 1–8) are under Creative Commons Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0:
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/>.
Figs 1–7: <https://resolver.sub.uni-hamburg.de/kitodo/PPN873729153>.
558 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

Fig. 2: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 252, fol. 1b (right, poem referring
to Sabbatai Zevi), 2a (left, an explicit that was reworked into a title).

Fig. 3: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 252, fol. 3b (right, segullot
nos 90–95), fol. 4a (left, childbirth amulet with an adjuration against Lilith).
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 559

Fig. 4: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 252, fol. 17b (the last numbered
segullot; at the bottom a segulla in Hebrew and Italian).
560 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

Fig. 5: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 252, fol. 12a (astronomical
diagram explaining the four phases of the moon).
 Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Stabi Hamburg | 561

Fig. 6: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 252, fol. 8a (right, cosmological
diagram), fol. 8b (left, Sator squares for a woman having difficulties during childbirth).

Fig. 7: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 252, fol. 18b (right), 19a (left),
childbirth amulet with the story of the prophet Elijah and the demoness Lilith.
562 | Michael Kohs, Giuseppe Veltri

Fig. 8: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 252, fol. 32b, lists of places,
sometimes accompanied by names of persons; turned 180 degrees.
<https://resolver.sub.uni-hamburg.de/kitodo/PPN873729269>.
Jürgen Paul
Notes on a Central Asian Notebook
Abstract: Among the personal notebooks from nineteenth-century Central Asia,
the manuscript NLR PNS 561 (National Library of Russia, Persian – New Series),
kept at Saint Petersburg, occupies a special position. It is a multilayered manu-
script with two main layers from the 1870s and the 1920s–1930s, respectively. In
the second layer in particular, the manuscript is both a multi-script and a multi-
graphic artifact. Some parts of this layer are quite likely autographs of a leading
Bukharan intellectual, Abdarrauf Fitrat (1885–1938). This paper is a detailed de-
scription of the manuscript that also assesses the ascription of discrete manu-
script sections to Fitrat as autographs.

1 Introduction
Sometimes a single manuscript offers a window into a wide array of research
questions. One such manuscript will be presented here. The questions are relat-
ed to the manuscript’s own history and to the history of alphabet changes in the
Soviet Union. The manuscript also prompts consideration of the nature of com-
posite manuscripts more generally and of autographs in particular.
The manuscript is kept at the National Library of Russia (NLR), with the
shelf number PNS 561. The acronym PNS stands for ‘Persian – New Series’
(Persidski – Novaia Seriia). The manuscript was acquired by the library in 2002
together with a number of other manuscripts from a Russian citizen with family
roots in Tajikistan.1
The manuscript is dated to the end of the nineteenth century and the 1920s–
30s and comes from Central Asia: ‘viii and 66 fols, 25,5 × 15 cm. Oriental and
European paper. Different hands. Entries are written with qalam in black ink,
(European) pen, and pencil.’ The catalogue description also notes that the cover

||
1 I owe this information to Olga Yastrebova, who is responsible for the Persian collection at
the NLR and was also involved in writing the corresponding parts of the New Acquisitions
catalogue (Personal e-mail message from Olga Yastrebova, 15 Oct. 2020). I thank her for point-
ing this out to me, and also for making the catalogue (see note 3) available to me.

Open Access. © 2021 Jürgen Paul, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-028
564 | Jürgen Paul

was made by Mīr Ṣāliḥ Ṣaḥḥāf (‘the Bookbinder’) and is dated 1274 AH / 1857–
1858 CE.2 As for the content, the description has the following:

A booklet with various entries and excerpts from different periods. The older entries in-
clude: a folkloric, fairytale-like story without beginning (2–4v); models of various qadi de-
cisions and other official documents (11–25v); models of letters to high-ranking persons,
members of the family, friends, and so on (26v–37v); recipes of folk medicine (60–61v); po-
ems in Persian and Turki [in different places in the manuscript] [the description then
names the authors of the poems; they are left out here]. On fol. 53 there are four notes, in
pencil, on the birth dates of four persons (20 Feb. 1904; 24 Feb. 1906; 9 Jan. 1913; 17 Jan.
1915). The verses on fols 38–40, 41v, 47v–52, 55v–56 apparently are autographs by
Abdarrauf Fitrat (1885–1938), which he wrote in the 1920s or 1930s. Probably, he also
wrote the grammatical and syntactic analyses of sentences on fols 40 v–41. There are en-
tries in Tajik written in Roman script on fols 53, 54, 55. Empty space on the pages is filled
with computations and the solution to equations.3

The last remark in the description is that there are eight sheets loosely deposited
into the volume at its beginning; these sheets include fragments (single pages)
of lithographed books, in both Persian and Turki.
This specimen is thus a multilayered manuscript: it was not written in one
go by one or several persons, but at different stages, with a considerable lapse
of time between the layers. It also is a multilingual manuscript since it has en-
tries in Persian and Tajik, Arabic, and Turki; there also is one entry in Russian.
Moreover, it is a multi-script manuscript: entries are in Arabic as well as Roman
script, and the Russian entry is in Cyrillic script. It is furthermore a multigraphic
manuscript: it contains not only text but also numerals, computations, and
arithmetic.
Besides that, the description claims that the manuscript has autograph sec-
tions, which would indicate that at least these sections are an original. More
specifically, this manuscript is a personal notebook or rather has parts of two
personal notebooks, one in each layer, as will be shown.4

||
2 This bookbinder is known: another manuscript from his workshop is in Tashkent, Institute
of Oriental Studies, Fond 2 (‘dubletnyi fond’) 524, dated 1268/1851–2. Gulomov et al. 2000, 145
no. 1584.
3 Yastrebova and Vasil’eva 2017, 146–7. All translations are my own. The description is quoted
at length because it emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of the manuscript. I have not seen
the manuscript itself, but am working from reproductions. Thanks to the National Library of
Russia for making the reproductions available to me so speedily.
4 The term ‘original’ is used here with reference to the debate surrounding it within the Cluster
of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ at Hamburg University, and in particular
within the relevant research field, ‘Creating Originals’. A very preliminary explanation was
 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 565

And finally, the manuscript is a composite manuscript because it was re-

bound: the object now kept at Saint Petersburg is not the one bound by Mīr
Ṣāliḥ; the binding was in fact refashioned, and perhaps the binding made by
Mīr Ṣāliḥ was not intended for the book we have today.5
Thus, even though this is a small manuscript – a mere 66 plus 8 sheets – it
has lots of interesting features.

2 Details of the description

2.1 The first layer
The description in the catalogue is correct, but it does not do justice to the com-
plexity of the manuscript.
The date on the cover can be read clearly: 1274 AH (1857–1858 CE). This
means that the cover is considerably earlier than the first dated entries in the
manuscript, which come from the 1290s AH / 1870s CE. It is of course possible
that nothing was written in the book for roughly fifteen years after it was pro-
duced, but that seems improbable. It is more likely that in the beginning the
cover did not belong to the manuscript at all, and that the cover was instead
reused at some unknown point for the present manuscript. This conclusion is
supported by the observation that the manuscript was indeed rebound (see
below). This question and other questions raised by the catalogue description –
e.g. regarding the paper: the description states that different papers were
used – can only be tackled if one has access to the material object. I have not
seen the manuscript itself but am working from reproductions which I obtained
from the National Library of Russia (see Fig. 1).
For what follows, the loose sheets at the beginning will be disregarded as
well as the various entries on the first ten folios. The analysis starts with the

||
given in the research proposal (June 2019). The following passage is a starting point for a long-
er debate, which is far from having reached any conclusion: ‘In many manuscript cultures,
however, some written artefacts are assigned a special status, the status of an original, and
such objects are given a higher value in many different ways: they are collected, bought and
sold at high prices, carefully preserved, treated with respect and even awe; they have great
efficacy in legal, religious, economic, literary and other contexts. […] The numerous types
include autographs, art works, legal documents, letters, diaries, notes, test and experiment
reports, minutes and proceedings, among many others.’ In this understanding, autographs and
notebooks would both qualify as originals.
5 Friedrich and Schwarke 2016, 1–26.
566 | Jürgen Paul

transition from fol. 10 to 11. These two folios clearly do not belong together. The
block is broken, the binding threads seem disordered. And the format of fol. 11
is a bit larger than that of fol. 10. Moreover, the paper does not match; there is a
difference in colour. Fol. 10v is empty, and the text on fol. 11r does not start with
a heading, but rather transitions straight into a legal document. This break in
continuity between fols 10 and 11 shows that the manuscript is a composite
manuscript: a manuscript with various parts which were not produced in a
single effort, but were joined together later, in most cases through binding. This
definition applies to what happened here as well, and as mentioned before, it is
altogether possible that an older cover was used.
On fol. 11r, a collection of models or copies of qadi documents begins. As a
general rule, in nineteenth-century Central Asian practice, such documents
start with the date on which the corresponding action took place. In the case of
models or copies, the dates are replaced by ‘so and so’, in Arabic kadhā.6 This is
also the case in our document. The writer of these pages overlined the first
words of an item. The last words are a formula which is also typical for qadi
documents, ‘and this was in the presence of Muslims [as witnesses]’, wa-kāna
dhalika bi-maḥḍar min al-muslimīn. In this manuscript, the formula is character-
istically written in an abridged form, as is frequently the case elsewhere. The
next item begins on a new line, with the first words again overlined and so
forth. The compiler therefore took care to mark the beginnings and the endings
of the individual entries.
The majority of entries in this part are undated, but there are some excep-
tions, most of which date to the 1290s AH /1870s CE. These dates are in line with
other dates in this part of the manuscript – all from the 1290s AH.
The catalogue description quoted above enumerates other parts with very
diverse content, and it can be added that the layout changes a great deal as
well. Poetry is written in two or more columns, with the script going at a
45 degree angle to the left, and an occasional perpendicular line in the middle
of the page. The older layer in the present manuscript therefore resembles other
manuscripts – most of them much larger – which have been categorized as
personal notebooks.
Notebooks kept by legal practitioners, qadis and muftis, survive from Cen-
tral Asia in relatively large numbers. In Tashkent alone, in the library of the
Institute for Oriental Studies, there are about fifty of them. They vary enormously,

||
6 Arabic was the main language for legal treatises. The legal terminology in Central Asia is all
in Arabic, even in legal documents that are otherwise in Persian or Turki. A kind of shariatic
legalese is the result.
 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 567

but many have one feature in common: their heterogeneity. They reflect the
multifarious activities of their writers. These notebooks contain not only legal
matter, but also poetry, texts and drawings on occult sciences, guidelines for
healing – mostly these guidelines involve the writing of amulets and other mag-
ical agents. Such elements are also present in the manuscript under review
here.7 For instance, there is some poetry in Turki.8 Bilingualism – Persian and
Turki – was widespread in Central Asia, and to have multilingual manuscripts
(with two or three languages: Persian, Turki, and possibly Arabic, as in our
manuscript) is the rule rather than the exception.
To sum up for the first layer or layers: The cover was made in the 1270s AH /
1850s CE, but the oldest dated text entries are from the 1290s AH / 1870s CE. The
entries with dates all come from the 1290s AH and are mostly legal matter. This
older layer also has letter samples, poetry, personal notes, and so on, as the
description points out. It is hard to tell how much in this layer was written in
one hand only. The writer is nowhere identified; there is no name or names, no
signature, no seal. Some texts carry place names, and the place where some-
thing was written is always Bukhara. So it is certain that this layer was written
in Bukhara, by a man active in the legal system, most probably as a qadi, who
also had other interests, mainly in poetry.

2.2 The second layer

The second layer – dated in the description to the 1930s – is even more compli-
cated. There is no point in the manuscript where the first layer stops and the
second starts. Quite the opposite: the first layer appears again and again until
the very end of the manuscript. The second layer is first visible on fol. 26r (see
Fig. 2).
On the left side, fol. 26r, there is an entry in black ink, but probably written
with a European pen, made of steel instead of reed. The script is Roman, the
language Tajik. Closely related to Persian, Tajik was the first language for a

||
7 These notebooks are called jung in Central Asia. This is an understudied genre in Central
Asian manuscriptology. Pioneering studies have been undertaken by Gulomov 2012 and
Saidakbar Mukhammadaminov 2017. James Pickett’s PhD dissertation, now published as a
book (Pickett 2020), is a groundbreaking contribution to the intellectual history of nineteenth-
century Bukhara. It is through Pickett’s work that I became aware of the manuscript examined
in this article. I have myself examined some other jung manuscripts in more detail in Paul
(forthcoming).
8 MS NLR PNS 561, fols 56v–57r.
568 | Jürgen Paul

majority of the urban population in Bukhara during the late nineteenth century.
Tajik was written in Roman script from 1928/1929 to 1939/1940, when Cyrillic
was introduced.9 Thus, the entry could hardly have been written earlier than the
mid to late 1920s and was certainly not written later than 1940. There is, then, a
distance in time of about fifty years between the two layers, that is, two genera-
tions. And since there is no information about the writer of the first layer, noth-
ing can be said about the possible relationship between the writers. In general,
it is unknown how the book made its way from the first writer and owner to the
second.10
The hand which wrote the lines is clearly not at ease with the script. The
forms of the letters betray that the teachers themselves (about whom no infor-
mation is available) must have been unfamiliar with Roman script and were
probably Russians or otherwise literate in Cyrillic. The writing in the first line
breaks off in the middle of a word, and the second line repeats the first and then
goes on a bit further. The text is probably an exercise: ‘Open steppe and beauti-
ful garden and fine weather’ and so on.
A bit below the writing exercise there are exercises in arithmetic. These ex-
ercises are written in pencil, a writing tool unknown in Bukhara until the nine-
teenth century but clearly there in the twentieth. The numerals used are both
the ‘Oriental’ and the ‘European’ Arabic numerals. For the exercises in Oriental
numerals, there are explanations in Arabic script and language.
And there is another, longer text in Tajik, in Roman script; written in pencil,
it is hardly legible in the reproduction. There are some mistakes in this section:
the writer repeats syllables in what is an attempt at writing verse.11
This layer offers a glimpse of what a script reform can mean to intellectuals,
to writers whose hands were used to writing without having to think about how,
only about what, they wrote. And the script reform also meant a reform of nu-
merals.

||
9 Script reform in the Soviet Union is best covered by Baldauf 1993. For Tajik in particular, see
Rzehak 2001.
10 The several notes which we find on the inner side of the cover are not helpful. There is a
note about the birth of a son, dated to the Year of the Pig 1305 (1887–1888), and another one,
dated to 1276 AH / 1859–1860 CE. The older note is in keeping with the date of the cover, which
was made just two years earlier, while the later one could refer to a later owner.
11 The first two lines read: ‘Man az bigzaşata ma’zuram * man az ajanda masrūrūram’ (‘I am
free from the past * I am happy with the future’ [or: ‘I am looking forward to the future’]). The
repetition of the syllable rū in the last word is a mistake; it should be masrūram (‘I am happy’).
The reading bigzaşta is doubtful. The writing of the long vowels (such as ū) is not always ob-
served.
 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 569

Writing Tajik in Roman script occurs on quite a number of folios in the

manuscript, as detailed in the catalogue description quoted above. Moreover,
there is also one item written in Cyrillic: a postal address on fol. 39v (see Fig. 3).
The town of Uratiube in Tajikistan is mentioned, as well as a location in the
region of Ural’sk, today in western Kazakhstan.12 The Russian elements in the
address – e.g. the name of the street, Pionerskaia ulitsa – are written phoneti-
cally.13 Tajikistan is called an ‘SSR’, which provides us a clue as to the dating:
Tajikistan was made an SSR only in 1929, and therefore this entry must be later
than that.
Next to the address, there is an entry in a completely different hand, a kind
of intellectual scribble. But since the ink is the same colour – a pale violet or
purple – it is quite possible that the writer was the same. The Cyrillic letters are
larger, written with more impact, and certainly more slowly than the Arabic
script next to them, but the pen could also be the same. Or did writers use dif-
ferent pens for writing in European scripts, from left to right, and in Arabic
script, from right to left?
A part of the page has been cut off, just below the address. This has hap-
pened in various places in the manuscript; such cuts can be observed in other
Central Asian notebooks as well. Probably such manuscripts also served as a
reservoir for paper.14 In this case, perhaps the address was written again, and
then the corresponding part of the page cut out and glued to the object which
was being sent.
The hand next to the address reappears in many places in the second layer
of the manuscript: this is the script that Yastrebova attributes to Abdarrauf
Fitrat.15 Fitrat was a leading representative of the Bukharan modernist intellec-
tuals of the early twentieth century. He joined the Bolsheviks after the revolu-
tion, was part of the Bukharan revolutionary government, but soon came into
conflict with the leadership of the Communist Party. After 1924, when he came
back to Central Asia following a forced stay in Moscow, he spent some years in
Samarqand and Tashkent, working in the nascent Soviet academic system, and
he was also involved in the Romanisation of Tajik: it was his proposal for the

||
12 The name of the place could be read as Shadrin or Tadrin. I have been unable to identify
such a place in the region of Ural’sk. The Russian word oblast’ (‘administrative unit’) comes
with a non-Russian ending, oblaste, which may represent a Turki form.
13 The writer has Пиянирск. Улитса instead of Пионерск. Улица. Tajikistan comes as
‘Tojikston’, which sounds either Uzbek or Tajik.
14 An extreme example is the manuscript Tashkent, Institut for Oriental Studies no. 9767,
where more than 40 sheets are missing. See Paul (forthcoming).
15 Outside of quotations, I write the name ‘Fitrat’ without diacritics.
570 | Jürgen Paul

script reform which was eventually adopted.16 His literary reputation is mostly
due to his dramatic works, but he was a prolific writer in many fields, writing in
both Turki and Persian. At the end, he fell victim to the Stalinist state terror and
was executed without trial in October 1938 in Tashkent.17

3 An autograph by Fitrat?
For a number of reasons, Yastrebova’s inference seems sound. Some entries
indeed were probably written by Fitrat himself, and these entries are proof that
he used this manuscript as a notebook for drafts, mostly of poetry, but also of
letters, journal articles, and speeches. If the grammatical explanations are also
his, as Yastrebova believes, their presence may relate to his work on Tajik
grammar.
My analysis of the second-layer components in this hand starts with this
short poem, four lines in all (Fig. 4a). At first the poem looks like a quatrain.
Since the lines are written in a careful hand, they should be easy to read, but
this impression is deceiving because nearly all the diacritical dots are missing.
There are, however, other versions of the same text on other folios. By compar-
ing the versions, it becomes clear that this is no quatrain, but a longer poem of
ten lines (five verses, ten hemistichs). There are notable variants. In one ver-
sion, we have Tājikistān instead of ʿālam at the beginning of line 6 (fol. 51v,
Fig. 4d), a more nationalist outlook: it is the home country instead of the whole
world that ought to be filled with light. In two versions, lines 7 and 8 have been
erased (Figs 4b and 4d); in one version, a word in line 4 (mullāyān, ‘mullahs’)
has been blackened (Fig. 4c), and attempts at blackening that word are evident
in another version (Fig. 4d). Most probably, this was done years after the poem
was written (see below). What follows is the complete poem in Persian and in
translation:

‫ﺃﻫﻞ ﺇﺳﺘﺜﻤﺎﺭ ﺭﺍ ﻣﻘﻬﻮﺭ ﻣﻲ ﺑﺎﻳﺴﺖ ﻛﺮﺩ‬ Ahl-i istithmār-rā maqhūr mī-bāyast kard
‫ﻟﻄﻒ ﭘﺮ ﺭﺣﻤﺘﻜﺶ ﻣﺰﺩﻭﺭ ﻣﻴﺒﺎﻳﺴﺖ ﻛﺮﺩ‬ Luṭf pur raḥmatkish muzdūr mī-bāyast kard
‫ﺗﺎ ﺑﺪﻧﻴﺎ ﭼﺸﻢ ﺑﮕﺸﺎﻳﻨﺪ ﺩﻳﮕﺮ ﺑﻌﺪ ﺍﺯ ﺍﻳﻦ‬ Tā ba-dunyā chashm bu-gushāyand dīgar baʿd az īn
‫ﭼﺸﻢ ﻣﻼﻳﺎﻥ ﺧﻮﺍﺑﻴﻦ ﻛﻮﺭ ﻣﻴﺒﺎﻳﺴﺖ ﻛﺮﺩ‬ Chashm-i mullāyān-i khwābīn kūr mī-bāyast kard
‫ﺍﺯ ﺿﻴﺎء ﺷﻌﻞ ﻋﺮﻓﺎﻥ ﻧﻮ ﺷﻤﻊ ﻋﻠﻢ‬ Az ḍiyāʾ-i shuʿl-i ʿirfān-i naw-i shamʿ-i ʿilm

||
16 Borjian 1999, 566.
17 For a short introduction, see Borjian 1999.
 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 571

‫ﻋﺎﻟﻢ ﺭﺍ ﭘﺮ ﺿﻴﺎء ﻧﻮﺭ ﻣﻴﺒﺎﻳﺴﺖ ﻛﺮﺩ‬ ʿĀlam-rā pur ḍiyāʾ-i nūr mī-bāyast kard
‫ﺗﺎﻧﺴﺎﺯﺩ ﺯﺍﻫﺪ ﺩﺧﻮﻝ ﺑﭽﺸﻢ ﺑﺪ ﻧﻈﺮ‬ Tā na-sāzad zāhid dukhūl ba-chashm-i bad-naẓar
‫ﺩﺧﺘﺮﺍﻥ ﺧﻮﺏ ﺍﺯ ﺩﺳﺘﻮﺭ ﻣﻴﺒﺎﻳﺴﺖ ﻛﺮﺩ‬ Dukhtarān-i khūb az dastūr mī-bāyast kard
‫ﻓﻄﺮﺗﺎ ﺍﺯ ﭘﺮﺗﻮ ﺧﻮﺭﺷﻴﺪ ﻋﺪﻝ ﺷﻮﺭﻭﻯ‬ Fiṭratā az partū-yi khūrshīd-i ʿadl-i shūrawī
‫ﻅﻠﻤﺖ ﻅﻠﻢ ﺷﺮﺭ ﺭﺍ ﺩﻭﺭ ﻣﻴﺒﺎﻳﺴﺖ ﻛﺮﺩ‬ Ẓulmat-i ẓulm-i sharar-rā dūr mī-bāyast kard

Translation:

The exploiters must be smashed

Workers must be treated with kindness and compassion
In order to make people open up their eyes again to the future
The eyes of the sleeping mullahs must be blinded
With the light of the flame of new knowledge, the flambeau of science
The world must be made full of light
In order to keep the ascetic [the religious zealot] from interfering, with his evil eye
The pretty girls must be freed [?] from the order [of veiling?]
Fiṭrat! From the sunlight of Soviet justice
The darkness of oppression and evil must be kept away 18

One argument that these entries are in Fitrat’s own hand is that this name oc-
curs at the beginning of the last verse (penultimate hemistich). In classical Per-
sian poetry, this is the place where the poet identifies himself, more often than
not in an invocation, addressing himself. The form of this short poem is alto-
gether classic in spite of its revolutionary content.19
Another argument is that when multiple versions of a single text appear in a
single manuscript, many of them in the same hand, the entries are probably
drafts. It is remarkable, however, that the neat version is so short – one would
expect it to have been written at the end, when the poet had decided which
version he would eventually publish or present or otherwise consider more or
less final. It is possible, however, that Fitrat also wrote the neat version – calli-
graphic writing after all was part of a standard education.

||
18 The stress on girls and veiling makes one think of the campaign for the unveiling of wom-
en, the so-called ḥujūm campaign which started in 1927.
19 Fitrat wrote poetry in both Persian and Turki. After writing in Persian earlier in his career
he turned to Turki, and it is his works in that language that are best known. But after the mid
1920s, he started to write and publish in Persian again, as well as in Tajik. Borjian 1999 remarks
that Fitrat’s works in Turki have been widely studied but that there is much less on his Persian
and Tajik works. A literary analysis of the poem printed above is beyond the scope of the paper.
See Hodgkin 2015. (I owe this reference to James Pickett.) I am unaware of any printed edition
of this text.
572 | Jürgen Paul

The manuscript contains another example of a draft and a neat version of

the same text, on fol. 53r. This is perhaps a draft for a poster, a journal article, or a
speech. In it, the addressees – ‘Dear comrades’ – are called upon to work for the
distribution of the newspaper ‘The Tajik Voice’, which is a paper that appeared in
Samarqand during the 1920s. Fitrat is known to have contributed to this news-
paper, for instance, with two articles in 1927 on the Romanisation of Tajik.20
Together, these factors make the character of the manuscript even clearer.
In the second layer as well, it served as a notebook. Perhaps it was even a note-
book for more than one person – on the bottom part of this page, someone not-
ed his own birthdate and that of others, perhaps his brothers and sister: ‘I,
Ḥamīd, was born on Friday, Dhū l-Ḥijja 17, 1321 hijrī, corresponding to February
20, 1904, of the Christian era’.21 These are the notes mentioned in the description
in the catalogue, quoted above.
In general, however, the entries in the second layer reflect some of the main
preoccupations of Abdarrauf Fitrat: revolutionary propaganda, the Romanisa-
tion of Tajik, and the use of Persian literary models for Soviet politics. Taken
together, these features are strong evidence that the manuscript in question
belonged to him during this period, perhaps from the mid 1920s into the 1930s.
In the light of this conclusion, it is altogether possible that Fitrat also wrote the
exercises in Roman script.
Most of the entries in this hand, likely that of Fitrat, are in a cursive script,
written in pencil or copying pencil, not easily legible, at times with ligatures
and special forms of letters. The layout changes from page to page, from entry to
entry. This variability is indicative of the strictly personal use for which these
entries were intended.

4 Final phase
There are still other entries which come from the final phase of the manuscript’s
documented use: another writer made entries after Fitrat’s death, thus later than
1938. This man wrote on fol. 40r, in Arabic: arqamahu Fiṭrat ghaffara ʿanhu,
‘Fitrat wrote this, may God pardon him’, and similarly on fol. 52r: rāqamahu
Fiṭrat ghaffara ʿanhu wa-sattara ʿuyūbahu, with the formula ‘and may God cover

||
20 Borjian 1999, 566.
21 The Christian date is given according to the old pre-revolutionary calendar, the Julian one,
still used today by the Russian Orthodox Church.
 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 573

up his sins’ added. Both notes are written in pencil, the note on fol. 40r is to be
found in the upper right corner of the page (Fig. 4a). The same person was
possibly responsible for blackening the word ‘mullahs’ in one of the versions of
the poem quoted above (fol. 39v), attempting to do so in another (fol. 51v) in
order to make the word illegible, and in erasing a verse in two places (fols 49r, 51v,
Figs 4b and 4d). Lines 7 and 8 therefore survive in one version only (fol. 38v,
Fig. 4c), which possibly escaped the eraser’s attention. This man was very
probably a mullah himself, with some knowledge of Arabic, and on the other
side of the barricades as far as veiling and unveiling is concerned: he did not
want the lines on veiling to survive, and he wanted to ‘correct’ Fitrat’s anti-
clerical polemics. Nevertheless, he thought it worth while to identify Fitrat as
the author and writer of these lines. Thus, his remarks betray a certain respect
for the personality of Fitrat, even if he also distances himself from Fitrat on
some points.22
A case can therefore be made for ascribing several parts of the manuscript
to Fitrat’s own hand. More research is required, in particular into other papers
possibly written in his hand, but that investigation is beyond the scope of this
contribution. If the ascription is correct, this manuscript offers a glimpse into
the working routines of a leading Central Asian intellectual and political actor.

5 Conclusion
The manuscript shows that handwriting plays an important role even after the
end of a manuscript culture. With the rise of print – introduced in Muslim Central
Asia around 1900 – people did not stop writing manuscripts. Except that the man-
uscript books they wrote were no longer meant to be copied, since copying was
no longer the central form of distributing texts. Fitrat also had many of his works
printed and even worked for the printed press. But of course personal notebooks
still served as diaries and contain drafts, letters, and many other kinds of notes.
The manuscript sits astride the transition from Arabic to other scripts for Ta-
jik, the transition from the traditional qalam to steel pen and pencil, and the
transition from manuscript to print culture. This transition also had an impact
on the writing of notebooks: they seem to have fewer excerpts and copies, and
instead contain more drafts.

||
22 The Arabic formulae quoted are standard and do not necessarily imply a judgement on the
character of the deceased person.
574 | Jürgen Paul

Acknowledgements
Special thanks to James Pickett who checked my English. Needless to say, all
mistakes and inconsistencies remain my own.

References
Baldauf, Ingeborg (1993), Schriftreform und Schriftwechsel bei den muslimischen Russland-
und Sowjettürken (1850–1937): ein Symptom ideengeschichtlicher und kulturpolitischer
Entwicklungen (Bibliotheca Orientalis Hungarica, 40), Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Friedrich, Michael and Cosima Schwarke (2016), ‘Introduction – Manuscripts as Evolving Enti-
ties’, in Michael Friedrich and Cosima Schwarke (eds), One-Volume Libraries: Composite
and Multiple-Text Manuscripts (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 9), Berlin: De Gruyter, 1–26.
Gulomov, Sanjar et al. (2000), Handlist of Sufi manuscripts (18 th–20 th centuries) in the holdings
of the Oriental Institute, Academy of Sciences, Republic of Uzbekistan, Berlin: Das Ara-
bische Buch.
Gulomov, Sanjar (2012), ‘О некоторых подлинных документах из коллекций рукописных
произведений фонда ИВ АН РУз’ ‘O nekotorykh podlinnykh dokumentakh iz kollektsii
rukopisnykh proizvedenii fonda IV AN RUz’, in Bakhtiyar Babadjanov and Kawahara Yayoi
(eds), History and Culture of Central Asia, Tokyo: TIAS, Department of Islamic Area Stud-
ies, The University of Tokyo, 135–170.
Hodgkin, Samuel, (2015), ‘Revolutionary Springtimes: Reading Soviet Persian-Tajik Poetry,
from Ghazal to Lyric’, in Matteo de Chiara and Evelin Grassi (eds), Iranian Languages and
Literatures of Central Asia: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Studia Iranica, 57),
Paris: Association pour l’avancement des Études Iraniennes, 273–305.
Mukhammadaminov, Saidakbar (2017), ‘Джунг – сборник практикующего судьи Средней Азии
(конец XVI – XIX век)’‘Jung – sbornik praktikuiushchego traditsionnogo sud’i Srednei Azii
(konets XVI–XIX vek)’ [=‘Jung – the collection of practicing traditional judge of Central Asia
(end of 16th century – 19th century)] IFEAC Working papers, 17 <ifeac.hypotheses.org/3217>
(accessed on 12 February, 2021).
Paul, Jürgen (forthcoming): ‘Mufti notebooks. A ǧung manuscript from late 19th-century Bukha-
ra’, in David Durand-Guédy and Jürgen Paul (eds), By One’s Own Hand – for One’s Own
Use (Studies in Manuscript Cultures).
Pickett, James (2020), Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia,
Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
Rzehak, Lutz (2001), Vom Persischen zum Tadschikischen: sprachliches Handeln und Sprach-
planung zwischen Tradition, Moderne und Sowjetmacht (1900–1956), Wiesbaden:
Reichert.
Yastrebova, O.M. and O.V. Vasil’eva (2017), Новые поступления в отдел рукописей 2001-
2005. Рукописные книги арабской графики и другие материалы восточного
происхождения. Novye postupleniia v otdel rukopisei 2001–2005. Rukopisnye knigi
arabskoi grafiki i drugie materialy vostochnogo proizkhozhdeniia, Saint Petersburg:
Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka.
 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 575

Fig. 1: MS NLR PNS 561, fols 10v–11r. All figures courtesy of NLR.
576 | Jürgen Paul

Fig. 2: MS NLR PNS 561, fols 25v–26r.

 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 577

Fig. 3: MS NLR PNS 561, fol. 39v.

578 | Jürgen Paul

Fig. 4a: MS NLR PNS 561, fol. 40r. Four lines of a poem in careful hand (red) and the note
‘arqamahu Fiṭrat ghaffara ʿanhu’ (blue).
 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 579

Fig. 4b: MS NLR PNS 561, fol. 49r. Longer version. Lines 7 and 8 erased.
580 | Jürgen Paul

Fig. 4c: MS NLR PNS 561, fol. 38v. Longer version. One word blackened (line 4): mullāyān.
 Notes on a Central Asian Notebook | 581

Fig. 4d: MS NLR PNS 561, fol. 51v. Longer version, lines 7 and 8 erased, attempt at blackening
one word in line 4 (mullāyān).
Stefano Valente
Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in
the Middle Ages: Notes on the Manuscript
Vaticanus Barberinianus gr. 70 of the
Etymologicum Gudianum
Abstract: The creation of a lexicon in the manuscript culture of the Greek Middle
Ages was a complex and difficult enterprise. It required access to different manu-
script sources and to writing materials in which the selected information could be
copied and structured. To illustrate this practice, some features of the manuscript
Vatican City, BAV, Vaticanus Barberinianus gr. 70 (eleventh century CE?) transmit-
ting the original of the so-called Etymologicum Gudianum will be investigated.

1 Introduction
‘Lexicography is an endless task’,1 wrote Robert Scott on 9 April 1862 in a letter
to the German classical scholar Wilhelm Dindorf. Scott is the co-author – with
Henry George Liddell – of the seminal Greek-English lexicon (first edition:
Oxford 1843) that remains the most authoritative lexicographic tool for the
study of Ancient Greek.2 More generally, Scott’s sentence is consonant with
almost every kind of lexicographic work produced in every time and culture.3
However, this ‘endless task’ applies not only to the intellectual act of collecting,
selecting, and explaining lexical items, but also concerns the material opera-
tions of transferring and transmitting them in a written artefact.
In this regard, the activity of a lexicographer working in the medieval Greek
manuscript culture was particularly challenging and required access to different

||
1 Stray 2019b, 11 (and n. 1 for the source: ‘Robert Scott letter books, OUP Archive’).
2 Usually abbreviated ‘LSJ’, viz. ‘Liddell, Scott, Jones’, the latter being Henry Stuart Jones
(1867–1939), who authored the revision of the lexicon. On the different editions of and supple-
ments to the Greek-English Lexicon, see Stray 2019a. Dindorf himself and his brother Ludwig
were also experts in lexicographic matters, since they were part of the team of scholars in
charge of updating the nine volumes of Stephanus’ Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (Paris 1831–
1863): see e.g. Müller 1903, 706.
3 For an overview on some lexicographic cultures of the past, see the papers collected in
Considine 2019 with further literature.

Open Access. © 2021 Stefano Valente, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-029
584 | Stefano Valente

manuscript sources, to writing materials, and sufficient time to select and or-
ganise the contents. To illustrate some aspects of this complex scholarly activi-
ty, I will focus on a single manuscript which lends itself as an exceptional case
study for understanding how an original of a lexicon was created.
The history of Greek lexicography begins in the Hellenistic Age (from about
the third century BCE onwards):4 for centuries, manuscripts containing lexica of
various kinds have been produced and copied for different purposes. Not only
did scribes and scholars copy already existing lexica of the past, with every new
manuscript being a more or less faithful adaptation of the contents to the needs
of the producers and/or users, but they also compiled new lexica using previous
works as sources of information. The huge number of extant Greek lexicograph-
ic manuscripts offers a fruitful field of investigation for studying adaptation
processes through the centuries and within different scholarly communities.
That said, few surviving manuscripts allow us to perceive and to reconstruct
how the material process of creating a brand new lexicon took place: such writ-
ten artefacts represent provisional and preliminary textual stages, thus consti-
tuting one stage in a complex intellectual and material work-in-progress.5

2 How to compose a new lexicon? Some

theoretical remarks
Creating a new lexicon in the Greek Middle Ages was a complex enterprise.
Firstly, the producers were confronted with the difficult task of gathering infor-
mation from different manuscript sources, in particular previous lexica, com-
mentaries to literary texts, grammars, and other specialised literature, as well as
from manuscripts transmitting literary works. They then had to select the in-
formation they considered interesting and necessary for their purposes. After-
wards, this selection was transferred into a new manuscript and converted into
a usable form. Alphabetical order was adopted to aid quick consultation of this
new text.6 The lexical items were thus arranged according to different degrees of
alphabetisation, from the easiest, i.e. to the first letter of the lemma, to the most

||
4 See among others Ferri 2019 and Valente 2019 with further literature.
5 See e.g. Valente 2017, 45.
6 For an overview of alphabetisation in Greek and Latin Antiquity and Middle Ages, see Daly
1967 and Alpers 1975. See also Valente 2014.
 Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages | 585

refined, i.e. the full alphabetisation.7 In Antiquity and the Middle Ages, this
latter lexicographic structure was a difficult and expensive task in terms of time,
intellectual energy, and material costs.
The German classical scholar Carl Wendel (1874–1951) described such a
painstaking operation in his entry in the Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft on the Late Antique grammarian Orion from Thebes in
Egypt (fifth century CE).8 Orion compiled the first Greek etymological lexicon
that has survived, collecting grammatical-etymological explanations of words
he found in different source texts.9 As already acknowledged, some of these
source texts were not alphabetically arranged. As Wendel suggests, it is possible
that the lexicographer had a separate set of sheets or quires for each letter of the
alphabet, in which he copied the different etymologies he found in his sources
according to their first letter.10 The lexicographer performed the process of
extracting information from his source texts in sequence (that is to say first ex-
ploiting a source, then a second one, etc.). This perhaps explains how groups of
entries originating from one and the same source (originally not alphabetically
arranged) appear in the same sequence within each alphabetic section of
Orion’s lexicon.11
Starting from this working hypothesis, an even more complex composition-
al process is required for creating an original of a fully alphabetised lexicon.

||
7 Generally, surviving Greek and Byzantine lexica are arranged up to the third letter, many
others just according to the first or second one: see Valente 2014.
8 On this lexicographer, see Wendel 1939; Ippolito 2008; Matthaios 2015, 287–288.
9 On etymology in Greek antiquity, see e.g. Sluiter 2015 with literature. It should be noted that
ancient etymologies have nothing to do with modern linguistic studies.
10 Wendel 1939, 1086–1087: ‘Da die meisten der von O[rion] benutzten Werke selbst nicht
alphabetisch geordnet gewesen sind, haben wir uns sein Verfahren so vorzustellen, daß er für
jeden Buchstaben des Alphabets ein besonderes Rollenstück vor sich niederlegte und bei der
Lektüre die ihm begegnenden Etymologien, so weit sie ihm wichtig erschienen, auf diese Blät-
ter übertrug. So entstand eine nach den Anfangsbuchstaben der erklärten Worte alphabetisch
angelegte Kompilation, die weder Eigenes enthält noch irgendeine der Vorlagen in ihrem
ursprünglichen Zusammenhang wiedergibt’. On this hypothesis, see also Daly 1967, 89 n. 1:
‘This description is based purely on inference from the character of the text of Orion rather than
on any direct evidence, but it is plausible in the light of the evidence cited above [ibid. 85–89,
but see also Wilson 1969, 366 on p. 88]’. Wendel mentions the use of papyrus rolls, but there is
no evidence for what kind of material support Orion really used. However, it seems more likely
that the lexicographer worked with single sheets or loose quires. For further literature and
another hypothesis concerning the composition of a version of the so-called Zonaras’s lexicon
(first half of thirteenth century), see Alpers 1981, 19 with n. 23. On the compositional methodol-
ogy of Guarinus Favorinus Camers’ lexicon, see Ucciardello 2017, 181.
11 See Kleist 1865, 16; Wendel 1939, 1086; Theodoridis 1976, 16f.
586 | Stefano Valente

Each list of entries for every alphabetic letter must be revised, the items checked
many times, then, in a further step, they can be copied according to a more or
less refined alphabetical order into a new manuscript. Bringing together differ-
ent sources transmitting similar materials also caused problems in terms of
locating the information correctly, by introducing new lemmata or extending
the explanations of already existing items. Mistakes such as placing an entry in
the wrong position were common and had to be corrected by revising the text or
producing a new version of it. The longer a text, the more complicated this pro-
cess turned out to be.

3 From theory to practice: the case of MS Vatican

City, BAV, Vat. Barb. gr. 70
Thus far the theory. In reality, the possibility of verifying this hypothesis in a
manuscript and of studying how such an intellectual and material process took
place during the production of a given written artefact is limited and relies upon
the very few manuscripts that preserve drafts of lexicographic texts. One such
text is the manuscript Vatican City, BAV, Vat. gr. 7 (diktyon: 66638), dated to
1310: it contains the first five letters of the Greek alphabet (from alpha to epsi-
lon) of a lexicographic collection compiled by Georgios Phrankopulos, a scholar
active in Constantinople at the beginning of the fourteenth century.12 The scribe
of this manuscript – possibly Phrankopulos himself – supplemented the main
text by adding further materials in the margins and in extra sheets that he glued
or bound to the original manuscript. The other manuscripts containing the
remainder of this collection are unknown or lost. Furthermore, there are no
traces of the Vatican manuscript ever having been copied.13
Another manuscript that preserves a working copy of a lexicon is now kept
in the Vatican Library as well: the Vatican City, BAV, Vat. Barb. gr. 70 (diktyon:
64618), possibly to be dated to the eleventh century.14 It is a small manuscript

||
12 See Mercati and Franchi de’ Cavalieri 1923, 4f.; Ucciardello 2007, 431–435; Gaul 2008, 178–
181; Ucciardello 2013 (in particular, 12–16); Valente 2017, 52. A full digitisation of the manu-
script is online: <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.7> (all internet sites mentioned in the
present article were accessed on 24 Feb. 2021).
13 For another manuscript fragment with a preliminary version of a lexicon, see Ucciardello
2021.
14 On this manuscript, see Reitzenstein 1897, 91–103; Capocci 1958, 77–78; Maleci 1995;
Sciarra 2005, 359–363; Arnesano and Sciarra 2010, 430–433. For an earlier dating to the end of
 Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages | 587

(c. 200 × 170 mm) now composed of 22 parchment quires (quaternions). In its
present state, there are some quires and some leaves missing15 and most of the
remainder is also damaged, especially near the margins. This makes the deci-
phering of the writing in these parts of the manuscript particularly difficult.16
The general consensus among the Greek palaeographers and scholars who stud-
ied this manuscript is that at least six different scribes co-operated in writing its
different textual layers, working together in the same place and at the same
time.17
With the exception of the last quire,18 the surviving leaves transmit the text
of a Greek etymologicon with conspicuous additions in the margins and be-
tween the lines, written at subsequent stages and by different scribes.19 The
German classical scholar Richard Reitzenstein (1861–1931) was the first to study
this manuscript in-depth and to acknowledge its pivotal importance as the orig-
inal of a seminal Byzantine etymologicon known under the name of Etymologi-
cum Gudianum.20 In his pioneering Geschichte der griechischen Etymologika,
published in Leipzig in 1897, Reitzenstein highlighted the main manuscripto-
logical and textual features of the Barberinianus and was able to trace the main

||
the tenth century, see Alpers 2015, 295–296. This topic is currently under investigation within
the project Etymologika. A full digitisation of the manuscript is online: <https://digi.vatlib.it/
view/MSS_Barb.gr.70>.
15 See Maleci 1995, 13–25.
16 In these cases, the later manuscripts descending directly or indirectly from the Barberi-
nianus are essential for reconstructing the text.
17 The production place is still to be identified with certainty. According to the communis
opinio, the manuscript was produced in Southern Italy, namely in Salento (Terra d’Otranto):
see e.g. Maleci 1995, 33–45, Sciarra 2005, 355–359 and 363–371. This has recently been ques-
tioned by Ronconi 2012, 86. Further investigations are needed in order to clarify the exact
origin of this codex and the number of scribes.
18 The final quire (fols 149–155, the first folio is lost) transmits a lexicon of synonyms: see
Reitzenstein 1897, 90–91; Nickau 1966, LIII–LIV; Palmieri 1987; Maleci 1995, 24, 71–72; Sciarra
2005, 363. This lexicon is alphabetically arranged to the first letter. Among the quite extensive
production of synonymic lexica from the Antiquity and Middle Ages still preserved, the text of
the Barberinianus turns out to be a unicum and may be a product of the same cultural milieu as
the etymologicon, since the same compositional process that was used in the first part is recog-
nised (for this, see below). Furthermore, in some cases, the scribes of the main text and of the
marginal annotations are the same ones as those of the rest of the manuscript.
19 Reitzenstein 1897, 91–92; Maleci 1995, 24, 45–67; Sciarra 2005, 359–363.
20 On this lexicon, which is the most widespread etymologicon in Greek manuscript culture,
see Reitzenstein 1897, 70–155; Cellerini 1988; Sciarra 2005; Alpers 2015, 295–296.
588 | Stefano Valente

lines of textual transmission of this etymologicon. His later studies, and those of
other scholars, refined the picture.21
For the purposes of the present paper, it should be emphasised that the
Barberinianus is a multi-layered manuscript, as revealed by the different strata
of annotations. As previously mentioned, a group of learned scribes, likely
working in the same workshop, revised and augmented the main text by con-
sulting not only further manuscript sources, but also re-using the same ones as
those used for compiling the main text. An examination of any folio of this
manuscript leaves one with the impression of facing a creative but organised
chaos.22
But what can we say about the main text itself? And is it ultimately possible
to reconstruct what lies behind it, i.e. the earlier composition stages of this lexi-
con? It has been acknowledged that three scribes are responsible for copying
the main text of the lexicon.23 All three – but in particular the first scribe – used
a quite calligraphic handwriting, while the scribes of the supplements in the
margins and between the lines used more informal and cursive handwriting.
Let us try a thought experiment. If the margins of the Barberinianus had re-
mained blank – that is, if there were no additional material in the free spaces –
we would face a well-written manuscript that we would probably consider to be
an accomplished piece of scholarship. It is only because of the later layers of
writing that we perceive this written artefact to be a working manuscript of an
anonymous group of scholars. If we disregard for a moment these successive
layers, we can try to understand the first layer as the main text, without the later
additions and corrections.
Firstly, the main text seems to be the result of an act of copying ‘in one
take’, that is to say, a text copied from a model and not produced during its
writing. In particular, we observe that entries are almost fully alphabetised; a
few minor misplacements can be detected towards the end of the lexicon but
these were usually corrected by the main scribe.24 Consequently, we can assume

||
21 Especially Reitzenstein 1907, 814–815. See Alpers 2015.
22 Further examples of other scholarly works in van der Valk 1971, XII–XXIV; Alpers 1981, 20.
23 Reitzenstein 1897, 92 (see also Capocci 1958, 77) and Maleci 1995, 33–45 (esp. 45 for an
overview) distinguished three scribes, but do not agree in the distribution of their work. See
also Sciarra 2005, 360 n. 16.
24 See Reitzenstein 1897, 93: ‘Die Reihenfolge der Glossen im Haupttext ist […] streng alphabe-
tisch, und zwar nach allen Buchstaben des Lemmas; wo diese Ordnung einmal gestört ist –
besonders oft im letzten Teil – hat häufig der erste Schreiber selbst durch Zeichen und Zahlen
eine beabsichtigte Umordnung der Glossen angedeutet’. Alessandro Musino (per litteras, 6
March 2020) remarks that something similar also occurs in relation to the marginal notes of the
 Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages | 589

a careful intellectual operation of selecting and structuring scholarly materials

from different manuscript sources in order to compile a new lexicon. While a
source text can be recognised with a degree of certainty for many entries, there
are many others where this is not the case.25 In general, the text of the first layer
does not seem to be a copy of any preserved lexicon that had already existed.26
We can deduce, therefore, that the main text of the Barberinianus represents a
copy of an original work. This means that we can also assume that there may
have been at least one previous working stage in a now lost manuscript preced-
ing the first textual layer of the Barberinianus. As Reitzenstein suggested, the
Barberinianus would therefore represent the neat copy of a prior working manu-
script whose form was probably similar to that of the Barberinianus itself.27
Some new evidence for this can be found when considering a textual fea-
ture that, to date, has received scant attention. Many entries of the main text do
not include an etymology of the lemmatised word, but rather feature a cross-
reference to one or more entries occurring above or later in the text in which the

||
Barberinianus: for instance, on fol. 141v, a scribe adds numerals from α΄ (1) to η΄ (8) next to the
lemmata in the text and in the left margin to indicate the correct positions for inserting the
entries from the margin into the main text in the correct alphabetical order (from χεῖα to
χεῖρον). As he properly remarks, this marks a further step towards the production of a new,
fully alphabetised manuscript of this lexicon.
25 See the first apparatus of De Stefani 1909–1920 for details concerning the letters alpha to
zeta (beginning). See also the specimen published by Reitzenstein 1897, 109–136.
26 Reitzenstein 1897, 104 also suggested this as one of two working hypotheses for explaining
the production of the Barberinianus (for the other one, see below, n. 27): ‘Kopierte der Schreiber
des Haupttextes im wesentlichen nur ein vor seiner Zeit schon entstandenes älteres Werk und
existierte eine Urform des Etymol. Gudianum schon vor ihm, so beweist die zwar begonnene,
aber nie vollständig durchgeführte und oft durch Zeichen erst nachträglich hergestellte streng
alphabetische Ordnung, daß er dasselbe erheblich umgestaltet hat’ (see also above, n. 24).
27 Reitzenstein 1897, 105 (see above, n. 26): ‘Ist er [i.e. the scribe of the Barberinianus] dagegen
selbst zugleich, wie ich glauben möchte, der Verfasser des Werkes, das erst durch ihn ent-
stand, so ist bei der klaren und zierlichen Schrift wie des ganzen Textes, so auch derjenigen
Glossen, welche sich uns als schon bei ihm aus mehreren direkt benutzten Quellen kontami-
niert erweisen werden, wenigstens das eine sicher, daß unserer Handschrift ein Entwurf, ein
Unreines, voraus liegt, welches ähnlich wie jetzt die erweiterte Handschrift ausgesehen haben
mag. Eine sichere Entscheidung vermag ich nicht zu geben’. Some years later, Reitzenstein
gave the preference to this latter hypothesis: ‘Ein älterer, sehr kurzer Text, der schon abge-
schlossen war und daher kalligraphisch sorgfältig auf einem relativ kleinen Teil der Seiten
eingetragen ist, ist von mehreren (fünf?) Schreibern nachträglich überarbeitet und erweitert
worden (etc.)’ (1907, 814).
590 | Stefano Valente

cross-referenced word is mentioned and/or commented on. For instance, let us

consider the following entry:28

γῆρυς· εἰς τὸ κῆρυξ καὶ διακηρυκεύεται.

gêrys (‘voice’): [see] at the entry kêryx (‘herald’) and at the entry diakērykeýetai (‘it is pro-
claimed by a herald’).

The cross-references are correct, since we find the meaning of the lemmatised
poetic name for ‘voice’ in the other two entries mentioned: in both of them, it is
explained as φωνή (phōnḗ, ‘voice’), the more common word for this.29
Furthermore, as the case below demonstrates, some entries contain an ac-
cumulation of such information:30

γῶ· εἰς τὸ γαστήρ καὶ γεγῶσα καὶ γῆ καὶ γυνή καὶ γωρυτός καὶ διακηρυκεύεται καὶ
ἐγγυαλίζω καὶ ἐγγύη καὶ χθών.

gô:31 [see] at the entries gastḗr (‘belly’), gegôsa (‘she, who has become’), gê (‘earth’), gynḗ
(‘woman’), gōrytós (‘quiver’), diakērykeýetai (‘it is proclaimed by a herald’), engyalízō (‘to
put into the hand’), eggýē (‘surety’) and chthṓn (‘earth’).

All but one of the cross-references are correct.32 Such a coherent and precise
system pointing both backward and forward in the text should therefore be seen
as the result of an intense engagement with the contents of the lexicon. It served
the needs of both the producers and the users of this new lexicon, assisting
them in navigating the manuscript to easily find the information they were look-
ing for. The producers created a compact network of information within their
original. Furthermore, this careful system of cross-references presupposes at

||
28 De Stefani 1909–1920, 310.8. The entry occurs on fol. 44v, l. 11 of the main text: for a digital
reproduction, see <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Barb.gr.70/0078>. I do not discuss here ei-
ther the literary source identified by De Stefani or the meaning of the marginal siglum in the
manuscript.
29 Respectively fol. 98v, main text, ll. 11–16, esp. 15–16 (text partly in Sturz 1818, col. 320.32–
41, esp. 38–41) and fol. 48r, main text, l. 2 from below–48v l. 2 from above (text in De Stefani
1909–1920, 365.20).
30 Fol. 44v, main text, l. 11, text in De Stefani 1909–1920, 327.5.
31 It is a fictive verbal form created by ancient grammarians for the sake of explaining the
origins of different words (see LSJ s.v.). The grammarian Philoxenus (first century BCE) may
have treated this form in his treatise On monosyllabic verbs (Περὶ μονοσυλλάβων ῥημάτων): see
Theodoridis 1976, 8–9, 129–131 (frags 79–82) and 133 (frag. 88).
32 The reference to γεγῶσα (De Stefani 1909–1920, 301.15) is mistaken, the correct one should
be to γεγαυῖα (De Stefani 1909–1920, 300.7).
 Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages | 591

least one preceding textual layer in manuscript form in which it could have
been implemented while revising the text. Otherwise, it would have been quite
difficult to know exactly what information would be present in still unwritten
subsequent alphabetic entries. We can deduce, then, that the scribes of the
main text did not compose it while writing the Barberinianus; rather, they
reproduced it from another manuscript, in which such a consistent cross-
reference system had already been developed.33
As already remarked, Reitzenstein suggested that the manuscript used as a
model for producing the Barberinianus may also have been a working manu-
script that looked similar to the Barberinianus in its current appearance.34 Such
a manuscript may have been conceived within the same cultural milieu. There is
evidence for this in the fact that the producers of the Barberinianus often used
the same source texts for entries both in the main text and for supplements; that
is to say, they had access to the same manuscripts over a certain span of time.
Furthermore, they continued to supplement entries in the main text with further
cross-references, taking into account the additional materials they had added
into the margins.35
A number of entries provide further textual evidence that the scribe of the
first layer was not creating the text for the first time but rather copied it from a
model. For instance, let us consider an entry under the letter zeta.36 It occurs on
fol. 75r, ll. 11–14, and reads (De Stefani 1909–1920, 580.1):37

ζαχρειῆς·38 κυρίως ζαχρειές ἐστι τὸ βιαίως ταῖς χερσὶ πραττόμενον· παρὰ γὰρ τὰς χεῖρας
πεποίηται ἡ λέξις· ὡς ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν βοῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλους μάχης μὴ συμφώνως
ἐργαζομένων· ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ πολλάκις, ὅταν ἕλκωσι, κάμνοντες ἐπερείδουσι τὸ βάρος πρὸς
ἀλλήλους.

raging (zachreiês, masc. and fem.): properly, the adjective zachreiés (neutrum) is what is
accomplished by violence with the hands: in fact, the word is formed from the term
‘hands’ (cheîras), just as (hōs) from the struggle of oxes against each other, when they do
not work harmoniously: for when they draw (the plug), they often push the weight
mutually on each other when getting tired.

||
33 A similar complex system of cross-references is also attested in Stephanus of Byzantium’s
geographic lexicon (see Neumann-Hartmann 2014; Billerbeck and Neumann-Hartmann 2017,
162–163) and in the Etymologicum Genuinum (see Reitzenstein 1897, 49–53).
34 Reitzenstein 1897, 105 (see above, n. 27).
35 See below, p. 596 with n. 63.
36 This is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet.
37 See the digital image at <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Barb.gr.70/0120>.
38 I print the accent as in the manuscript. The right form according to grammar is ζαχρειής.
See also below, nn. 41 and 48.
592 | Stefano Valente

The explanation is difficult to understand as it stands. In the first half, the ad-
jective zachreiés (‘raging’) is explained as being derived from the root of the
word χείρ (cheír, ‘hand’). The source for this information is an earlier etymologi-
con, the so-called Etymologicum Genuinum (produced in the mid-ninth century
in Constantinople).39 The relevant entry reads (overlaps underlined):40

ζαχρειῆς·41 οἷον ‘ἔμπης δ’ ἑγρομένοιο σάλου ζαχρειῇσιν αὔραις’.42 κυρίως ζαχρειές ἐστι τὸ
βιαίως ταῖς χερσὶ πραττόμενον· παρὰ γὰρ τὰς χεῖρας πεποίηται ἡ λέξις ζαχερής καὶ
ὑπερθέσει43 ζαχρεής καὶ ζαχρειής κτλ.

raging [zachreiés, masc. and fem.]: such as in the verse ‘Nevertheless, when a swell was
awakened by the raging winds’.44 Properly, the adjective zachreiés [neutrum] is what is
accomplished by violence with the hands: in fact, the word zacherḗs is formed from the
term ‘hands’ [cheîras]: with a transposition of letters, it becomes zachreḗs and then
zachreiḗs [etc.].

The producers of the Barberinianus selected only the information from the long-
er entry of the Etymologicum Genuinum that they considered useful for their new
lexicon. They omitted some learned materials such as a literary quotation from
the Argonautica by the Hellenistic poet Apollonius Rhodius (third century BCE).
What follows after the particle ὡς (hōs) in the Barberinianus, however, is
puzzling and does not occur in the aforementioned entry of the Etymologicum
Genuinum. Moreover, the content seemingly bears no relation to the lemma. The
last editor of the Etymologicum Gudianum, Edoardo Luigi De Stefani, was right
in emphasising that this explanation comes from another entry of the Etymo-
logicum Genuinum concerning the verb ζυγομαχεῖν (zygomacheîn, lit. ‘to struggle
with one’s yoke-fellow’). In it, we find part of the explanation that is used in the
Barberinianus (overlaps underlined):45

||
39 See Reitzenstein 1897, 1–69; Alpers 2015.
40 See also De Stefani 1909–1920, 580 in his apparatus.
41 I print the text as in Vat. gr. 1818 (diktyon: 68447), fol. 162r; the right accent ζαχρειής occurs
in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, S. Marco 304 (diktyon: 16882), fol. 121r both in the
main text (as a correction for ζαχρηεῖς) and in the margin. On this point, see nn. 38 and 48.
42 These words, omitted in Laur. S. Marco 304, are a literary quotation from Apollonius
Rhodius’ Argonautica (Book 1, verse 1159) to illustrate the use of the lemmatised adjective. The
form ζαχρειῇσιν is however metrically mistaken instead of the right ζαχρήεσιν.
43 Laur. S. Marco 304 reads καθ’ ὑπερβιβασμόν, having the same meaning of ὑπερθέσει (‘with
a transposition of letters’).
44 See above n. 42 for the reference.
45 I print the text of the Etymologicum Genuinum as in Vat. gr. 1818, fol. 163v and Laur.
S. Marco 304, fol. 123r.
 Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages | 593

ζυγομαχεῖ: στασιάζει, ὡς οἱ βόες ἐζευγμένοι. μετῆκται δὲ ἡ λέξις ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν βοῶν πρὸς
ἀλλήλους μάχης καὶ μὴ συμφώνως ἐργαζομένων· ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ πολλάκις,46 ὅταν ἕλκωσι,
κάμνοντες ἐπερείδουσι τὸ βάρος πρὸς ἀλλήλους κτλ.

‘to struggle with one’s yoke-fellow’ [zygomacheîn]: to quarrel, as the oxen when they have
been yoked. The word is borrowed from the struggle of oxes against each other and when
they do not work harmoniously: for when they draw (the plug), they often push the weight
mutually on each other when getting tired [etc.]

Here, the explanation is inserted into a much more consistent context47 and the
previously puzzling text of the Barberinianus becomes intelligible.48 But how
can we explain this mistake?
It is difficult to assume that the scribe of the first textual layer of the Bar-
berinianus made this mistake while copying the text directly from the manu-
script of the Etymologicum Genuinum he was consulting, since the two entries in
the latter are written quite distant from each other.49 Rather, the mistake be-
comes easier to explain if we assume that the two entries appeared in this very
sequence in another manuscript that later served as a model for the Barberi-
nianus. Alphabetisation may not have been completely achieved in such a work-
ing manuscript and was possibly limited to the first letter with several entries
for this letter extracted from one source followed by corresponding excerpts
from other sources. Thus, the order of the working manuscript may have reflect-
ed the sequence in which different sources were consulted, according to the
methodology mentioned above (p. 585–586).
We can try to reconstruct the genesis of the error as follows. When prepar-
ing the text of this working manuscript, a scribe first copied the entry ζαχρειῆς
(zachreiês).50 After having written the word λέξις, léxis (‘word’), he overlooked

||
46 Instead of πολλάκις, Laur. S. Marco 304 has the false reading πολλούς (‘many’, acc. m. pl.)
47 In turn, this entry of the Etymologicum Genuinum has a complex origin. A full account of it
would go beyond the scope of the present paper. See Theodoridis 1998, 245, apparatus to the
entry ζ 57 in Photius’ lexicon for details.
48 Concerning the Etymologicum Gudianum, De Stefani was well aware of the textual problem
while critically editing the text. He therefore suggested the radical solution of splitting the
entry in two, adding the lemma ζυγομαχεῖν (zygomacheîn) on the basis of the Etymologicum
Genuinum. In so doing, however, he disregarded the strong alphabetical order, since the new
item begins with ζυγ- (zyg-) in the series of entries beginning ζαχ- (zach-). For reason of con-
sistency, he was also forced to delete the particle ὡς (hōs, ‘just as’): see below, p. 594.
49 Respectively Vat. gr. 1818, fols 162r and 163v, Laur. S. Marco 304, fols 121r and 123r: see above
n. 41 and n. 45.
50 He also reproduced the wrong accent of the lemma ζαχρειῆς as in the excerpts from the
Etymologicum Genuinum he had at his disposal.
594 | Stefano Valente

the beginning of the new entry ζυγομαχεῖ (zygomacheîn) and omitted its lemma
together with the beginning of the explanation. It may not be a coincidence that
the missing text ends with the same word λέξις (léxis) also occurring at the end
of the previous explanation; indeed, this is a common copying mistake called
saut du même au même (omission by homoioteleuton). This working manuscript
thus contained quite heterogeneous explanations merged in one gloss that
turned out to be difficult to understand. Such a working manuscript was later
used by the scribe of this part of the Barberinianus who did not recognise the
exact mistake but tried to straighten out the text by introducing the particle ὡς
(hōs, ‘just as’).
These considerations may give a glimpse at the complexity of this manu-
script not only in terms of acknowledged later additions, but also in terms of the
problems of reconstructing previous material and textual stages.
Another entry from the letter zeta on fol. 75v offers us an example of the
scholarly work relating to the production of the Barberinianus.51 It concerns the
substantive ζῆλος (zêlos), which covers a broad spectrum of meanings, includ-
ing ‘zeal’, ‘desire’, ‘emulation’, ‘jealousy’, and ‘pride’.52 The text of the first layer
of the Barberinianus without supplementary information reads as follows:53

ζῆλος καὶ ζηλοτυπία διαφέρει· ζηλοτυπία μὲν γάρ ἐστι τὸ ἐν μίσει ὑπάρχον, ζῆλος δὲ ἡ
μίμησις τοῦ καλοῦ· ‘ζηλοῖ δὲ γείτονα γείτων’.

zeal (zêlos) and jealousy (zēlotypía) have different meanings: for jealousy is a feeling con-
sisting of hate, zeal is the imitation of the good. ‘The neighbour competes with the neigh-
bour’.54

This entry concerns the disambiguation of two terms that may be considered
synonyms. In Greek Antiquity and the Middle Ages, many lexica with synonym-
distinctions circulated, most of them re-elaborations of the first lexicon of this
type written by the grammarian Herennius Philo in the first/second century CE.55

||
51 See the digital image at <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Barb.gr.70/0119>.
52 See LSJ s.v.
53 The Greek text is also available in the printed (but non-critical) edition by Sturz 1818 based
on the later manuscript Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, 29–30 Gud. gr. (a. 1293; dik-
tyon: 72073–72074), now preserved in two volumes, transmitting a strongly re-worked version
of the text: see Sturz 1818, col. 231.7.
54 Quotation from Hesiod’s Works and days, verse 23, to illustrate the use of the verb ζηλόω
(‘to compete with’). In this paper, I will not analyse the relation between literary and lexico-
graphic text in depth.
55 On these lexica, see e.g. Matthaios 2015, 286–287.
 Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages | 595

In fact, the producers of the Barberinianus gathered this entry from one of those
synonymic lexica:56

ζῆλος καὶ ζηλοτυπία διαφέρει. ζηλοτυπία μὲν γάρ ἐστι τὸ ἐν μίσει ὑπάρχον· ζῆλος δὲ ἡ
μίμησις τοῦ καλοῦ· ‘ζηλοῖ δέ τε γείτονα γείτων’. ζηλοτυπεῖ δὲ ἡ Ἥρα τὸν Ἡρακλέα καὶ τὴν
Σελήνην καὶ τὴν Σεμέλην.

zeal (zêlos) and jealousy (zēlotypía) have different meanings: for jealousy is a feeling con-
sisting of hate, zeal is the imitation of the good. ‘The neighbour competes with the neigh-
bour’. Hera is jealous of Hercules, Selene and Semele.

The entry in the Barberinianus reproduces the source text almost verbatim,
except for the last part, since the mythological example for the use of the verb
‘to be jealous of’ (ζηλοτυπέω, zēlotypéō) is missing. On the other hand, the
anonymous quotation from the poem Works and Days of Hesiod (eighth/seventh
century BCE) concerning the related verb ‘to compete with’ (ζηλόω, zēlóō) is
preserved.57
While revising the main text, a different scribe was able to access another
manuscript of a different synonymic lexicon, namely the one later attributed to
the grammarian Ammonius.58 In it, we read a similar, but more extensive entry,
albeit with some significant differences:59

ζῆλος καὶ ζηλοτυπία διαφέρει. ζηλοτυπία μὲν γάρ ἐστιν αὐτὸ τὸ πάθος ἤγουν τὸ ἐν μίσει
ὑπάρχειν· ζῆλος δὲ μίμησις καλοῦ, οἷον ζηλοῖ τὸν καθηγητὴν ὁ παῖς. ‘ζηλοῖ δέ τε γείτονα
γείτων’, Ἡσίοδος60 ἐπὶ καλοῦ. ζηλοτυπεῖ δὲ ἡ δεῖνα τόνδε.

zeal (zêlos) and jealousy (zēlotypía) have different meanings: for jealousy is the passion it-
self, that is to say the feeling consisting of hate; zeal is imitation of good, such as in the
phrase ‘the pupil emulates the master’. Hesiod says ‘and the neighbour competes with the
neighbour’ for what is good. ‘Some woman is jealous of this given man’.61

||
56 Text in Palmieri 1988, 174, entry no. 83.
57 See West 1978, 96 (apparatus on v. 23).
58 See Nickau 1966, L–LIII.
59 Text in Nickau 1966, 55 (entry no. 209). This may also be considered as the source of the
entry in the synonymic lexicon in the Barberinianus (see above, n. 18): Barb. gr. 70, fol. 150v l. 9
(Palmieri 1987, 56, entry no. 58): ζῆλος ζηλοτυπίας διαφέρει. ζῆλος μὲν γάρ ἐστι μίμησις καλοῦ,
ζηλοτυπία δὲ τὸ ἐν μίσει ὑπάρχειν ἑτέρου.
60 See above, n. 54.
61 The last sentence serves to explain the syntax of the verb, i.e. that it is constructed with an
accusative. This is a quite common exegetic pattern in Greek lexicography and grammar.
596 | Stefano Valente

The scribe who supplemented the main text in this part collated the text of the
Barberinianus with the help of a second manuscript transmitting Ammonius’
lexicon. He was thus able to supplement the missing information in the
interlinear space. He also marked with dots the articles in the phrase ‘zeal is the
imitation of the good’ (ζῆλος δὲ ἡ μίμησις τοῦ καλοῦ, zêlos dè hē mímēsis toû
kaloû). Such critical signs usually serve to indicate that letters or words should
be deleted. In this particular case, however, I would tend to interpret them as
critical signs indicating that the marked articles were absent in the text the
scribe was collating. The following text is the result (supplements are under-
lined, dotted words in double square brackets):

ζῆλος καὶ ζηλοτυπία διαφέρει· ζηλοτυπία μὲν γάρ ἐστι τὸ ἐν μίσει ὑπάρχον, ζῆλος δὲ [[ἡ]]
μίμησις [[τοῦ]] καλοῦ οἷον ζηλοῖ τὸν καθηγητὴν ὁ παῖς· ‘ζηλοῖ δέ τε γείτονα γείτων’ ἐπὶ
καλοῦ· ζηλοτυπεῖ δὲ ἡ δεῖνα τὸν δεῖνα.

zeal (zêlos) and jealousy (zēlotypía) have different meanings: for jealousy consists of hate,
zeal is [[the]] imitation of [[the]] good, such as ‘the pupil emulates the master’. ‘And the
neighbour competes with the neighbour’ for what is good. ‘Some woman is jealous of
some man’. 62

The scribe therefore intended to update the first layer by adding further infor-
mation that would later assist in producing a new manuscript featuring a ‘final
version’ of the lexicon.
This intention is also visible in many other entries in which the same scribe
who wrote the main text inserted a cross-reference after the colon which usually
marks the end of the item. Let us take the short entry on ζωγράφος (zōgráphos),
‘painter’:63 after the explanation of the meaning ‘he who paints by imitating
living beings (zôa)’, the scribe added ‘and see below at the entry “historiog-
rapher” (ἱστοριογράφος, historiográphos)’. In fact, we find this entry later in the
manuscript on fol. 93v, ll. 22–25. In it, there is a similar but not identical defini-
tion of the term ‘painter’: ‘he who paints images of living beings’.64 When copy-
ing the entries beginning with the letter iota, the scribe noticed the similarity of

||
62 The source text shows a little difference: ‘somebody else’ (τὸν δεῖνα) vs. ‘this man’ (τόνδε).
This change may be regarded as intentional, in order to make the syntactic construction clear-
er, or as a mistake (τὸν δεῖνα => τόνδε).
63 Fol. 76r, main text, l. 4 from below: ζωγράφος· (another hand adds here the particle διὰ)
ζῷα μιμούμενος γράφει (the same scribe of the main text corrected the verb into the infinitive
form γράφειν and added after the colon the words καὶ εἰς τὸ ἱστοριογράφος). Text also in Sturz
1818, 233.28–29.
64 Text also in Sturz 1818, 283.55: (…) ζωγράφος δὲ ὁ ζῴων εἰκόνας γράφων.
 Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages | 597

the definitions and referred back to the already copied entry in the letter zeta
where he then added a cross-reference to the entry ‘historiographer’ in order to
guide the readers through the meanders of the lexicon.
The practices described provide evidence for the continuous scholarly activ-
ity performed on this manuscript by a group of scholars who worked together
and with access to a number of lexicographic and literary manuscripts. These
manuscripts served as a source-texts for producing a new scholarly work that
would have been useful for their own cultural interests.65
The Barberinianus is only a snapshot of a more complex intellectual operation.
More generally, this manuscript allows us to enter a medieval scholarly workshop
and to understand how intellectual procedures for creating originals were
performed within the boundaries of a concrete and multi-layered written artefact.

Acknowledgements
This paper was conceived within the framework of the project Etymologika.
Ordnung und Interpretation des Wissens in griechisch-byzantinischen Lexika bis
in die Renaissance under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences and Humani-
ties in Hamburg with funding from the Academies Programme at the University
of Hamburg. It presents some preliminary results from the ongoing researches.
I thank Christian Brockmann, Daniel Deckers, Alessandro Musino and Eva
Wöckener-Gade for their useful comments on a first draft of this paper.

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Naples: M. D’Auria.
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Geschichte der Philologie in Alexandria und Byzanz, Leipzig: Teubner.
Reitzenstein, Richard (1907), ‘Etymologika’, in Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Alter-
tumswissenschaft, VI/1, Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 807–817.
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Ronconi, Filippo (2012), ‘Quelle grammaire à Byzance? La circulation des textes grammaticaux
et son reflet dans les manuscrits’, in Giuseppe De Gregorio and Maria Galante (eds), La
produzione scritta tecnica e scientifica nel Medioevo: libro e documento tra scuole e
professioni, Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sul Medioevo, 63–110.
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Christian Brockmann
A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of
Learning: Some Glimpses into the Scribal
Practices Evident in the Aristotelean Codex
Vaticanus graecus 244
Abstract: In the Greek study manuscripts of the Aristotelean tradition, the goal
of combining and relating extensive core content and extensive para-content in
such a way that constant interaction becomes possible, has been achieved in an
exemplary manner. After introductory remarks on the complex and often multi-
layered formatting of this type of manuscripts, a closer look is taken at the
Organon codex Vat. gr. 244. The way in which Aristotle’s Analytica Posteriora
are explained in this manuscript in large marginal commentaries is illustrated
by the analysis of a sample passage.

1 Introduction
During Byzantine times and the Renaissance, the active study of and interaction
with Aristotelean texts and their extensive commentaries gave rise to an unusu-
ally rich manuscript production. Since these texts, particularly the Organon, but
other works from philosophy of nature, ethics and metaphysics as well, were
studied and taught in the context of the commentaries, from the Late Antique
ones to those contemporary, their users required new and specific kinds of
manuscripts. Teaching and learning was facilitated by ‘textbook’ manuscripts
aiming to combine the challenging core texts with those commentaries and
exegetic materials most central to their understanding. This required presenting
the source texts section by section, if not sentence by sentence, along with the
paratexts, thereby striving for the best possible arrangement to represent their
interrelatedness on the available space of each individual page. Considering the
often significant length of the Aristotelean treatises themselves, and by how
much the extent of the relevant commentaries exceeded this, the production of

Open Access. © 2021 Christian Brockmann, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-030
604 | Christian Brockmann

such combined study manuscripts must have required substantial planning and
considerable aptitude in book production.1
The most common and effective method of formatting the interrelated con-
tent was to arrange the accompanying texts around the centrally located main
text. The possibilities offered by this layout were exploited to the utmost in the
production of Aristotelean study manuscripts. To accommodate the ever in-
creasing space required by the paratexts, the room reserved for the core text was
reduced more and more, leaving the larger share of the page to the former.2 Yet
even this was frequently insufficient for the extensive commentary, thus one or
even several subsequent pages were set aside just for the commentary. In effect,
this was almost an inversion of the relation between core content and para-
content, even though their hierarchy was still indicated by the use of larger
script for the core text.
A relevant example of such a written artefact is codex Venice, Biblioteca
Nazionale Marciana, Marc. gr. Z. 227 (Diktyon: 69698), from the latter half of the
thirteenth century. It combines Aristotle’s Physics with Simplicius’ commentary
as well as with parts of that of John Philoponus (both end of fifth or sixth centu-
ry). The manuscript is for the most part an autograph of George of Cyprus
(c. 1241–1289), who later became patriarch Gregorius II of Constantinople.3 As a
further example, during the second third of the fourteenth century, the learned
scribe Malachias created a corpus of four manuscripts that covered all
Aristotelean treatises and the most central commentaries.4 For some of the

||
1 On general considerations concerning the page layout of Greek manuscripts, cf. Cavallo
2000; Maniaci 2000; Vianès 2000; Maniaci 2006; Bianconi 2011. Daniele Bianconi discovered
instructions on partitioning the page and distributing the text to create an Organon manuscript
on some folios of the manuscript Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 604.
2 A similar approach was used in creating bible manuscripts to accommodate extensive cate-
nae, as found e.g. in two splendid tenth-century manuscripts: Vatican City, Biblioteca Aposto-
lica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 749 (<digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.749.pt.1>) and the Psautier de Paris:
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Grec 139 (<gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10515446x.
image>). On the origin of the catena commentary, see the new thesis developed in Goeke-Mayr
and Makris 2020, who posit that this particular kind of manuscript first arose around 900 in
Constantinople rather than during the sixth century. For the opposing view, see Vianès 2000.
3 Harlfinger 1987, 277-278, 286. Digital images can be consulted via <www.internetculturale.it/it/
1317/venezia-biblioteca-nazionale-marciana-manoscritti>. See also the manuscript description by
Ciro Giacomelli for the CAGB project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Human-
ities: <cagb-db.bbaw.de/handschriften/handschrift.xql?id=69698> (accessed on 10 March 2021).
4 The scribe Malachias, referred to as ‘Anonymus Aristotelicus’ in earlier scholarship, was
identified by Brigitte Mondrain (Mondrain 2004; Koch 2017, 174–183; Martínez Manzano 2019).
The four codices comprising his corpus of Aristotelean manuscripts are: Jerusalem, Βιβλιοθήκη
 A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning | 605

treatises, Malachias faced the additional challenge of having to arrange two col-
umns (even three or more in one case) of commentary and annotational layers
around the core texts, which lead him to exhaust the spatial limits of the manu-
script page, as evident in the images from Paris, BnF, Coislin 166 (Figs 1 and 2).
These examples are from the Meteorology. In addition to the commentary, the
lower part of fol. 396v (Fig. 2) is enriched by a graphical representation of the
wind rose. Here, the commentary section encroaches on what was actually a
generously calculated area reserved for the core content and pushes it back, as
if there were a virtual strife between the two text types over dominating the
page. By contrast, the upper part of the page retains unclaimed areas for com-
mentary.5 The scribe evidently expected to have further commentary to add
from additional manuscripts.6
Besides this prevalent method of aggregating and structuring a large set of
content and para-content in a meaningful way, we occasionally see another,
opposed method that presents the main content alternating with the pertinent
additional material by sections.7 The interrelatedness of the layers is still

||
τοῦ Ὀρθοδόξου Καθολικοῦ Πατριαρχείου, 150 (Diktyon: 35387) (logic); Paris, Bibliothèque
nationale de France, Coislin 161 (Diktyon: 49300) (ethics, Politics, Metaphysics); Coislin 166
(Diktyon: 49305) (natural philosophy) and Grec 1921 (Diktyon: 51548) (biology, De anima, Parva
Naturalia) (cf. Harlfinger 1971, 55–57). The manuscripts held in the BnF can be consulted digi-
tally via the Gallica website, a digitized microfilm of the codex Panaghiou Taphou 150 is
provided on the website of the Library of Congress. On the Jerusalem manuscript, see the man-
uscript’s description by Paul Moraux, in Moraux et al. 1976, 385–387, also available via the
CAGB site <cagb-db.bbaw.de/handschriften/handschrift.xql?id=35387>, which also has a de-
scription of Par. gr. 1921 <cagb-db.bbaw.de/handschriften/handschrift.xql?id=51548>.
5 On several pages and even entire quires of the manuscript this area remains empty, cf.
Devreesse 1945, 148, Mondrain, 2000, 21 and the digital images via Gallica.
6 It is evident that the area left blank does not represent a missing part in the commentary by
Alexander of Aphrodisias, which was the main one used by Malachias in this section, for the
commentary in the middle marginal column continues the four lines from the top margin, thus
the uninterrupted commentary of Alexander’s on the Meteorology is split up between these
areas, and in fact reference marks and lemmata have been inserted to point to certain parts of
the core text. The reserved space underneath the lemma alpha that has been prominently put
in the four top lines of the upper margin suggests that Malachias was planning to add material
from another commentary not available to him at the time of composing the manuscript. On
the excerpts from Alexander’s commentary on the Meteorology see Hayduck’s edition 1899,
108. The top margin contains the text up to 108,12, followed by a line from the Meteorology as
lemma alpha (2, 6, 363b11–12). The middle part of the commentary continues from the very
same location, i.e. ed. Hayduck 1899, 108, line 12 after lemma beta. The inserted lemma beta
matches Aristotle, Meteorologika 2,6, 363b26.
7 For the use of this approach in catena manuscripts, cf. e.g. Vianès 2000, 80; Lorrain 2020.
606 | Christian Brockmann

indicated by changes in script size and use of reference marks as with the other
method. The two codices of the Organon Paris, Bnf, Grec 1972 (Diktyon: 51599),
and Paris, BnF, Coislin 157 (Diktyon: 49296) from the first half of the fourteenth
century are particularly noteworthy examples. Both are written in Metochites
style, with Coislin 157 in the hand of well-known Metochites-scribe Michael
Klostomalles himself (Fig. 3).8 Both core content and para-content of either
manuscript are derived from Vatican City, BAV, Vat. gr. 244 (Diktyon: 66875), on
which we will focus in this article.9 The latter method of arranging the texts in
these two more recent codices re-structures the layout of a manuscript that used
the former method: the Vatican manuscript presents the core content in win-
dows of varying size positioned centrally on the double page spread, whereas
the commentary or commentaries utilise the wide space left around these re-
served areas. Thus, the transition from the original manuscript of this branch of
transmission, i.e. the Vat. gr. 244, to the later manuscripts derived from it saw a
fundamental reformatting of the interrelated layers of text.

2 Commenting Aristotle in the Vat. gr. 244

A closer look at the Vatican manuscript is in order. This is the main manuscript
of the commentaries by Leo Magentinus on Aristotle’s logical treatises. As in
many other Organon manuscripts, Porphyry’s Isagoge has been prepended to
the Aristotelean works. This additional text is also framed by explanatory re-
marks of Magentinus in the margins, as well as having some added pages just
for further commentary. At the start of this commentary, on fol. 3r, the title line
not only names Magentinus, but identifies him as the metropolitan of Mytilene,
as is also the case in some of the other manuscripts transmitting his com-
mentaries.10 Beyond this pointer to his ecclesiastical position on Lesbos, we

||
8 On codex Coislin 157, see Prato 1994, 129, 131 and Table 23. The Metochites scribe was identi-
fied as Michael Klostomalles by Lamberz 2000, 158–159, see also Lamberz 2006, 44–47. Addi-
tionally, see the description of Par. gr. 1972 by Diether Roderich Reinsch on the CAGB site
<cagb-db.bbaw.de/handschriften/handschrift.xql?id=51599>.
9 Cf. Kotzabassi 1999, 53–57. The exact stemmatic relations are as follows: Par. gr. 1972 goes
back to Vat. gr. 244 via a lost intermediary manuscript, and Coisl. 157 is an apographon of Par.
gr. 1972.
10 Cf. the digital images available from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: <https://digi.vatlib.it/
view/MSS_Vat.gr.244>. Further cf. Mercati and Franchi de’ Cavalieri 1923, 313; Ebbesen 1981,
302–303; Kotzabassi 1999, 47–48; Brockmann 2019, 219–220; Valente forthcoming b and c.
 A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning | 607

have practically no information on the life of this Aristotelean commentator.

The manuscript can be dated to the twelfth century11 and is thus the oldest
manuscript containing these commentaries of Magentinus. It appears to not be
far removed from the time of Magentinus himself and might have been created
by him personally or by a member of his circle. This suggests that the lifetime of
Magentinus would have been in the twelfth century as well.12
While Magentinus’ commentaries on Categories, Sophistikoi Elenchoi, Topics
and Prior Analytics have seen scholarly research and in some cases even (par-
tial) editions over the last decades, the one on Posterior Analytics was mostly
neglected and is now the focus of a project in the Hamburg Centre for the Study
of Manuscript Cultures.13 Though the author of this particular commentary in
Vat. gr. 244 is not named, from Leo Magentinus’ name being associated with the
preceding commentaries in the manuscript it can be safely deduced that the
extensive paratexts surrounding the core text of Posterior Analytics are also
his.14 It is a striking feature of the Vaticanus that the exegetical paratexts of
Magentinus are divided into sections treatise by treatise and book by book, with
the sections sequentially numbered using Greek letters. These Greek numerals
are simultaneously used as reference marks, and the same numbers are added
in the area of the core text to indicate the passages to which the commentary
refers. As a later step, the scribe added further marginal notes to the remaining
outermost parts of the margins, mostly excerpting commentaries on Aristotle
from Late Antiquity and linking them to the existing content using a different
kind of reference marks.15
In the following, an attempt will be made to further determine the nature of
the commentary of Leo Magentinus on the Analytica Posteriora by analysing a
sample passage. Previous research has shown that on the one hand Leo follows
the exegetic tradition of John Philoponus and frequently uses the latter’s work
as a source, on the other hand, though, he frequently also adds material of his
own.16 However, the exact relations between dependencies or reuse versus
amendment, extension and change of focus in the commentary have yet to be
elucidated. The final step of later adding earlier commentary, including literal
excerpts from Philoponus on some pages, attests to Magentinus’ commentary

||
11 Hunger 1990/1991, 33–34 and Hunger 1991, 74–75.
12 See the forthcoming edition by Agiotis.
13 Cf. Ebbesen 1981; Bülow-Jacobsen and Ebbesen 1982; Kotzabassi 1999; González Calderón
2015, 361–376; Brockmann 2019; Valente forthcoming a, b and c.
14 Cf. Ebbesen 2015, 13–14; Brockmann 2019, 220; Valente forthcoming a, b and c.
15 Cf. Valente forthcoming b.
16 Cf. Brockmann 2019, 223–227, Valente forthcoming b.
608 | Christian Brockmann

being recognised as a distinct and independent work. The scribe would hardly
have gone to the trouble of adding Philoponus in what looks like an attempt to
further increase the usefulness of the main paratext, if he had considered Leo’s
commentary, to which he had assigned the main parts of the marginal areas,
not as a work in its own right, but as substantially identical to that of Philoponus.
Now we will turn to the sample passage, it is the commentary numbered μζʹ
(= 47) on fol. 311v (cf. Fig. 4), in reference to An. Post. I 4, 73a37–38. This is in the
context of Aristotle drawing the distinction between four cases of belonging in
itself, i.e. between four different kinds of how A can belong to B in itself, with
the selected passage referring to the second kind. To add further context, let us
contrast how Aristotle distinguishes between the first and second kind of be-
longing in itself.17 The first kind of these propositions are those where that, what
is being predicated (A) is part of the definition of what is underlying (B), e.g.
‘animal belongs to man in itself’ or ‘delineated by three straight lines belongs to
the triangle in itself’, for the terms ‘animal’ and ‘delineated by three straight
lines’ are part of the definition of ‘man’ and ‘triangle’, respectively. Looking at
this in a more contemporary way rather than the customary Aristotelean formu-
las: in the statement ‘all men are animals’, the predicate (A) ‘animal’ applies to
the subject (B) ‘man’ because the predicate occurs in the definition of the sub-
ject. The second kind of these propositions are those where what is underlying
(B) is present in the account of what is being predicated (A), i.e. where the sub-
ject is required to define the predicate. Aristotle uses the examples of ‘straight’
and ‘curved’ (A) applying to ‘lines’ (B), and ‘even’ and ‘odd’ (A) applying to
‘numbers’ (B). In this sense, the attributes ‘odd’ and ‘even’ belong to ‘numbers’
in their own right, since the term ‘number’ is required to explain what ‘odd’ and
‘even’ mean, e.g. ‘odd’ is a property of numbers not divisible by two.
The sample of the commentary by Magentinus from Vat. gr. 244 is an expla-
nation of the phrase used by Aristotle to introduce the second kind of propositions
in themselves. That phrase as transmitted presents a difficulty that Philoponus
and Magentinus observed in a similar way and tried to improve upon, and that
continues to be discussed in modern commentaries.

||
17 Detailed discussions of this part of the text and its numerous issues can be found in Bonitz
1866, 366–368; Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics, ed. Ross 1965, 518–521; Mignucci 1975,
59–68; Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, tr. Barnes 1993, 112–114; Detel 1993, II, 100, 107–109, 122–
126; Bronstein 2016, 43–50.
 A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning | 609

In the Vaticanus the Aristotelean sentence that is commented on here

reads:

καὶ ὅσοις τῶν ἐνυπαρχόντων αὐτοῖς, αὐτὰ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ ὑπάρχουσι τῷ τί ἐστι δηλοῦντι […]

and (I call in itself) all those of the attributes that inhere in them, for which they them-
selves (in turn) belong to the account that explains what it is.18

Let me now present a first edition of the corresponding commentary (cf. Fig. 4):19

μζʹ : – “καὶ ὅσοις τῶν ἐνυπαρχόντων αὐτοῖς·” τοῦτο τὸ δεύτερον σημαινόμενον τοῦ καθ’
αὑτό· τὸ δὲ αὐτοῖς ἀντὶ τοῦ τισὶν ὑποκειμένοις ληπτέον· ὅσοις γοῦν τῶν συμβεβηκότων
τῶν ἐνυπαρχόντων τισὶν ὑποκειμένοις αὐτὰ τὰ ὑποκείμενα ἐνυπάρχουσι καὶ λαμβάνονται
ἐν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ ὁρισμῷ τῶν κατηγορουμένων τῷ δηλοῦντι τί ἐστι τὸ κατηγορούμενον, καὶ
αὐτὰ καθ’ αὑτὰ λέγονται ὑπάρχειν τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ· οἷον ἡ σιμότης καθ’ αὑτὸ λέγεται
ὑπάρχειν τῇ ῥινί. λαμβάνεται γὰρ ἡ ῥὶν τὸ ὑποκείμενον εἰς τὸν ὁρισμὸν τοῦ κατηγορου-
μένου ἤγουν τῆς σιμότητος· σιμότης γάρ ἐστι κοίλανσις ἐν ῥινί. καὶ ἡ εὐθεῖα καθ’ αὑτὸ
ὑπάρχει τῇ γραμμῇ· εὐθεῖα γάρ ἐστι πάθος γραμμῆς, ἥτις ἐξ ἴσου τοῖς ἐφ’ ἑαυτῇ20 σημείοις
κεῖται. καὶ τὸ περιφερὲς καθ’ αὑτὸ κατηγορεῖται τῆς γραμμῆς· περιφέρεια γάρ ἐστι πάθος
γραμμῆς, ἀφ’ οὗ σημείου ἀρχομένης εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ πάλιν καταληγούσης· τὸ δὲ περιφερὲς
δηλοῖ τὸν κύκλον : –

Nr. 47: And all those of the attributes that inhere in them, for which: This is the second
meaning of ‘in itself’. The term ‘them’ is to be understood as ‘the respective underlyings’
(‘the subjects’). In any case, all those among the accidental attributes that belong to cer-
tain underlyings, to which these very underlyings (in turn) themselves adhere and for
which they are employed in the account and definition of the predicates, which explains
the ‘what-it-is’ of the predicate, they too are said to belong in themselves to the underlyings.

||
18 In its reading ὑπάρχουσι instead of ἐνυπάρχουσι, the Vat. gr. 244 follows codex Paris,
Coisl. 330, which is its model for the core text. A further point: Both in the core text and in the
lemma of the commentary, the Vatican manuscript has the reading ἐνυπαρχόντων, which is
that of the main tradition. Hermann Bonitz pointed out that this is a small mistake: according
to Aristotelean terminology that clearly distinguishes between ὑπάρχειν and ἐνυπάρχειν in
such contexts, ὑπαρχόντων should be read here rather than ἐνυπαρχόντων (Bonitz 1866, 367–
368). William David Ross concurred and chose ὑπαρχόντων in his edition, for his reasons see
Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics, ed. Ross 1965, 520–521.
19 The text has been cautiously updated to modern conventions as regards accents, punctua-
tion, and the use of iota subscript. In its constitution, the further manuscripts transmitting it
have been taken into account, i.e. Vatican City, BAV, Reg. gr. 107 (Diktyon: 66277) Paris, BnF,
gr. 1972, Coisl. 157, and Coisl. 167 (Diktyon: 49306), as have the excerpts added by a twelfth-
century scribe to Vatican City, BAV, Urb. gr. 35 (Diktyon: 66502). However, all of these offer
only very minor variants for the section under discussion.
20 In the version of part of this commentary added to Urb. gr. 35 by a later hand, the reading is
ἐφ’ ἑαυτῆς, cf. the digital images of the Vatican Library, fol. 198v.
610 | Christian Brockmann

As e.g. snub-nosedness is said to belong to the nose in its itself. For the nose is used as the
underlying in the definition of the predicate, i.e. of snub-nosedness. For snub-nosedness
is a hollowing of the nose. And straightness belongs to the line in itself. For straightness is
a quality of a line that falls levelly onto its points. Being curved is also used of the line in
itself. For curvedness is a quality of a line that ends on the same point again from which it
began. Being curved indicates the circle.

In a second pass over the commentary passage μζʹ, the scribe added three sup-
plements in a colloquial, less restrained script, one to the top right near the
spine, two to the outermost left margin (cf. Fig. 4). The first supplement adds to
the initial statement of this being the second meaning of ‘in itself’ by stating
that Aristotle lists a total of four kinds (τέσσαρας γὰρ τρόπους παραδίδωσι). In
the supplements to the left, the scribe first adds a second description of the
quality of a straight line to the first, traditional one, i.e. that of one whose inner
points are in a line with the outer points (ἢ ἧς τὰ μέσα τοῖς ἄκροις ἐπιπροσθεῖ).
In this case, he starts his addition by inserting the conjunction ἢ between the
core text and the right side of the commentary and then continuing it in the
outer part of the left margin (cf. Fig. 5, detail of Vat. gr. 244, fol. 311v).

Fig. 5: Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 244, fol. 311v (detail); 12th c. © Biblio-
teca Apostolica Vaticana.

The third supplement is added straight to the end of the μζʹ passage, commenc-
ing in the small margin between commentary and core text as well, with its first
word being directly adjacent to the final term τὸν κύκλον, and continuing once
more in the left margin. The short introductory particles and conjunctions are
thus also used as a kind of reference marks. The third supplement dwells on the
connection of the curved line to the circle: ‘However, the section of the circle
 A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning | 611

should be called bent rather than curved, as can be understood from that which
Aristotle says here. For the circle is an encompassing curve (“circumference”),
as the geometer also decreed’.21
In some of the other manuscripts transmitting this commentary of Magentinus,
the three supplements have been cleanly integrated into the exegetic passage.
This matches the stemmatic observations of Sten Ebbesen and Sofia Kotzabassi
on his commentaries on Sophistikoi Elenchoi and Topics.22 For the three four-
teenth-century manuscripts that Ebbesen and Kotzabassi have shown to be
linked to the Vat. gr. 244 via a lost intermediary manuscript, i.e. the Reg. gr. 107,
the Paris gr. 1972 and the Coisl. 157, all have the extended version of this exeget-
ic passage.23 It would thus already have been inserted by the scribe of the inter-
mediary manuscript. While the general formatting of content and para-content
of the Vat. gr. 244 is to be found also in the Reginensis, the two Paris manu-
scripts alter it completely. For these latter manuscripts alternate between the
layers of text and commentary in the central part of the page. Accordingly, they
have the discussed passage from the commentary as number two (βʹ) in smaller
script following the corresponding Aristotelean core text passage (cf. Fig. 3).
An additional manuscript from Paris, the Coislin 167, also from the four-
teenth century, is independent of the codices discussed above, including the
intermediary. Its scribe probably had access to Vat. gr. 244 itself, but was not
interested in creating a new Aristotelean study manuscript that intertwines core
text and para-content. On the contrary, he left out the core text and exclusively
copied the commentary of Leo Magentinus. Thus, he transformed the para-
content into a new core text, creating a manuscript that has the commentary as
its main (and only) content, however ignoring the supplements previously
discussed. As evidence that they were nevertheless present in his exemplar, and
that this exemplar probably was the Vat. gr. 244, we offer the following textual
peculiarity. Towards the end of the exegetic passage we discussed, this manu-
script has an additional ἤ (‘or’) on fol. 191r, a conjunction interfering with the

||
21 τὸ μέντοι τμῆμα τοῦ κύκλου καμπύλον μᾶλλον κληθείη ἢ περιφερὲς ὡς ἔστιν ἐντεῦθεν ἐξ
ὧν ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης λέγει γνῶναι· περιφέρεια γὰρ ὁ κύκλος ἐστὶν ὡς καὶ ὁ γεωμέτρης ὡρίσατο.
22 Cf. Ebbesen 1981, III, 71; Kotzabassi 1999, 57; and see note 9 above.
23 See the images on the Vatican Library and Gallica (BnF) sites: Vat. Reg. gr. 107, fol. 217r;
Par. gr. 1972, fol. 335r; Coislin 157, fol. 291r. The Vat. Reg. gr. 107 is based on the lost intermedi-
ary independently of the two Paris manuscripts and forms a different branch of the transmis-
sion. In the Analytica Priora and the Analytica Posteriora, the Reginensis only took over the
commentaries from Vat. gr. 244 (via the intermediary). In the core content it is a descendant
from (an)other manuscript(s). I am grateful to José Maksimczuk, who has established this re-
sult for the Analytica Priora.
612 | Christian Brockmann

sense and clearly intrusive in this place: ἢ καὶ τὸ περιφερὲς καθ’ αὑτὸ
κατηγορεῖται τῆς γραμμῆς. This clearly traces back to the palaeographical lay-
out of Vat. gr. 244, for it is the exact place where the second supplement was
introduced by the single ἤ (‘or’) that was added to the right of the commentary,
while the remaining supplemental text appeared to the left. The appearance of
the text (cf. Fig. 5) with the single word as a reference mark could easily be mis-
read in the way the scribe of codex Coisl. 167 did, particularly since he ignored
the supplements to the left, making the composition of the page even less com-
prehensible to him. Thus, he would have regarded the ἤ (‘or’) as part of the
original commentary.
To conclude this inquiry, let us compare this sample from Leo’s commen-
tary to its somewhat more extensive counterpart in Philoponus’ exegetical trea-
tise.24 First, it should be noted that all central content of it is already present in
Philoponus, however Magentinus added his own personal touch through cer-
tain changes.
Philoponus’ commentary on An. Post. I 4, 73a37 is structured thus:
– classification as pertaining to the second meaning of ‘in itself’
– concise general explanation of this meaning
– first example: snub-nosedness defined as concavity of the nose
– second example: the definition of ‘straight’ uses the term ‘line’
– definition of the straight line (as in Magentinus)
– additional definition of the straight line (as in the supplement to Magentinus)
and the suggestion that there are further possible definitions
– third example: accurate definition of ‘circular’ (more appropriate than
Magentinus’)
– contrasting with a section of the circle and the term ‘bent’ (as in the third
supplement to Magentinus)
– definition of ‘even’ and ‘odd’ using the term ‘number’
– detailed analysis of the textual difficulty in the Aristotelean text, including
a full quotation of the part in question
– another succinct description of the second meaning of ‘in itself’ to conclude
the argument.25

||
24 Ioannis Philoponi in Aristotelis Analytica Posteriora, ed. Wallies 1909, 61.
25 Ioannis Philoponi in Aristotelis Analytica Posteriora, ed.Wallies 1909, 61: Τοῦτο δεύτερον
τοῦ καθ’ αὑτὸ σημαινόμενον. φαμὲν γὰρ καθ’ αὑτὰ καὶ ὧν ἐν τοῖς ὁρισμοῖς τὰ ὑποκείμενα
αὐτοῖς παραλαμβάνονται· οἷον ὁριζόμενοι τὴν σιμότητα παραλαμβάνομεν ἐν τῷ ὁρισμῷ αὐτῆς
τὸ ὑποκείμενον, λέγω δὴ τὴν ῥῖνα, λέγοντες σιμότητα εἶναι κοιλότητα ἐν ῥινί. ὁμοίως καὶ τὸ
 A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning | 613

Whereas Leo’s commentary on the same passage is structured like this:

– classification as pertaining to the second meaning of ‘in itself’26
– immediately followed by a suggestion on how to resolve the textual difficul-
ty, albeit without further discussion
– somewhat laborious rephrasing of the Aristotelean thought
– first example: snub-nosedness defined as concavity of the nose, explained
in his own words
– definition of ‘straight’ as in the first of Philoponus’ examples on that item
(the latter’s second example on this is only added during the later supple-
mentation of the text)
– unsatisfactory definition of ‘circular’
– since the commentator seems to have realised the shortcomings of his defi-
nition, he adds the slightly clumsy remark that the term ‘curved’ refers to
the circle
– he later supplements the contrasting with the section of the circle and be-
tween the terms ‘bent’ and ‘curved’ from Philoponus, however adding his
own pointer that this could be understood from the text of Aristotle’s.

The processes of revision that are evident in this passage and characteristic of
the commentary in the manuscript Vat. gr. 244, can be summarised as follows:
Leo Magentinus changes the order of annotation. He commences with the

||
εὐθὺ ὁριζόμενοι παραλαμβάνομεν τὴν γραμμὴν εὐθὺ λέγοντες εἶναι πάθος γραμμῆς ἥτις ἐξ ἴσου
τοῖς ἐφ’ ἑαυτῆς σημείοις κεῖται, ἢ ἧς τὰ μέσα τοῖς ἄκροις ἐπιπροσθεῖ, ἢ ὅπως ἄλλως ὁρίζεται.
ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ περιφερὲς ἤτοι περιφέρειάν φαμεν εἶναι πάθος γραμμῆς πρὸς ἣν ἀφ’ ἑνὸς
σημείου τῶν ἐντὸς αὐτῆς κειμένων πᾶσαι αἱ προσπίπτουσαι εὐθεῖαι ἴσαι ἀλλήλαις εἰσί. καὶ
δῆλον ὅτι οὐ τὸ τμῆμα τοῦ κύκλου αὐτὸ καλεῖται περιφέρεια, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον καμπύλον κληθείη
κυρίως ἐκεῖνο ἢ περιφέρεια. περιφέρεια δὲ ὁ κύκλος, ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ γεωμέτρης ὡρίσατο.
ὡσαύτως καὶ ἄρτιόν φαμεν ἀριθμὸν τὸν διαιρούμενον δίχα καὶ περιττὸν ἀριθμὸν τὸν μὴ
διαιρούμενον δίχα· καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ὁμοίων ὡσαύτως. τὸ μὲν οὖν δεύτερον σημαινόμενον τοῦ καθ’
αὑτὸ τοῦτο. ἔχει δέ τινα ἀσάφειαν ἡ λέξις, ἣν καταστήσομεν τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον. φησὶ γὰρ καὶ
ὅσοις τῶν ἐνυπαρχόντων αὐτοῖς αὐτὰ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ ἐνυπάρχουσι τῷ τί ἐστι δηλοῦντι. τὴν δὲ
ἀσάφειαν ἐνεποίησε τὸ αὐτοῖς· διὸ ἀντὶ τούτου τὸ ‘τισί’ παραλάβωμεν, καὶ σαφὴς γίνεται ὁ
λόγος ἔχων οὕτως. καὶ ὅσοις τῶν κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ἔν τισιν ὑπαρχόντων αὐτὰ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ
ἐνυπάρχουσι τῷ τί ἐστι δηλοῦντι, τουτέστιν αὐτὰ τὰ ὑποκείμενα, οἷς ὑπάρχουσι τὰ
συμβεβηκότα, ἐν τῷ λόγῳ παραλαμβάνονται τῶν συμβεβηκότων τῷ δηλοῦντι τὸ τί ἐστι,
τουτέστι τὸ εἶναι ἐν τοῖς ὁρισμοῖς αὐτῶν, ὡς εἶναι τὸ ὅλον τοιοῦτον· ταῦτα, φησί, λέγω καθ’
αὑτὰ τῶν ἐν ἄλλοις τὸ εἶναι ἐχόντων ὅσων ἐν τοῖς ὁρισμοῖς τὰ ὑποκείμενα αὐτοῖς
παραλαμβάνεται. Since the main points of Philoponus’ commentary have been highlighted in
the structural analysis, I do not include a translation here (but see the rendering by Richard
McKirahan: Philoponus, On Aristotle, Posterior analytics, tr. McKirahan 2008, 67).
26 With a slight deviation from Philoponus by one transposition and the addition of an article.
614 | Christian Brockmann

textual difficulty, however instead of discussing it as did Philoponus, he just

posits that the term ‘them’ is to be understood as ‘the respective underlyings’,
yet with this he extends his gloss in a manner particular to him. For, while
Philoponus recommends using the expression ‘certain things’ in place of ‘them’,
Magentinus is more precise in stating that what is meant in each case is ‘the
respective underlyings’. His subsequent paraphrasis of the second meaning of
‘in itself’ may have been influenced by the concluding part of Philoponus’
commentary. With good reason, he introduces the term for (logical) predicates (τὰ
κατηγορούμενα), instead of Philoponus’ accidental attributes (τὰ συμβεβηκότα),
even if his juxtaposition of two participles is a bit clumsy.27 The example using
the term nose and the attribute snub-nosedness is clearly explained in what
seem to be partially his own words. The next example of the straight line has
been abridged by omitting Philoponus’ second example and the indication of
further existing definitions. While Magentinus limits himself to the first of these
in his commentary, the scribe, who might be Magentinus himself or a scholar of
his circle, later supplements the second in the margin. When explaining
περιφερές (circular), Magentinus uses an explanation (not found in Philoponus
on this passage) that is less accurate, as it would also cover any non-circular
line that returns to its starting point.28 However, recognising the shortcomings
of this explanation, the scribe tries to restrict it to the case in point by adding
that it is in reference to the circle. In his later addition of Philoponus’ passage
on a section of the circle and the differences between ‘bent’ and ‘curved’, the
scribe once more deviates from the earlier comment by restructuring and
shortening it as well as by adding to it. He even refers back to Aristotle himself
in his addition, claiming that the explanation matches the Aristotelean wording.
Succinctly: in quoting Philoponus and excerpting from his commentary while
adding his own variations, he invokes Aristotle as his authority.
Magentinus uses a similar process in other parts of his commentaries. To
create an annotated Aristotelean study manuscript perfectly adapted to his own

||
27 I.e. he writes τῶν συμβεβηκότων τῶν ἐνυπαρχόντων τισὶν ὑποκειμένοις (instead of
Philoponus’ τῶν κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ἔν τισιν ὑπαρχόντων, Ioannis Philoponi in Aristotelis Analy-
tica Posteriora, ed. Wallies 1909, 61, ll. 22–23).
28 Philoponus’ commentary has this description of the circle in a later passage entirely unre-
lated to this context (Ioannis Philoponi in Aristotelis Analytica Posteriora, ed. Wallies 1909,
395): ὡς γὰρ ὁ κύκλος ἀφ’ οὗ σημείου ἄρχεται, εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ καταλήγει […] The somewhat daring
particple construction of Magentinus’ (περιφέρεια γάρ ἐστι πάθος γραμμῆς, ἀφ’ οὗ σημείου
ἀρχομένης εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ πάλιν καταληγούσης) is probably based on a formula such as the one we
find here in Philoponus, and should be taken as a mere transposition of the statement into a
genitive expression with omission of the necessary adaptation.
 A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning | 615

scholarly aims, he builds on the commentators from Late Antiquity and follows
the structure of their works, however he mostly does not reproduce their expla-
nations literally, rather using techniques of excerpting, compiling, adding,
shortening and replacing to result in new and autonomous exegetic corpora. We
would not do justice to his extensive transformative accomplishment that is
evident in the end result, the comprehensive Organon manuscript Vat. gr. 244
with its intricate interdependencies of core text and para-content, if we were to
apply modern criteria of plagiarism. It would be more useful and appropriate to
further examine Magentinus’ techniques of transforming and reworking in
terms of the scholarly manuscript work of his time. While this brief inquiry
could only make use of a sample passage for its analysis, it would be worthwhile
to study the extensive labour of Magentinus’ that is evident in this manuscript at a
larger scale and adduce further examples for its more precise reconstruction.

Acknowledgements
This contribution was created within Research Field D ‘Formatting Contents’,
project 07: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Founda-
tion) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written
Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, pro-
ject no. 390893796. The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre
for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg. I owe many
thanks to Daniel Deckers, Caroline Macé, José Maksimczuk and Stefano Valente.

Abbreviations
CAG Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca.
CAGB Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina.

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Fig. 1: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Coislin 166, fol. 363r; written by Malachias,
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620 | Christian Brockmann

Fig. 2: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Coislin 166, fol. 396v; written by Malachias,
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 A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning | 621

Fig. 3: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Coislin 157, fol. 291r; written by Michael
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622 | Christian Brockmann

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Heidi Buck-Albulet
From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked
Poetry and the Fushimono
Abstract: This paper examines how titles in renga (‘linked verse’) poetry, the so-
called fushimono, interact with the texts they precede, or with parts of them,
particularly the first verse or hokku. Renga is poetry jointly created by a group.
Of the rules necessary for this, fushimono originally represented a significant
part. While in the course of history the scope of the fushimono became more and
more limited, it remained as an indispensable paratext. This paper also shows
how historical changes to the renga rules and to the function of the fushimono
were inextricably linked to the structure and layout of the manuscripts that
emerged from the renga sessions. Finally, the paper will introduce the features
of fushimono as a paratext in written artefacts, both in manuscripts and prints.

1 Introduction
In classical renga 連歌 poetry, there is a peculiar kind of paratext1 that cannot
easily be understood by its readers: fushimono 賦物 titles. Their peculiarity lies
in the fact that they are also a type of directive. Fushimono tend to be over-
looked, as research is usually more concerned with poetological and aesthetic
issues of the genre, i.e. the text. However, renga also includes a performative
aspect (the practice of composing) and a material aspect as well (the written
artefacts that emerge from this practice), and once the focus is shifted there,
fushimono, like other paratexts, can no longer be ignored.
The meaning of fushimono is only revealed to those who take the trouble to
understand its history.2 Starting off as a kind of directive, it became a mere con-
vention in the fifteenth century and has remained so ever since. The following
example from 2018 indicates how this latter form works:3

||
1 A broader term called ‘paracontent’ has been developed at CSMC, which includes non-verbal
elements. See Ciotti et al. 2018. Since I am mainly concerned with text elements in this paper, I
will continue to use the term ‘paratext’.
2 On the history of fushimono in Western languages, see Keene 1977; Horton 1993; Naumann
1967 among others.
3 The first sheet recto and verso of the respective manuscript are depicted in Fig. 2.

Open Access. © 2021 Heidi Buck-Albulet, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-031
624 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

賦御何連歌
三十年を鼓に舞ふや露の庭 裕雄

Fusu on nani renga (Renga related to ‘honourable’)4

Misotose o Thirty years
tsuzumi ni mau ya dancing to the drum
tsuyu no niwa in the garden of dew Hiroo

A peculiar kind of game is at work here: in the example above, the title could be
read in such a way that it requires the hokku 発句 (‘first verse’) to include a word
that can be combined with on 御, meaning ‘honourable’ (the solution in this
case is niwa 庭, yielding on niwa, or ‘honourable garden’). The task (i.e. to find a
corresponding part) is indicated by the character fu 賦. However, as we shall
see, the hokku was actually written before the title, so the task works the other
way round: on was chosen because of the word niwa in the hokku.
A second example, dated to 1688 (see Fig. 1), shows that the principle was
the same in pre-modern renga:

賦何人連歌
かへるさの山づとにせむ木葉かな 信貞

Fusu nani hito renga (Renga related to [the word] ‘person’)5

Kaerusa no At the time of returning
yamazuto ni semu the trees’ autumn leaves
ko no ha kana as a souvenir from the mountains Nobusada

The hokku contains the word yama. When nani (‘what’) is replaced by yama in
this renga’s fushimono title, the result is the compound yamabito (lit. ‘mountain
man’, i.e. ‘mountain dweller’).
Fushimono titles figure prominently in renga manuscripts as they are writ-
ten in a bigger font size on the right-hand side of the text on the first sheet recto.
Titles of this kind emerged in pre-modern Japan in the course of the formation
of the genre itself and are still employed in contemporary poetic practice.

||
4 The renga was composed in Gujō Hachiman (Gifu Prefecture). The author of the hokku is
Tsurusaki Hiroo 鶴崎裕雄, who also acted as the renga master (sōshō 宗匠). The above transla-
tion of the title (lit. ‘distribute “honourable” something renga’) was inspired by the way Earl
Miner (1979) translated renga titles.
5 Yamaguchi Prefectural Library (no. 1085). A transcription of it can be found in Ozaki 2005,
81–83.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 625

Fig. 1: Renga kaishi originally owned by the Abe family in Yamaguchi (Abe ke renga kaishi 安倍
家連歌懐紙) and dated to 1688. Now in the possession of Yamaguchi Prefectural Archives
(Yamaguchi ken Monjokan 山口県文書館). The name of the document is Fusu nani hito renga
kaishi 賦何人連歌懐紙 (‘Distribute something with person renga’ kaishi). Courtesy of the
Yamaguchi Prefectural Archives. Photo: H. Buck-Albulet, 2018.

After a brief introduction to the genre of renga, I aim to show where the roots of
fushimono lie, how its function changed over time and how it ‘works’ in written
artefacts. Tracing the development of fushimono titles also sheds light on the
development of renga itself.

2 What is renga?
Renga 連歌 (‘linked verse’) is Japanese poetry jointly composed by a group of
authors. The group is guided by a master (sōshō 宗匠), an official record of the
poem is made by a scribe (shuhitsu 執筆), and the participants (renjū 連衆) add
verses to the poem either one after the other or competitively. In pre-modern
renga, the scribe was the only one to take any notes. The manuscripts that
emerged from the gatherings are called renga kaishi 連歌懐紙 (literally, ‘renga
chest paper’).6
A more recent form of classical renga is still being practised in contempo-
rary Japan,7 but kaishi and a brush are not usually used any more to record
verses during a renga session; a newly invented form sheet developed by Mitsuta

||
6 ‘Chest’ refers to the chest part of the author’s clothing where such papers may have been
kept.
7 Classical renga had nearly died out at by the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was
revived again in the 1980s. See Buck-Albulet 2020 for details.
626 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

Kazunobu 光田和伸 is used by all the participants instead (including the sōshō
and scribe) and the brush has been replaced by a pencil and biro. On formal
occasions, however, especially in religious votive renga,8 a calligrapher may be
commissioned with producing a clean copy of the poem on kaishi in the tradi-
tional format and layout.
Preliminary forms of renga already existed in the Heian period (794–1185).
In the course of its long history, the genre has naturally gone through various
changes and it has also developed many variants. The length of the poems can
vary from thirty-six or forty-four verses to a hundred, a thousand or even ten
thousand, but a hundred verses – or hyakuin 百韻 (literally, ‘a hundred
rhymes’)9 – became the pre-modern standard and forty-four verses, or yoyoshi
世吉, the modern norm.10 One important feature of the genre – since the late
fourteenth century, at least – is that a host of poetic rules apply that define
which semantic category or motif can be used in which part of the poem. More-
over, in the course of time, the process of composing verses in a group became
highly ritualised and was consequently codified in rulebooks; the scribe in par-
ticular had to follow detailed instructions (shuhitsu sahō 執筆作法) on how to
handle the paper, brush and inkstone, for instance, and on the way he had to
write fushimono titles.11 The vast majority of these procedural rules have now
been abandoned in contemporary renga. What has remained, though, is the
practice of allocating the traditional roles of the master, scribe and other mem-
bers of the group.
The parameters of the genre that have remained constant are particularly
noteworthy: apart from the metre, the internal structure of a renga text and its
representation in kaishi have also remained stable after reaching a certain point
in the development of renga (see below), even since the invention of new media
in the twentieth century. The structure of renga developed in close connection
with the layout of the traditional kaishi and now consists of eight verses on the
first sheet recto and last sheet verso and fourteen on all the other pages. This

||
8 In votive renga, sessions are conducted to honour a deity. The composing session is followed
by a dedication ceremony at which the renga poem is recited to the deities and a calligraphic
copy of the text is presented to the respective shrine or temple.
9 The term hyakuin indicates the influence of Chinese poetry as Chinese verses had rhymes.
10 During my research trip in 2018, I also witnessed the practice of composing twelve and
twenty-two verses.
11 Regarding the procedure (shidai 次第) of writing fushimono titles, see Carter 1987, 12; Horton
1993, 449; Hiroki (ed.) 2010, 18 and Iwashita 2010.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 627

allows for fixed caesuras in the manuscript such as the end of a page, which
adds to the text’s organisation.12

3 The formal development of renga

Two ‘starting points’ are essential for the development of renga: Chinese linked
verse (lianju 聯句, Jap. rengu)13 and Japanese waka 和歌 poetry.
In China, forms of linked poetry were practised from the Six Dynasties (222–
589) to the Tang period (617–907) in particular. They also became known in
Japan, and Japanese poets began to practise lianju themselves as early as the
Heian period. We can already find the Chinese term fu 賦 in lianju, employed in
a way that contributed significantly to how the term fushimono was later used in
renga. Only a few of all the meanings the Chinese term and its character can
represent will be mentioned here. First of all, it is the name of a genre of Chinese
‘prose-poems’ and it is a form of literary expression at the same time.14 Fu 賦
may also be translated as ‘to compose a poem’.15 As for Chinese linked poetry,
David Pollack’s mention of a fu technique is noteworthy; he describes this as a
‘“spectacular agglomeration” of things in neat categories’.16 As will be elaborated
shortly, Japanese linked poetry is also about arranging things in categories,
although it is precisely the ‘agglomeration’ that should be avoided.17
In Chinese linked poetry, there was a practice to allot rhymes to the poets
and distribute them within a poem. Topics came to be allotted as well, and this

||
12 See Buck-Albulet 2020 for details.
13 Besides discussing lianju 聯句, Pollack (1976, 19) also mentions a shorter Chinese form of
linked poetry called lianju 連句. In Japan, there were also mixed forms with alternating Chinese
and Japanese verses (wakan rengu 和漢聯句). Incidentally, rengu should not be confused with
renku 連句, the term for haikai no renga (a variant of renga that developed from the sixteenth
century onwards). See Ogata 2008, 992.
14 One of the ‘six styles’ of classical Chinese poetry mentioned in the ‘Great Preface’ Da xu
大序 of the Shijing 詩経 (Book of Odes). On the Chinese fu see Ho 1986, among others. Fu is also
mentioned in the Chinese preface (manajo 真名序) of the Kokin wakashū 古今和歌集 (Collection
from Ancient and Modern Times, 905) and is rendered as kazoe uta 数え歌 in the Japanese
preface (kanajo 仮名序) and subsequently as one of the six waka styles as well. SNKBT 5, 7–8
and 339. Kazoe uta is translated as ‘description’ by Rodd and Henkenius 1996, 38.
15 Tanaka 1969, 431. The sinologist Okamura Shigeru says its basic meaning is ‘to spread’ (see
Nihon hyakka daijiten, lemma fu, Japan Knowledge).
16 Pollack 1976, viii.
17 Pollack 1976, viii.
628 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

was indicated in the titles, such as fu te x (賦得 x, ‘writing a poem on the subject
of x’) or fu x te y (賦 x 得 y, ‘writing a poem on the general subject of x, I got the
sub-topic y’),18 patterns that were adopted in Japanese anthologies of Chinese
poetry.19 In this case, fu either means ‘to compose’ or ‘to allot a topic for a po-
em’.20
One fundamental difference between Chinese and Japanese linked poetry is
that the latter does not make any use of rhyme words (Jap. inji 韻字, Chin. yunzi)
as a structural category. There is much to suggest that fushimono or ‘the distri-
bution of names for things’ came to be introduced instead. Medieval Japanese
poets were well aware of these Chinese roots. Some Japanese poetic treatises
compared Japanese fushimono to the ‘distribution of topics’ (Jap. dai 題, Chin. ti)
in Chinese poetry, while others compared it to rhyme (Jap. in 韻, Chin. yun) in
Chinese lianju.21
However, since renga developed in a different way than Chinese linked
verse, the origin of the fushimono cannot be explained solely by the model of the
lianju. Rather, the poetic rhetoric of the waka needs to be taken into account as
well.
Waka, or ‘Japanese song’ consists of thirty-one syllables or ‘morae’ ar-
ranged in five units (or ku) of 5-7-5-7-7 morae. The first 5-7-5 form the upper part,
the ‘long verse’ (chōku 長句), while the 7-7 form the ‘short verse’ (tanku 短句).
Renga may also have found a model in the fact that waka were sometimes com-
bined to form longer chains of verses, the standard length of which became a
hundred poems (hyakushu uta 百首歌).22 A specific method of poetry composi-
tion from which renga could draw was ‘topic poetry’, the composing of verses
according to previously set topics, which was practiced in China as well as in
Japan. Finally, waka opened up the possibility of splitting a poem into two sep-
arate halves if a semantic and grammatical caesura is made after the ‘long
verse’. A very simplified overview of the formal development of renga consists of
five steps:
1 When some of the waka split up into two parts, the earliest form of ‘linked
verse’, the short renga’ or tanrenga 短連歌 (or as it was called by that time,
the ikku renga 一句連歌) emerged in the eleventh and twelfth century. It

||
18 Pollack 1976, 37–38.
19 Tanaka 1969, 431–433.
20 Pollack 1976, 47.
21 Tanaka 1960, 31; Tanaka 1969, 433; Ichiji 1967, 24; Naumann 1967, 33–36.
22 A poem by Sone no Yoshitada 曽禰好忠 dated to 960 is regarded as the earliest example.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 629

consisted of a ‘long verse’ and a ‘short verse’, with two people composing
each part.
2 By repeating this pattern, the length of the renga gradually expanded to
form longer ‘chains’ of verses (kusari renga 鎖連歌). This probably took
place around the Insei period (1086–1221).
3 Towards the end of the Insei period, longer chains of verses formed ‘long
renga’ (chō renga 長連歌) with a fixed number of verses (teisū renga 定数連歌).
4 A hundred verses (hyakuin) eventually became the most representative form
(in the latter half of the Kamakura period, 1185–1333). A hyakuin was first
mentioned in 1200.23
5 The standardising of the length was accompanied by the emergence of poetic
rules and an internal text structure (‘parts of speech’, so to speak), which was
also reflected in the layout of the written artefacts, as will be explained below.

Early renga, while adopting its metre from waka poetry, was practised as a kind
of counterpart to it, especially to the ‘elegant’ (ga 雅) and aristocratic nature of
court poetry: it was conducted as a verse-capping game, requiring skills from its
participants such as the ability to make puns and play with words.
There are at least two parameters that are essential for every game. First of
all, as Johan Huizinga noted, ‘all play has its rules’,24 and second, it is necessary
for every play or game to maintain the initial suspense among the participants.
Moreover, as renga is a game that results in a text being produced, this notion
relates not only to the performative level, but to the text level as well (we might
speak of ‘text coherence’) and even to the material level of the written artefact.
The fact that renga started as a competitive game was decisive for the suc-
cess of the genre, and the early fushimono was absolutely necessary at this
formative stage because it provided a challenge whose fulfilment could be
judged.25

||
23 It is mentioned in the Meigetsuki 明月記 (‘Record of the Clear Moon’), a diary kept by
Fujiwara Teika 藤原定家 (1162–1241). However, the distribution of verses in the kaishi was not
formalised at that point, see Hiroki 2015, 96.
24 Huizinga 1998, 11.
25 Ishida 1959, 30–38.
630 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

4 Renga and the fushimono

The short renga (tanrenga 短連歌) can be seen as an initial stage of the genre.26
It had a dialogic structure and depended on successfully creating a link be-
tween two parts, A and B. The point of contact consisted of two associated ob-
jects or concepts, often linked by way of a pun.27 This is the technique of mono
no na 物の名 (‘names of things’) adopted from waka poetry. The tanrenga can
be described as a short dialogue with only two contributions that are mutually
related to each other and it demands esprit and quick-wittedness from the poets.
As Hiroki Kazuhito has put it, it is basically a riddle-answer pattern.28 However,
as soon as a third link is added, this changes the structure of the poem funda-
mentally.29 This is where fushimono literally came into play because other
means to maintain suspense or text coherence became necessary.30
Fushimono may be described as ‘tasks to be fulfilled’ or ‘thematic direc-
tives’.31 These have changed fundamentally in the course of time, and in two
ways: on one hand, in terms of how they worked as a structural principle,
i.e. whether they affected the entire text/performance or only part of it, and on
the other, in terms of the types of directives used.

4.1 Types of fushimono

Whilst different types of fushimono have been used at the same time for decades
and even centuries, a certain historical development can still be seen. The first
type of fushimono is mono no na (‘names of things’). With this directive, the
renga went back to a principle that was already at work in waka poetry and in
short renga as the ‘hidden topic’ (kakushidai 隠題) aka mono no na, a form of the

||
26 Tanaka Yutaka (1960, 2) argued that the tanrenga is not just a preliminary form of renga,
but a genre all of its own – a work that is self-contained.
27 Keene 1977, 248; Okuda 2017, 22.
28 Hiroki 2015, 30. Regarding the affinity between a riddle, renga and fushimono, see Schneider
1974 and 1989.
29 The performance changes, too, as there might be a third person, and a new place for the
composing process may come into play. See Kishida 2015, 2–20.
30 The puns in short renga poems have been described by Okuda as an ‘original form’ of
fushimono (‘fushimono no gensho keitai’ 賦物の原初形態), see Okuda 2017, 22; Carter 1987, 12.
31 Konishi 1991, 275.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 631

aforementioned topic poetry. The task here is to ‘hide’ topics in semantically

unrelated homonyms32 or to allude to them in the verses.
Topics of this type could be place names from the classical novel Genji
monogatari 源氏物語 (‘The Tale of Genji’), names of plants and animals or the
names of poets of famous poetry collections, for example. Many of them were
contrastive pairs; one had to refer to black and white alternately in Fusu kuro
shiro 賦黒白, for example (the term itself means ‘distribute black and white’).33
The acrostic type of fushimono was another early form. Linked poetry com-
posed this way was called kanmuriji renga 冠字連歌 or ‘crown- [or cap-] charac-
ter renga’. Each verse had to begin with a certain character. As the writing
alignment in a renga manuscript is always vertical, the first syllables or charac-
ters would be on the top, or ‘crown’ (or cap).
Two special forms of the acrostic type may be mentioned: first, the iroha
renga (an ‘alphabet renga’, so to speak, which flourished around the twelfth and
thirteenth century34), the verses of which began with the characters of the old
‘alphabet’-like iroha poem. The task or fushimono in this case would be Fu(su)35
iroha 賦伊呂波, or ‘Distribute i-ro-ha characters’. A hundred-verse renga follow-
ing this principle would be a Fu iroha hyakuin. The Myōgō renga 名号連歌 was a
second ‘crown-character renga’, the verses of which started with the syllables of
the invocation Namu Amida Butsu 南無阿弥陀仏 (‘I take refuge in Amida Bud-
dha’). It is interesting to note that ‘crown-character renga’ poems are related to
the development of ‘fixed-number renga’ poems mentioned above. In manu-
scripts, the ‘crown-characters’ are often indicated by paratexts.36
The third type is what could be called ‘the nani 何 (‘what’) type of fushimono’.
The nani type can also be divided into two sub-types: a ‘simple’ (tanshiki 単式)
and a ‘double’ or ‘combined’ (fukushiki 複式) fushimono. Analysing data from
Fujiwara Teika’s diary Meigetsuki,37 Ishida sets the watershed that separates the
‘nani’ type from the earlier forms around the Jōkyū 承久 era (1219–1222). After

||
32 The technique is employed, for instance, in Book 10 of the Kokin wakashū. The bird’s name
hototogisu (‘lesser cuckoo’), for instance, appears in the words hodo ほど (‘about’) and toki
suginure ya 時すぎぬれや (‘is it because the time has passed?’). SNKBT 5, 140, Tanaka 1969,
435–436.
33 Ishida 1959, 27; Okuda 1979, 33, n. 2.
34 Hiroki (ed.) 2010, 48.
35 The character 賦 may be read as fu or fusu (verbalised).
36 A beautiful example of a kaishi recording a ‘crown-character renga’ dating to 1548 is de-
picted in Tenri Daigaku fuzoku Tenri Daigaku toshokan (ed.) 2020, 83–102.
37 Entries on fushimono cover the years from 1200 to 1235. See Ishida 1959, 27–28 and n. 23
above.
632 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

this date, all the entries relate to the nani type. One of the reasons for moving to
this rule might have been that the task is easier to achieve and gives one more
artistic freedom, so the poetic results lead to greater thematic variety.38 As an
example of a ‘simple’ one, if the fushimono is nani yama 何山, or ‘what [kind of]
mountain’ (or ‘something with “mountain”’), then the task in the renga is to use
binary words, the second part of which is ‘mountain’. If the fushimono is yama
nani 山何, then ‘mountain’ is the first part of the compound and the second part
has to be inserted. The first case is called uwabushi 上賦 (‘the fushi above’),
while the second case is called shitabushi 下賦 (‘the fushi below’).
The second sub-type is a combination of two simple nani compounds, like
nani hito kawa nani 何人河何 (‘what-person-river-what’) demanding from the
poet that all long verses should have a compound term with hito (person) as its
second part and all the short verses should have a compound term with kawa
(river) as its first part. One might expect the ‘simple’ form to precede the double
one, but in fact the opposite was true: the double form was the one that came
first, while the ‘simple’ one only started to flourish in the second half of the
thirteenth century. As it turns out, the nani-type fushimono mentioned in
Meigetsuki are all of the ‘double’ type.
The simple fushimono has been in use ever since then. Its emergence and
persistence should be seen in connection with another historical development:
while the double fushimono with its alternating distribution was more an ex-
pression of renga as a game and was probably also inspired by Chinese models,
the simple fushimono went hand in hand with increasing abstraction and, in
parallel, the shift of weight in renga from ‘game’ to ‘art’, a process that included
the development of poetic theory, the ritualisation of the performance, and acts
of ‘nobilitation’ of the genre like its inclusion in poetry anthologies39 and later
the editions of anthologies solely devoted to renga (see below). Renga also be-
came regarded as worthy of being conducted as a votive gift (hōraku renga 法楽
連歌 or hōnō renga 奉納連歌) to the deities.40 On a material level, it can be
observed that some renga poems were written on lavishly decorated kaishi pa-
per, which was precious, and that kaishi sheets were occasionally turned into
scrolls, the book format with the highest prestige of all. Not only were the votive

||
38 Ishida 1959, 29–30. As Ishida states, the sudden change to the nani type may also be related
to a change in the practice and to the fact that this change occurred after ex-emperor Gotoba
had been exiled to Oki island.
39 The Shūi wakashū 拾遺和歌集 (Collection of Gleanings, 1005) was the first anthology to
include short renga.
40 See Buck-Albulet 2020.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 633

poems dedicated to the deities through the acts of composing and reciting, but
their material carriers (i.e. the manuscripts) were donated to the gods as well.
There is a fourth group of miscellaneous types of fushimono as well. I shall
mention two of these here:
– sanji chūryaku 三字中略 (‘take the middle character of three characters
out’). This refers to a task that requires the poet to use a three-syllable (or
kana-character) word that still makes sense when the middle syllable has
been taken out.41 For example, if you took out the middle character from
katsura かつら (cassia tree), the result would be kara から (‘China’). I call
this the ‘ryaku’ or ‘shortening’ principle.
– niji hen’on 二字反音 (‘two characters, reverse sound’), on the other hand,
requires words consisting of two kana characters that have another mean-
ing if read backwards, such as hana はな (‘flower’) and naha (= nawa) なは
(‘rope’).42 I call this the ‘reverse’ principle. Both types are still in use today.43

Collections of fushimono began to be compiled in the Kamakura period (1185–

1333),44 which not only indicates the importance of the technique, but that a
process of canonisation was also taking place. One of the medieval collections is
still used by contemporary sōshō, as they choose the fushimono from it:45 the
Fushimonohen 賦物篇 (A Compilation of Fushimono) by Sanjōnishi Sanetaka 三
条西実隆 (1455–1537) and revised and enlarged by Botanka Shōhaku 牡丹花肖
柏 (1443–1527).

4.2 Fushimono as a structural principle

The development of the fushimono’s effect on a renga poem can be divided into
four steps. First of all, in the Kamakura period (1185–1333), it was a principle
that affected each link of the poem. In a second step, the scope of the rule was
reduced, for example to the first eight verses (= the recto of the first sheet) or the
first three. The third step was reducing the scope to just the hokku, and finally,
the fourth step was the reversal of the principle: the fushimono was only provided

||
41 Ogata 2008, 344; Hiroki (ed.) 2010, 122.
42 Hiroki (ed.) 2010, 228.
43 See Susa Jinja Renga no kai (ed.) 1997, 18 and 44, for example.
44 The oldest extant collection is the Nosakabon Fushimono shū 野坂本賦物集 (Fushimono
Collection, manuscript owned by the Nosaka family, fourteenth century); see Ogata 2008, 660.
45 Yukuhashi-shi bunka isan kasseika jikkō iinkai (ed.), 2014, 21. A printed edition was pub-
lished by Yamada Yoshio and Hoshika Sōichi in 1936, 11–20.
634 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

once the hokku had been composed, just like in a riddle where the answer is
given first and the question leading to it then has to be found. In 1468, the prac-
tice of only picking the fushimono once the hokku was composed was criticised
by the monk and eminent renga master Shinkei 心敬 (1406–1457).46 From the
viewpoint of the performance, the scope of the fushimono also developed from
affecting all the participants, then just some of them and finally – at least in
contemporary Japan – only the sōshō who creates the fushimono from the hokku.
The fourth step may be related to the fact that the first verse was often created
prior to the gathering, usually by the guest of honour.47

4.3 From fushimono to shikimoku

With the development towards the simple fushimono on the one hand and its
‘degeneration’ as a structural principle on the other – it was no longer some-
thing that determined every verse, and gradually became meaningless around
the Nanboku era (1336–1392)48 – other measures to maintain text coherence be-
came necessary. These were the rules (shikimoku 式目) of restriction on seriation
(kukazu 句数, limitation of the ‘number of verses’ in which ‘thematic or lexical
categories may appear in sequence’), rules on intermission (sarikirai 去嫌,49
where similar themes had to be separated by a certain number of verses), and
rules on occurrence (rules that ‘limit the number of times certain words may
appear in a full sequence of one-hundred verses’).50 In modern renga, for
example, the subject of ‘famous places’ may be continued for two verses. Verses
containing ‘love’ must be separated by five verses. Some of the restrictions also
apply on the level of the manuscripts: ori o kirau 折を嫌ふ refers to expressions
that should ‘not be repeated on the [same] folded sheet’, while omote o kirau
面を嫌ふ (‘avoid the page’) means a participant should not come up with the
same category on the same page.51 These rules, known as shikimoku, came to be
recorded in rulebooks, the prototype of which became Renga shinshiki 連歌新式
(1372, New Rules on Renga, later called Ōan shinshiki 応安新式 New Rules of the
Ōan era), which is still the reference work upon which contemporary practice is
based. As Okuda has remarked, its compilation ‘coincided almost exactly with

||
46 Okuda 2017, 25. ZGR 17b, 1131.
47 Benl 1954, 438.
48 Okuda 2017, 22.
49 Okuda 1979, 38. The term in modern Japanese is ku sari 句去り (‘set verses apart’).
50 Carter 1983, 584. Hiroki (ed.) 2010, 120.
51 Mitsuta 1993, 148.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 635

the period in which fushimono was on the decline’.52 It is also worth noting that
the development from fushimono to shikimoku rules paralleled the development
of renga from a game to an acknowledged art. This is also indicated by the com-
pilation of the earliest semi-official anthology, Tsukuba shū 菟玖波集 (Tsukuba
Anthology, 1356), and the Shinsen Tsukubashū 新撰菟玖波集 (Newly Selected
Tsukuba Anthology, 1495).
So what happened to the fushimono after the invention of shikimoku rules?
So far, we have seen that it changed in a four-step development from being a
structural principle affecting each verse of a renga poem to being something
that not only related exclusively to the hokku, but that was created once the
hokku had been announced and had thus undergone a reversal of its initial
principle. The remarkable thing here is that it was not entirely abandoned, but
changed its function from being a ‘quiz question’ to the answer. In other words,
the place of the question or task moved from the ‘title’ to the first verse. Or ra-
ther, the question in the ‘title’ came to be created after the ‘answer’ was given in
the hokku.

4.4 Fushimono as a title?

As mentioned above, fushimono appear as titles or ‘headers’ written in a bigger
font size than the verses themselves in manuscripts and other written artefacts.
According to the definition produced by the Centre for the Study of Manuscript
Cultures in Hamburg, paratexts can have a structuring, commenting and/or
regulating function.53 Two of the most important functions that a header has are
naming a text or manuscript and giving a short summary or keyword that ade-
quately describes the essence of the main text that follows. (A fushimono can
only have such a function if it relates to the entire poem.) However, a title or
header (or rather, a sub-title) may also have a regulating function, as in a maths
test: ‘Multiply the following numbers: …’. The main text in this case (the maths
test) would be like a cloze exercise to be completed by the reader. ‘Topic poetry’
(Jap. daiei 題詠) as it was practised in China and Japan is a similar case: the
titles had a regulatory function, at least in the performative process. In the early
stage of renga, fushimono titles may have been where the directive that worked
in the performance was recorded. Fusu nani hito renga would thus mean ‘find

||
52 Okuda 1979, 38.
53 <https://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-hamburg.de/Projekte_e.html> (accessed on 3 Oct.
2020); Ciotti and Hang 2016, XI.
636 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

words (or ‘characters’; ji 字) that could replace nani to form a compound expres-
sion with hito (‘person’) as the second part and distribute them in every54 verse’.
This task was to be performed by the participants.
With the wording of the fushimono title being a result of what was written
before in the hokku, its regulating function is somewhat defunct in the final
stage of its development. To some degree, the riddle still works for the reader,
but not for the poets. The hokku provides a task that is to be performed by the
sōshō who creates the fushimono title. Apart from this, the function of fushimono
titles in later renga poems tends to shift to naming or classifying the renga, thus
a commenting function of the paratext. However, the naming function is also
somewhat defunct as there is only a limited number of terms that may be used.
In research and in catalogues of renga manuscripts, different devices like the
initial words from a hokku and reference numbers may additionally be used to
identify a specific renga manuscript.55
The purpose of fushimono as a paratext may thus be described as assigning
a kind of ‘genus’ or classification to the poem. It has also been said that fushi-
mono is a ‘label’ (fuchō 符帳) rather than a title.56 Some outstanding poems have
been given unique names like the Minase sangin hyakuin 水無瀬三吟百韻
(Hyakuin by three poets at Minase),57 for example, which is a Fusu nani hito
renga.

5 Written artefacts and the fushimono

5.1 Renga kaishi
In contemporary Japan, traditional renga manuscripts are usually only written
on special occasions. But when they are written, they employ a layout that has
largely remained the same for centuries:58 four folded sheets (ori 折) around
36 × 52 cm in size when folded are necessary for a hundred verses and two

||
54 Or the first eight verses or just the hokku, according to the era.
55 See Ozaki 2005, 81.
56 Tsurusaki 2010, 51. Hiroki states that a fushimono does not denote an individual work, see
Hiroki 2017, 49.
57 See Yasuda (1956) for an English translation. A facsimile of a record of this renga, which is
said to be in handwriting of the famous poet Sōchō 宗長 (1448–1532), has recently been pub-
lished. See Tenri Daigaku fuzoku Tenri Daigaku toshokan (ed.) 2020, 41–59.
58 The handling of the layout in Fig. 2 is a little freer, but the basic scheme is still employed.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 637

sheets are needed for forty-four verses (the standard in contemporary Japan).59
Both distribute the verses on the sheets in such a way that there are eight of
them on the recto side of the first sheet, eight on the verso of the last one and
fourteen on all the other pages. The title – one of the introductory paratexts60 –
is placed to the right of the hokku and at the left margin of the blank space,
which covers a little less than a third of the first sheet recto, and is written in a
bigger font. In order to store them in boxes, many kaishi are folded twice to yield
three parts (see Fig. 1), and the title is usually placed to the right or left of the
fold or exactly where the fold is to be made.61
We do not know precisely when this layout emerged as no manuscripts
have been found that date to the earliest stage of renga’s history. Ichiji reports
the existence of kaishi from the early fourteenth century that already followed
exactly this pattern.62 Initially, however, alternative patterns existed as well.
The Meigetsuki mentions five and even six folded sheets (ori 折 or origami 折紙),
but we do not know if this refers to the record of a hundred verses.63 There was
also a pattern using three ori for a hyakuin, although such copies are very rare.64
Among the kaishi consisting of four origami in the fourteenth century, there
were a number that distributed the verses according to a different formula, such
as ten for the first sheet recto and six for the last sheet verso, or a distribution of
ten and fourteen for the first sheet, twelve and fourteen for the second and third
sheet and fourteen and ten for the last sheet.65 The pattern as we know it today
seems to have spread more and more in the course of the fourteenth century or
towards the end of it.
How does the development of these formats relate to that of the fushimono?
The existence of different layout patterns may indicate that they correlated with

||
59 The fold can be seen in Fig. 2. As this manuscript is not tied with thread, it was possible to
unfold it for the photo.
60 Hashizukuri 端作 in the narrower sense is the date in the right-hand margin, following
precedents of waka kaishi. Sometimes the fushimono title is included in the notion of
hashizukuri. See Hiroki (ed.) 2010, 237.
61 According to Yamada 1980, 161, the fushimono title was to be placed to the right of the first
vertical fold. I would like to thank Inoue Yukiko 井上由希子 for this information. A kaishi by
Inoue which complies with Yamada’s instructions for writing the fushimono is depicted in
Buck-Albulet 2020, 17.
62 Ichiji 1967, 137.
63 Ichiji 1967, 20 and 140.
64 Ogata 2008, 983; Ichiji 1967, 139. The distribution of verses this case is ten for the first sheet
recto and the last sheet verso and twenty for all the other pages.
65 Ichiji 1967, 139.
638 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

different poetic rules, each developed by the great poets of the time.66 The earli-
est extant fragment of a renga kaishi, dating to 1241, already has the typical
blank space on the first third of the page, like the first sheet recto of later kaishi.
Moreover, it also has a title indicating that this is a Fusu nani ya nani mizu renga
賦何屋何水連歌 (‘Renga related to house and water’).67 The title is followed by
nine verses, each written in two vertical lines, as in practically all renga kaishi.68
A remaining blank space on the left-hand side suggests that this page was ini-
tially meant to be filled with twelve or fourteen verses.69 As the title shows, this
renga fragment is part of a fushimono renga, i.e. the rule expressed in the title
applies to the whole text, with nani ya and nani mizu applying alternately to the
verses. As mentioned above, in the history of fushimono there was a develop-
ment from the mono no na type to the ‘double’ nani type. It was not until the
second half of the thirteenth century that the ‘simple’ nani-type fushimono oc-
curred.70 Initially, the simple fushimono was also maintained throughout the
renga, as can be seen from extant kaishi from the fourteenth century, but since
this is more difficult than with a ‘complex fushimono’, it became shortened to
the first eight verses (i.e. the first sheet recto), the first three verses and finally
just the hokku. In the preceding sections, we saw that shikimoku rules were on
the rise just when the fushimono rules were being eroded, reduced to a mere
fragment only visible in the title and, to the insider, in the hokku. This was also
the time when poetic standards were set that applied to the layout of the kaishi,
one of which has stood the test of time to this day. Finally, since we mentioned
Chinese lianju above, the question that remains at the end of this chapter is
whether or not the form of renga kaishi is actually based on Chinese models of
manuscripts.71 Future research on this point should address questions such as
whether Chinese manuscripts of linked poetry are extant or at least whether
Chinese manuscripts of linked poetry are mentioned in source literature. A

||
66 Ichiji 1967, 137.
67 This manuscript is written on the verso of a manuscript from Tōdaiji yōroku 東大寺要録
(Essential Records on Tōdaiji Temple), which is stored in the Archive of Daigoji Temple; Okuda
2017, 54–55 (a photo of the manuscript can be found there). A reprint of the text is in Ichiji 1967,
136–137.
68 There are manuscripts with verses written in one line, but it seems this is mainly the case
with clean copies.
69 Ichiji 1967, 140.
70 Ichiji 1967, 144.
71 Tanaka 1969, 434; Ramirez-Christiansen 2008, 14.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 639

starting point may be Chinese linked poetry as practised in Japan:72 Nose Asaji
quotes several Japanese collections of Chinese poetry suggesting that kaishi
were prepared for rengu sessions. These sources not only show that similar divi-
sions of verses were used for the rengu kaishi, but the four-origami form is also
mentioned in them.73

5.2 Fushimono in the age of print

In contemporary renga, every member of the circle takes notes using a printed
Mitsuta sheet, as mentioned above. This way, everybody writes his or her own
manuscript, a hybrid of print and handwriting. There are some variants of the
form sheet in circulation, which vary in detail. There are even more paratexts in
the pre-printed parts, which cannot be described in this paper. Many of them
refer to parts of the poetic rules of the renga and thus serve as a guideline for
poets. The pre-printed part of the fushimono usually contains the words
fusu … renga 賦____連歌 with a blank space in the middle to be filled in by the
participant as soon as the sōshō announces his decision on that.
Thus, fushimono has survived to this day, albeit as a kind of relict, and can
be found as titles in modern print editions of renga poetry as well. What do
these tell us about the use of fushimono in contemporary Japan? To examine a
modern sample, I analysed the fushimono in two printed editions of modern-day
renga. They showed a surprising degree of variety. In the collection called Heisei
no renga (Renga of the Heisei era),74 which contains sixty-eight renga, thirty-
three different fushimono were used, the most common ones (each mentioned
four times) being nani ta 何田 (‘something field’), on nani 御何 (‘honourable
something’), kara nani 唐何 (‘China/Chinese something’) and hatsu nani 初何
(‘first something’).
A collection of seventy renga composed at Kumata Shrine 杭全神社 in
Osaka between 1987 and 1993 likewise has thirty-three different fushimono, the
most common being nani hito 何人 (‘something person’, eight times), nani ki 何
木 (‘something tree’, five times) and nani ro 何路 (‘something path’, six times).
As there are forty-four different fushimono listed in the Fushimonohen, this
means that most of them were used. Moreover, this result also suggests that

||
72 When lianju or rengu 聯句 is mentioned in Japanese research literature, the authors often
do not make it sufficiently clear whether they mean Chinese linked poetry or Japanese linked
poetry composed in Chinese.
73 Nose 1950, 119–121.
74 Susa Jinja Renga no kai (ed.) 1997.
640 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

there is a striving for balance that goes beyond the individual renga sessions,
extending to the series of sessions that led to the printed anthology.75 Thus the
fushimono is also a place of intertextual reference.

6 Conclusion
The early fushimono was a kind of rule that was initially inspired by techniques
used in Chinese linked poetry. However, while lianju remained more of a game,
‘the Japanese raised the concept of “playing” in poetry to the level of high art’.76
Like the shikimoku employed later (and like rules in general), it was a device
that limited players’ options and thus made it possible to play the game in a
group. It can be said that the early fushimono rules had stabilising and stimulat-
ing functions, just as the shikimoku rules did that were introduced later. They
contributed to the coherence of the text and of the process of its creation, and
thus to the internal cohesion of the group itself. Competition governed by com-
mon rules encouraged the linking process and contributed significantly to the
development of long renga poetry.77
With the limitation of its scope to the hokku and then the reversal of the
principle (i.e. the fushimono was decided on after the hokku had been com-
posed), the fushimono became defunct as a task or ‘thematic directive’ and a
structural principle and was replaced by other rules. At the same time, renga
poetry underwent a process of aestheticisation and literarisation. A remnant of
the riddle function can still be mentally reproduced when reading a fushimono
title and looking for the ‘solution part’ (actually written before the title) in the
hokku.
Thus, the fushimono title also takes on the function of a bearer of tradition,
a lieu de mémoire that might call up memories of renga’s long history and of
literary techniques used before in short renga, waka and even in Chinese poetry.
Reminiscent of the heritage of Chinese culture is also the fact that the syntax of
the fushimono title is basically a kanbun structure. Yamada Yoshio thus resolves
the title 賦二何花一連歌 as Nani hana o fusu(ru) renga (‘Renga that distributes
“flower” to something’).78 As a paratext in manuscripts and prints alike, fushi-
mono also makes a renga poem recognisable as a renga as opposed to similar

||
75 Kumata Jinja (ed.) 1993, 155–159.
76 Pollack 1976, vii–viii.
77 Ogata 2008, 808.
78 Yamada 1980, 6.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 641

genres like haikai no renga or renku. Because of its exposed position, a title is
particularly suitable for such kinds of inter- and extra-textual references.
Apart from this visual feature, fushimono titles differ from what are usually
considered to be functions of titles or headers, like naming the text or manu-
script or referring to its content. Due to limited variety, the identifying function
of fushimono titles is a weak one; like very common personal names, additional
identifiers are needed in certain contexts. This paper has also shown that it is
necessary to distinguish between the directive aspect of fushimono and its fea-
ture as a ‘title’, although both uses are inextricably linked. The development
from ‘task’ to ‘title’ therefore means a shift in weighting between both aspects.
In contemporary Japan, fushimono is still an indispensable part of renga poetry
as a performative practice and a literary genre. While being a kind of title, fushi-
mono has never entirely lost its nature as a task and a language riddle, just as
renga has never ceased to be a game and yet serious poetry at the same time.

7 Epilogue
It was the last of fourteen circles composing renga linked poetry that I took part
in during my six-week research trip in Japan in the hot summer of 2018. The
group met up on 6 August at a mountain retreat next to Myōken Shrine 明建神社
in Gujō Hachiman, a beautiful place in Gifu prefecture in Central Japan. The aim
of this gathering was to jointly compose a forty-four-verse linked poem79 that
was to be recited the next day before the deity of Myōken Shrine at the annual
Shrine festival.
The first verse, or hokku, had been composed by Professor Tsurusaki him-
self, who acted as the sōshō at the day’s renga session. It is the one quoted at the
beginning: Misotose o tsuzumi ni mau ya tsuyu no niwa (‘Thirty years/ dancing to
the drum/ in the garden of dew’).80 The hokku alludes to the thirtieth perfor-
mance of the takigi nō81 Kurusu sakura くるす桜 (‘Kurusu cherry blossom’),
which was to take place the next day during the annual festival at Myōken
Shrine.82 Once the first half of the poem had been created, Professor Tsurusaki

||
79 The whole poem can be found online at <http://www.kokindenju.com/column.html> (ac-
cessed on 16 July 2020).
80 The sound of the drum should be thought of as a kind of background music. My thanks to
Yamamura Noriko 山村規子 for this information.
81 Nō theatre that is played outside in the evening by torchlight.
82 <http://kokindenjunosato.blogspot.com/2015/04/25.html> (accessed on 14 Nov. 2019).
642 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

announced the fushimono, i.e. the ‘title’ of the day’s poem: Fusu on nani renga
賦御何連歌 (‘Renga related to ‘honourable’).

Fig. 2: Clean copy of the renga composed in Gujō Hachiman in August 2018 (first sheet recto
and verso). The calligraphy is by Yamada Hakuyō 山田白陽. Courtesy of Kokin denju no sato
fiirudo myūjiamu 古今伝授の里フィールドミュージアム (Kokin denju Village Field Museum).
Photo: H. Buck-Albulet.

As mentioned previously, the Fushimonohen from the fifteenth century serves as

a source of information regarding which words may be inserted for nani. How-
ever, when I consulted that work to find out which word in the hokku was meant
to refer to on, it appeared that the only character that matched up with it was
toshi 年 (‘year’), thus yielding the compound mitoshi 御年 (‘grain’). When we
asked Professor Tsurusaki whether this was correct, he replied that he had an-
other character in mind, viz. niwa. The solution was on niwa 御庭 (‘honourable
garden’).83 As niwa is not listed in the Fushimonohen as a possible match for on,
this indicates that the sōshō’s authority enables some allows for a degree of
artistic freedom, and the authority of the old rulebook (which I actually wanted
to demonstrate with this example) is not considered absolute in contemporary
renga circles.

||
83 I would like to thank Tsurusaki Hiroo and Yamamura Noriko for their advice on this matter.
 From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono | 643

The solution on niwa is only virtually present in the renga kaishi. ‘The word
written into the verse with black ink and the fushimono together form the com-
pound word’.84 Moreover, there is no semantic relationship between the ‘hid-
den’ compound in the hokku and the content of the verse. In votive renga,
however, it can be observed that the compound often reinforces the auspicious
tone that the hokku sets, as this example shows.
On the evening of the day following the composing session, Professor
Tsurusaki dedicated the kaishi to the deity of Myōken Shrine and solemnly
recited the first eight verses of the renga in the light of burning torches. The
fushimono in this oral presentation was a kind of ‘acoustic title’ marked by a
short pause in speech before the first verse followed, and thus an indispensable
part of the dedication ceremony. I left Japan two days later, deeply grateful for
having been able to experience what it means to live the tradition of renga. My
experiences there also made it clear to me that fushimono is part of this living
tradition.

Acknowledgements
The research for this article was funded by the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) in connection with Germany’s
‘Excellence Strategy’ – EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material,
Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796.
The research was conducted within the scope of the work carried out at the
Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg. It
was also supported by members of the renga circles that I visited in the summer
of 2018; there are too many individuals I am indebted to for me to be able to
name them all here, but I would still like to express my sincere gratitude to all of
them collectively.

Abbreviations
SNKBT Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei
ZGR Zoku gunsho ruijū

||
84 Ichiji 1967, 141.
644 | Heidi Buck-Albulet

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Jost Gippert
Hidden Colophons
Abstract: On the basis of Georgian codices from the collection of the Iviron
Monastery on Mt Athos, the article examines a special purpose of using red ink
in medieval manuscripts, namely, to provide information concerning the manu-
script in question and the people involved in its production (scribes, authors,
translators, or commissioners) by scattering sequences of individual letters over
one or two pages. After discussing authentic accounts of the use of rubrics in
the Georgian manuscript production of the eleventh century, the shape and
scope of ‘hidden colophons’ is illustrated by reference to four codices of the
monastery (Ivir. georg. 4, 9, 16, and 61).

1 Introduction
When I first visited the University of Hamburg for a research stay concerning
manuscript studies in summer 2009,1 one of my topics was the typology of the
use of red inks in manuscripts of the Christian East, and as a first result of my
stay, I was given the opportunity to publish a short paper on this in the Newslet-
ter manuscript cultures issued by the Research Group Manuscript Cultures in
Asia and Africa in 2010 (no. 3).2 The materials I relied upon were mostly Geor-
gian manuscripts from the Caucasus and from St Catherine’s Monastery on
Mt Sinai which I had been working on intensively in the years before. The main
functions I was able to work out then were decoration, demarcation, the high-
lighting of headings, titles, and initial letters (including those of proper names

||
1 The host of the stay was the DFG-funded Research Group 963 Manuscript Cultures in Asia and
Africa (2008–2011), a forerunner of the Sonderforschungsbereich 950 Manuscript Cultures in
Asia, Africa and Europe (2011–2020) and the present Cluster of Excellence Understanding Writ-
ten Artefacts (2019–). The steady development of this research association, today hosted at the
dedicated Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, is a success story that is unparalleled in
the history of the Humanities in Germany. – My thanks are due to Michael Friedrich who invit-
ed me to Hamburg and who has supported my work immensely over the years – the present
contribution is meant to be a humble antidoron to him.
2 Gippert 2010. The main points of the paper had been presented to the Research Group during
a workshop on July 23, 2009, under the title ‘Textauszeichnungen in Handschriften’ (‘Text
markup in manuscripts’).

Open Access. © 2021 Jost Gippert, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-032
648 | Jost Gippert

in enumerations), referencing, esp. via numerical information (as in the case of

the so-called ‘Ammonian’ section numbers in Gospel codices), and the marking
of peculiar signs such as neumes in hymnographical manuscripts. Recently,
during my work on a catalogue of the Georgian manuscripts of the Iviron
Monastery on Mt Athos,3 I have come across another function of red ink that
seems to have remained unnoticed so far, namely, of constituting a peculiar
type of ‘hidden’ colophons. In the following pages, I intend to provide a
preliminary account of this phenomenon.

2 The Georgian manuscripts of the Iviron

Monastery
With 95 numbered items (93 codices, one scroll and several minor fragments
taken together as no. 95), the Iviron Monastery on Mt Athos hosts one of the
largest collections of Georgian manuscripts outside of Georgia.4 The reason is
that the monastery was built up by two Georgian noblemen named John and
Euthymius by the end of the tenth century and remained under the leadership
of Georgians for several centuries, establishing itself as a true centre of Georgian
eruditeness. Among the most remarkable items of its collection, we may count
the famous ‘Oshki Bible’ (Ivir. georg. 1), which was written down in the epony-
mous monastery in East Anatolia5 in 978 CE and contains on more than 950
folios, bound in two large volumes today, the oldest near to complete transla-
tion of the Old Testament into Georgian.6 Another outstanding item of the

||
3 The project of compiling a new catalogue of the Georgian manuscripts of the Iviron Monas-
tery has been conducted by myself in cooperation with Bernard Outtier and Sergey Kim in the
framework of a project on Georgian palimpsests kindly funded by the Volkswagen Foundation
between 2009 and 2019. Further cooperation partners were the laboratory ‘Orioni’ at Ivane
Javakhishvili State University, Tbilisi and several members of the Korneli Kekelidze National
Centre of Manuscripts, Tbilisi. For former catalogues of the collection cf. Cagareli 1886, Blake
1932–1934, and Axobaʒe et al. 1986.
4 Larger collections abroad are those of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian
Academy of Sciences with c. 560 items, St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai with c. 200 items
(including the so-called ‘New Finds’ of 1975), and the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem with
c. 150 items. The largest collection by far is hosted in the Korneli Kekelidze National Centre of
Manuscripts, Tbilisi, with several thousands of Georgian manuscripts.
5 The remnants of the Oshki monastery are situated at 40°36'50.3"N and 41°32'32.9"E.
6 Leaving lacunae that are due to the loss of quires or folios aside, the only parts that are
missing are the Psalter, the Chronicles, and the books of Maccabees.
 Hidden Colophons | 649

collection is the so-called ‘Athos mravaltavi’ (Ivir. georg. 11), a homiliary as well
from the end of the tenth century comprising more than 94 texts, mostly transla-
tions of Greek Church Fathers.7 If we leave palimpsests aside,8 the oldest codex
of the collection is the so-called ‘Opiza Gospels’ of 913 (Ivir. georg. 83), a small
codex written in toto in majuscules.9 A second codex in majuscules is Ivir.
georg. 9, again written in Oshki in 977 CE, which consists of homilies mostly by
John Chrysostom and Ephrem the Syrian as well as a large collection of apo-
phthegms including the Pratum spirituale by John Moschus (see 3.1 below).

2.1 Colophons in Iviron manuscripts

The Georgian manuscripts of the Iviron monastery are exceptionally rich in
colophons. In many of them, scribes, authors, compilers, translators, binders,
commissioners, donors, and other persons that were involved in the production
of the codices have left their personal accounts, partly in unusual verbosity, and
partly with the expressed wish that they should be included in later copies. This
is especially true of the colophons by George the Athonite, the most productive
and influential figure among the monks of the Iviron, who, in the eleventh cen-
tury, produced a huge bulk of translations from Greek, among them homiletic,
hagiographic, and hymnographic works, and who was also responsible for the
last redaction of the Old Georgian New Testament, which was soon widely ac-
cepted as the ‘Athonite vulgate’. The most verbose colophon of his is found in
Ivir. georg. 45, which contains a complete paraklētikē, i.e., a collection of chants
and canons in all eight modes.10 In the codex, George’s colophon comprises
nearly seven folios (fols 2v–9r), fully covered with 44 lines each in his tiny cur-
sive hand, in which he provides a complete survey of the structure and contents
of the ṗaraḳliṭoni (thus the Georgian term, from Greek παράκλητον) consisting

||
7 The provenance of the codex is unknown but it is likely that it was produced in the monas-
tery of SS Cosmas and Damian on Mt Olympus (present-day Uludağ) near Bursa in Bithynia,
given that it was probably written by the same hand as Ivir. georg. 42; cf. the colophon on
fol. 236r of the latter codex which reads ‘It was written on Mt Olympus, in the abode of
SS Cosmas and Damian, during the patriarchate of Polyeuctus in Constantinople (and) the
reign of Nikephoros (II Phokas)’, thus yielding a date between 963 and 969 CE.
8 At least one palimpsest of the Iviron collection must be older as it contains an undertext in
the so-called khanmeti variety of Old Georgian (c. fifth–seventh centuries).
9 Opiza was another monastery in East Anatolia (probably situated at 41°13'35.6"N and
42°02'13.5"E).
10 On the system of canons and modes (or tones), cf. Gippert 2014, 558–561.
650 | Jost Gippert

of 155 items numbered alphanumerically in the margins. Remarkably enough,

the first page, in which he outlines his survey, is written all in red ink; it reads:11

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit! Translated was (this) paraklēton,
completely and without gap, widely and richly, purely and beautifully, by my, wretched
priestmonk George’s, hand. And I would barely have been able to fulfil this eminent and
unattainable task, but God, benevolent towards my kin through the prayer and virtue of
all Georgians, opened my beast-like mouth and aroused my filthy tongue and my soul and
mind, liable to all guilt, and granted me to accomplish this all-beautiful and great matter.
And now you who will copy this holy and soul-enlightening book, firstly pray for us and
do not think that I have seen but some little and neglectable trouble translating and tran-
scribing it! The Lord knows, when I remember the beginning and the end of the endeav-
our, my bones start quivering and I wonder how I could venture and attempt it or how I
completed it! However, for the powers of God nothing is impossible and, as the Master
himself spoke truly, ‘His power is made perfect in weakness’.12 And as I could not assess
whether I should venture to translate it completely somehow, I first translated the
prokeimenon stichera in another book, and then, as by order of my spiritual fathers I un-
dertook to translate it completely, the second book was written, (very) big, and inevitably
it was written down in scattered pieces; therefore it was necessary to draw up an index
(zanduḳi, from Gk. σάνδυξ ‘red colour’) for it so that somebody who would copy it might
copy it in just the sequence as we have written it down, and that someone who wants to
know its gist, (i.e.), what is written in this holy and all-pleasant book, might easily recog-
nise its gist and the number of stichera and chants (contained in it). But now it is appro-
priate that, if someone copies it entirely, he first begins with the Greek-Georgian stichera
for the Resurrection. Just as we have written them down in the paraklēton, (thus) you
should copy them, and do not disturb even one of them, be they (hymns) for the Resurrec-
tion or the Archangels or the Baptist or the Theotokos or the Apostles or the Cross or the
Saints, they all must be written down at their proper place, and this (is also true) for the
proper place of the newly translated (hymns). And if someone should say that it seems
appropriate to pronounce either this or that (hymn) or (even) both, it is in the power and
the will of everyone, and both are very good and beautiful and both are from Greek and
rarely from Georgian, and those that are Georgian and have been written down by us are
very good and pleasant. And (lit. but) nobody must sneak in others more, (hymns) that we
have not written down, and it will be hurtful for the book if someone said, this is really
enough and excessive. And if he did, he who cares for more and corrupts the book will
have to answer to God on Judgement Day.”

After describing the structure of the paraklētikē, George adds a personal account
in which he mentions the place where he created the work (in the Laura of

||
11 This and all other colophons of the Georgian manuscripts of the Iviron Monastery will be
found edited and translated into English in the catalogue (Gippert et al. forthcoming). For a
colour image of the page (Ivir. georg. 45, fol. 2v) and a German translation of the first lines
cf. Gippert 2018, 137–138 with Fig. 137.
12 Cf. II Cor. 12.9.
 Hidden Colophons | 651

St Symeon the Wonderworker on the Admirable Mountain)13 and the date of its
accomplishment; interestingly enough, the exact year was left out intentionally,
probably because George wrote the colophon down before accomplishing the
remaining 304 folios of the codex. The text reads (fol. 8v, with the address line in
red ink again):

Now, holy and godly fathers, I do know that the extent of this soul-enlightening book
bears witness unspokenly to our toil and effort, and (that) truly a church that will adopt
this holy book entirely will not find it lacking of chant and praise even if some feasts may
be missing (in it), once it is used. And no one should surmise that he might find some-
where, either in Greek or in Georgian, a paraklēton equal to this. And this toil and effort
we took upon ourselves so that in your holy prayers you may remember this soul of mine,
liable to all guilt, and that of my teachers and parents and my brothers in spirit and flesh
and of all my benefactors and supporters. – I could not sell my handiwork, there was no
means, and I was reared by the support of God-loving men, and I had to buy the parch-
ment (myself), too – may Christ pay the reward to their souls and give (something) from
His generous treasures to their souls. I did neither pray nor strive, I was lazy myself and
idle, but then there was much to be done, and only lately, I was ready to do something for
God. Forgive me, you, too, and ask God to forgive me. And if something good is found in
this work of mine, you should know that it was fulfilled by the grace of our holy father
Euthymius; it was his grace that opened this animal-like mouth of ours, and it was he who
after God and the holy Theotokos supported and helped me. And his holy soul knows that
I served devotedly on his grave and in the monastery built by him on Mt Athos for many
years. – This newly translated paraklēton was accomplished in translating and writing it
down by the hand of mine, wretched George the priestmonk, on the Admirable Mountain
in the Laura of our holy father Symeon the Wonderworker, in the chronicon [ ] (and) in the
year after Creation six thousand five hundred sixty and [ ] – may God forgive me my sins
and have mercy on my pitiful soul, amen!

The indication of a ‘year after Creation six thousand five hundred sixty and [ ]’
might mean any year between 6561 and 6579, given that in Georgian, the num-
bers between 70 and 79 are styled as 60 + 10, 19 etc. (cf. French soixante-dix,
soixante-dix-neuf, etc.). The time reckoning system used here is that of the Greek
annus mundi, with 6561–6579 corresponding to 1053–1071 CE.14 Of these years,
only the period between 1053 and 1065 CE can be meant here as 1065 CE was the
year of George’s death. The assumption that he wrote the colophon first, before
the remainder of the codex, is corroborated by a short note that George added
on top of the first page of the main text (fol. 9r) together with the rogation ‘Lord

||
13 Today Samandağ, lit. ‘Symeon’s Mountain’, near Antioch (present-day Antakya) in South-
ern Turkey, 36°04'36.0"N and 36°02'32.3"E.
14 Cf. Gippert 2018, 138 with Fig. 138 for an image and a German translation of the passage in
question.
652 | Jost Gippert

Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and direct the deeds of our hands to the
laud and praise of Your most holy name, for You are blessed in eternity, amen!’;
the note simply says, ‘I began on February 10’. The day of the end of the work is
not indicated anywhere in the manuscript.

2.2 Reasoning on the use of red ink

In his description of the paraklētikē, George not only provides details as to the
contents and the ordering of the elements but also as to the use of red ink in
copying them. The first paragraph of his treatise reads (fol. 3r–v):

At first now it is appropriate to write down the Greek (hymns) for the Resurrection and the
perpetual (canon beginning with the 1st ode on) ‘Lord, I cried’ (Ex. 15.1) up to the (matins
sticheron on) ‘Praise the Lord’ (Ps. 148.1), in the following way: First the (hymns) for Res-
urrection, and then, following those for Resurrection, those for Repentance, and (after)
those for Repentance, those for the Cross, and (after) those for the Cross, those for the
Apostles, and (after) those for the Apostles, those for the Saints, and (after) those for the
Saints, those for the Hierarchs and Fathers and Female Martyrs, and then again those for
the Soul, and (after) those for the Soul, those for the Theotokos, and in this way should be
completed the (whole) mode, and all eight modes should be written down in this manner.
– But as we were copying these perpetual (hymns) widely and richly (and) we could not
find such a rich book in Greek in which all (hymns) would have been written altogether so
that we could have copied them one by one, therefore we have written the remainder and
even more at the end of the second book, and now, these are the main ones and the foun-
dations, (those) which are written in the minor book. But if a hymn consisting of pairs (of
chant and antiphon) is found in the big book, this must not be copied separately, but if it
be a (hymn) for the Resurrection, it should follow those for the Resurrection, and if (it be
one) for Repentance, (it should follow) those for Repentance, and (one) for the Cross
(should follow) those for the Cross, and (one) for the Apostles (should follow) those for the
Apostles, and (one) for the Saints (should follow) those for the Saints, and (one) for the
Hierarchs and Fathers (should follow) those for the Saints (!), and (one) for the Soul
(should follow) those for the Soul, and (one) for the Theotokos (should follow) those for
the Theotokos. It is appropriate to write it down in this way (no matter) whether it may be-
long to the (canon of) odes or to the prokeimena, and likewise the eight modes (and) odes
are to be written down in this manner and divided into pairs, and all headings are to be
put in rubrics because those that are not (subsumed) under a heirmos are idiomela, and
therefore it is appropriate to apply rubrics. Those again that are (subsumed) under a
heirmos are likewise to be copied in pairs as usual. And when they are finished, (continue)
as follows.

It is clear that here, rubrics are meant to mark headings, a function that has well
been established in the typology outlined above. In another autograph of his,
Ivir. georg. 65, George mentions a somewhat different function of red ink in one
 Hidden Colophons | 653

of his colophons. The codex, which comprises a menaion for the months of
January and February, is introduced by an index of the canons for the saints
and feasts of January (fols. 1r–2r), to which George adds:

There will also be (some) stichera of this month that we have left over; they were not writ-
ten among these Greek stichera of ours. At the end I found (some) other Greek stichera,
too, and I have written them down there. (You) now, good brother who will copy (this),
check what day you will be copying and copy them together with the stichera of that day.
And these stichera and the remaining (ones), look, are written in the middle of these
quires, and the number of the day that they should be ascribed to is placed (lit. sits) in the
margin, and the name of the saint (is) in rubrics. And <now> pray for us, (you) whoever
come across this work of ours. I had great zeal but the mud of my affairs did not permit me
to do it properly. And no one of you should Hellenise something and look for the mode of
certain canons as if they were not in that mode in Greek – do not look for it, I have trans-
lated certain canons in the mode I liked, but if a word was appropriate and fitting, the
words are the same as they were in Greek. Only a small amount of canons did not go well.

Here, it is the function of highlighting the names of saints that a given hymn is
addressed to; another function that has widely been adapted in the production
of Georgian menaion codices.
A third function of rubrics is insinuated by George in a minor note that was
copied from his model to Ivir. georg. 56, a menaion of May and June that must
have been written down after his death, given that it contains a memorial office
for George himself (on May 13, together with that of Euthymius). The note
appears in the outer margin of fol. 52r, with the first half written in rubrics itself,
and reads: ‘In my canons, beloved one, do not look for initials; I am interested
in words and not in red letters’. Here, George is obviously referring to the usual
practice of marking the first letters of a hymn in red and, if present, of the
heirmos that determines its melody; this is clearly visible in the page in ques-
tion, which contains the beginning of the canon for Thalelaeus the Unmerce-
nary of Anazarbus (May 20). It seems that the copyist added the markings in the
normal way, thus ‘reacting’ to George’s warning.

3 Hidden colophons
Marking individual letters that represent the initials of hymns and the like in red
was common practice indeed, not only on Mt Athos, and the liturgical manu-
scripts abound in such rubrics. A very different use of red ink for individual
letters is found in at least four other Georgian codices of the Iviron collection,
namely, Ivir. georg. 4 (fol. 2r–v), 9 (fols *8v–*9r), 16 (fols 299v–300r), and 61
654 | Jost Gippert

(fol. 1r–v). Here, a series of several letters scattered over the main text constitute,
in their given order, a subtext in its own right, which may be styled a ‘hidden
colophon’, given that it represents, just as usual colophons, a reference of the
scribe to the codex he was writing and the persons involved in its production.
To illustrate this, it may be convenient to investigate the four examples in more
detail.

3.1 Ivir. georg. 9

Of the four codices, Ivir. georg. 9 is the oldest (of 977 CE) and peculiar in being
written in asomtavruli majuscules throughout (see 2 above). According to its
main colophon (fols 375r–377v), it was copied in Oshki under commission of
John Tornikios, a prosperous Georgian general in the Byzantine army who later
became a synkellos (assistant of the Patriach) in Constantinople and contributed
a lot to the erection of the Iviron Monastery before his death in 985 CE, and his
brother John Varazvače. The codex was obviously written by three different
scribes, two of which left their names in usual colophons, namely, one Sṭepane
and one Davit; the first one reads (fol. 374v): ‘Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on
the soul(s) of John and (mine), Sṭepane, who wrote this book. If anything is
missing, forgive me in name of God.’ In contrast to this, Davit’s role was obvi-
ously restricted to writing down the commissioners’ colophon, as he states
(fol. 377v): ‘This colophon was written by me, unworthy Davit, sister’s son of the
godly father Mikael Modreḳili. If I missed anything by negligence, please forgive
me in the name of God and pray for me.’15
Different from Sṭepane and Davit, the third scribe, who must have been re-
sponsible for the first part of the codex,16 provided his colophon not as an at-
tachment to the main text but in form of individual letters scattered about the
first two folios of the fourth quire of the codex (fols *8v and *9r, see Fig. 1),17
within a Sermo de ieiunio et purificatione animae et mali oblivione attributed to
John Chrysostom (CPG 5175.3). Taken together, they yield the sentence გიორგი

||
15 Mikael Modreḳili was the most famous Georgian hymnographer of the tenth century; sever-
al hymns of his are included in George the Athonite’s paraklētikē in Ivir. georg. 45.
16 The actual switch from the first to the second scribe is hard to determine, given that there is
not much difference in the style of the majuscules throughout the codex. I presume fol. 244v to
be the first page written by Sṭepane.
17 The first two quires of the codex are lost so that it begins within the third quire. In its pre-
sent state, quires IV–VII are bound upside down and in reverse order; fols *8v and *9r are there-
fore numbered 15r and 14v, respectively.
 Hidden Colophons | 655

მწერალი ცოდვილი გვედია ლოცვასა ღმრთისათჳს, which may be rendered

as ‘Giorgi the sinful writer is entrusted to your prayer, for the sake of God’. The
hidden colophon thus provides the name of a Giorgi for the first scribe; a fact
that has escaped the notice of all former cataloguers.18 In the case of the cata-
logue produced in Tbilisi in 1986, this may easily be explained by the fact that
this catalogue was based not on inspection in situ but on microfilms in black-
and-white which conceal the change of the ink colour.19

3.2 Ivir. georg. 4

Ivir. georg. 4 is the middle part of a trias of codices that contain the complete
translation of John Chrysostom’s Commentary of the Gospel of Matthew (90
chapters). Together with Ivir. georg. 13 (as the first part) and 10 (as the last part),20
it was produced in 1008 in the ‘abode of the Holy Theotokos’, i.e. the Iviron
Monastery, on Mt Athos by the three scribes Iovane Grʒelisʒe (‘John son of
Grʒeli’), Iovane Okroṗiri (lit. ‘John Chrysostom’!) and Arseni Ninoc̣ mideli (of
Ninotsminda), as the scribes’ colophons tell (Ivir. georg. 4, fol. 263r; Ivir.
georg. 10, fol. 337v; Ivir. georg. 13, fol. 259r–v).21 The author of the Georgian trans-
lation was Euthymius the Athonite who was directed by his father, John, as the
commissioner, as the latter’s lengthy colophon on fols 331v–337v of Ivir. georg. 10
tells us; Euthymius himself left his translator’s colophon (written by the scribe,
Iovane Grʒelisʒe) on fol. 331r: ‘Glory to you, Holy Trinity, one God and one
essence, accomplisher of all good, who deemed me, the unworthy one, worthy

||
18 Cagareli 1886, 89–91, no. 69; Blake 1931–34, [1], 329–339; Axobaʒe et al. 1986, 34–49.
19 Axobaʒe et al. 1986, 44. The author of the description (N. Čxiḳvaʒe) rejects the former pro-
posal by D. Bakraʒe (1889, 243) and T. Žordania (1892, 107) that there were two scribes, one
Ioane and one Sṭepane, the latter styled a ‘sacristan’ (deḳanozi; the catalogue erroneously uses
the plural as if both scribes had been sacristans) and insists upon Sṭepane being the sole scribe
of the main text.
20 The present shelf numbering system was developed by R. P. Blake in the course of his
cataloguing. It is based upon the mere size of the codices, without consideration of contents,
internal relationships, and the like.
21 The dates given are consistent: Ivir. georg. 13, fol. 259v, names the ‘year from Creation’ (i.e.,
annus mundi) 6516, which yields 1007–1008, and the 6th indiction, which fits with the same
date. In addition, it names the year 983 ‘from the Crucifixion’, the Georgian ‘year from Creation’
6612 (which equals the Greek 6516), and the ‘chronicon 228 in the 13th cycle’, which again yields
1008. Ivir. georg. 4, fol. 263r, names only the ‘chronicon 228’. In Ivir. georg. 10, fol. 337v, the
colophon breaks off before the date due to the loss of the last folio. Cf. Gippert 2018, 145 as to
the Georgian time reckoning system.
656 | Jost Gippert

of accomplishing the translation of this holy Gospel book. — Holy Evangelists

and St. John Chrysostom, intercede before God for my father John and have
mercy on me, too, your slave Euthymius, unworthy and liable of numerous sins,
amen!’ On fol. 2r–v of Ivir. georg. 4, the same scribe, Iovane Grʒelisʒe, concealed
an invocation for Euthymius, arranged in a similar form as the hidden colophon
of Ivir. georg. 9; it reads (Fig. 2): ღმერთო აკურ(თ)ხე ეფთჳმე ამენ – ‘God, bless
Euthymius, amen!’

3.3 Ivir. georg. 16

Ivir. georg. 16 contains another major work of John Chrysostom’s, namely, his
Commentary of the Gospel of John, as well translated by Euthymius the
Athonite. The codex is without a dating; from the final colophon (fol. 389v),
however, it is clear that it was copied by one Mikael from a model that was writ-
ten in Jerusalem by a certain Esṭaṭi. In a set of short additions to the text, the
scribe added invocations for Leonṭi, the archbishop of Ruisi, who is likely to
have been the commissioner of the codex; e.g., on fol. 55r, we read ‘Lord Jesus
Christ, have mercy on and exalt in both lives Leonṭi, archbishop of Ruisi, and
forgive him all his guilts’ (comparable additions on fols 84r, 245v, 322r, 330r, 338r,
352v, 368v, 386r, all in red ink). In one case, on fols. 299v–300r, a similar invoca-
tion is spread in individual red letters across the main text; it reads (Fig. 3):
ქ(რისტ)ე ადიდე ლეონტი მროელ მთავარებისკოპოსი ა(მე)ნ – ‘Christ, exalt
Leonti, the archbishop of Ruisi, amen!’ With the repeated mention of Leonṭi
Mroveli, the compiler of the Georgian chronicle Kartlis Cxovreba, the codex can
safely be dated to the second half of the eleventh century.

3.4 Ivir. georg. 61

The case of Ivir. georg. 61 is harder to assess. The codex, which on its 154 folios
contains the larger part of a menaion for the month of August with additional
stichera, has no normal colophon that would tell about its provenance, date, or
scribe; from its content and its structure, it is probable, however, that it was
produced as a copy of a (lost) autograph by George the Athonite in the elev-
enth–twelfth centuries. Unfortunately, it is highly lacunose: taking its quire
numbering as the basis, a total of 37 quires must be missing at its beginning,
which suggests that it once comprised not only the missing seven first days of
August but rather one or two preceding months more. It is all the more welcome
that despite of being heavily damaged and partly covered by a paste-on label to
 Hidden Colophons | 657

protect its torn outer edge, just the first folio that has been preserved (fol. 1r–v)
provides some letters in red ink that may be taken to represent a hidden
colophon. What can be made out today are, in the given order, the letters c̣-m-d-
ma on the recto and m-e-x-e-q̇-a-v-sa-x-l-m-o-gam-sa-šen-s-a-u-ġirs-a-mo-n-a-sa-
a-s-c̣-i-n-a-š-e (Fig. 4). Considering that the saint commemorated in the sur-
rounding text is the apostle Matthias (in Georgian maṭatia), the successor of
Judas Iscariot who was celebrated on Aug. 9, we may tentatively restitute this to
read წმ<ი>დ<აო> მა<ტათია> მე<ო>ხ ეყავ სახ<ე>ლმო<დ>გამსა შენსა უღირსა
მონასა <ამ>ას წინაშე <ღ(მერთს)ა>, which would mean something like ‘St
Matthias, intercede for your namesake, this unworthy monk, before God!’ If this
is correct, the colophon most likely yields us the name of the scribe who took
the opportunity to mention himself in connection with his biblical namesake. It
is important in this context that other codices containing the commemoration of
the apostle on Aug. 9 (Jerusalem, Greek Patriarchate, georg. 107, fol. 231r–v;
Mt Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, georg. 92, fol. 384r–v, and georg. 56, fol. 83r)
do not contain the corresponding rubrication.

4 Conclusion
The four Georgian codices of the Iviron Monastery on Mt Athos reveal the prac-
tice to insert secondary information concerning the manuscript in question and
the people involved in its production by applying red ink to a sequence of indi-
vidual letters throughout one or two pages. The hidden ‘colophons’ thus pro-
duced may refer to the actual scribe (Ivir. georg. 9 and 61), the author or trans-
lator of the given text (Ivir. georg. 4) or the commissioner of the codex (Ivir.
georg. 16). It would certainly be worthwhile investigating whether this practice
extended beyond the Athos collection, beyond the time frame of the tenth–
twelfth centuries, and beyond Georgian.
658 | Jost Gippert

References
Axobaʒe et al. (1986), ქართულ ხელნაწერთა აღწერილობა. ათონური კოკექცია. I. შეადგინეს
და დასაბეჭდად მოამზადეს ლია ახობაძემ, რუსუდან გვარამიამ, ნარგიზა გოგუაძემ,
მანანა დვალმა, მანანა დოლაქიძემ, მანანა კვაჭაძემ, გულნაზ კიკნაძემ, ციალა
ქურციკიძემ, ლელა შათირიშვილმა, მზექალა შანიძემ, ნესტან ჩხიკვაძემ [Kartul
xelnac̣ erta aġc̣ eriloba. Atonuri ḳolekcia. I. Šeadgines da dasabeč̣ dad moamzades Lia
Axobaʒem, Rusudan Gvaramiam, Nargiza Goguaʒem, Manana Dvalma, Manana
Dolakiʒem, Manana Ḳvač̣ aʒem, Gulnaz Ḳiḳnaʒem, Ciala Kurciḳiʒem, Lela Šatirišvilma,
Mzekala Šaniʒem, Nesṭan Čxiḳvaʒem], Tbilisi: Mecniereba.
Bakraʒe, D(imiṭri Zakarias ʒe) (1889), ისტორია საქართველოსი (უძველესის დროდამ მე-X
საუკ. დასასრულამდე) [Isṭoria sakartvelosi (uʒvelesis drodam me-X sauḳ. dasasrulamde)],
Tbilisi: E. G. Mesxi.
Blake, Robert Pierpont (1931–1934), ‘Catalogue des manuscrits géorgiens de la bibliothèque
de la Laure d’Iviron au Mont Athos’ [1–3], Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 3.Ser. [1]: 8=28,
1931–1932, 289–361; [2]: 9=29, 1933–1934, 114–159; [3]: 9=29, 225–271.
Cagareli, Al(exandr) A. (1886), ‘Каталогъ грузинскихъ рукописей и старопечатныхъ книгъ
Иверскаго монастыря на Аѳонѣ, составленъ въ іюнѣ мѣсяцѣ 1883 года [Katalog"
gruzinskix" rukopisej i staropečatnyx" knig" Iverskago monastyrja na Athoně, sostavlen"
v" ïjuně měsjacě 1883 goda]’, in Свѣдѣнія о памятникахъ грузинской письменности
[Svěděnïja o pamjatnikax" gruzinskoj pis'mennosti], I, St. Petersburg, 69–94.
Gippert, Jost (2010), ‘Towards a Typology of the Use of Coloured Ink in Old Georgian Manu-
scripts’, manuscript cultures, 3, 2–13.
Gippert, Jost (2014), ‘O en arši anarxos loġos – Greek Verses in Georgian Disguise’, in
Johannes Den Heijer, Andrea Schmidt, Tamara Pataridze (eds), Scripts Beyond Borders. A
Survey of Allographic Traditions in the Euro-Mediterranean World (Publications de
l’Institut Orientaliste de Louvain, 62), Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Lou-
vain, Institut Orientaliste / Leuven: Peeters, 555–601.
Gippert, Jost (2018), Georgische Handschriften. In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Nationalen
Korneli-Kekelidze-Handschriftenzentrum Georgiens und unter Mitwirkung von Zurab
Tchumburidze und Elene Machavariani, Wiesbaden: Reichert.
Gippert et al. (forthcoming), Catalogue of The Georgian Manuscripts of The Iviron Monastery,
Mt Athos: Holy Monastery of Iviron.
Žordania, T(eodore) (1892), კრონიკები და სხვა მასალა საქართველოს ისტორიისა,
შეკრებილი, ქრონოლოგიურად დაწყობილი, ახსნილი და გამოცემული [Ḳroniḳebi da
sxva masala sakartvelos isṭoriisa, šeḳrebili, kronologiurad dac̣ q̇obili, axsnili da
gamocemuli], Tbilisi: A. Šaraʒe.
 Hidden Colophons | 659

Fig. 1: Hidden colophon in Ivir. georg. 9, fols *8v–*9r. © Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos.
660 | Jost Gippert

Fig. 2a: Hidden colophon in Ivir. georg. 4, fol. 2r. © Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos.
 Hidden Colophons | 661

Fig. 2b: Hidden colophon in Ivir. georg. 4, fol. 2v. © Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos.
662 | Jost Gippert

Fig. 3a: Hidden colophon in Ivir. georg. 16, fol. 299v. © Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos.
 Hidden Colophons | 663

Fig. 3b: Hidden colophon in Ivir. georg. 16, fol. 300r. © Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos.
664 | Jost Gippert

Fig. 4a: Hidden colophon in Ivir. georg. 61, fol. 1r. © Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos.
 Hidden Colophons | 665

Fig. 4b: Hidden colophon in Ivir. georg. 61, fol. 1v. © Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos.
Volker Grabowsky
Sealed Manuscripts in Laos: New Findings
from Luang Prabang
Abstract: This article discusses two palm-leaf manuscripts from the former Lao
royal capital of Luang Prabang which contain royal decrees. Both manuscripts
are dated from the mid-nineteenth century when the kingdom of Luang Prabang
was still a tributary state of Siam. Attached to the manuscripts are well pre-
served royal seals authenticating and legitimising the royal decrees sent to pro-
vincial governors. The materiality and iconography of the seals as well as the
contents of the decrees are analysed against the background of the use of seals
in the manuscript culture of Laos and neighboring Tai speaking regions.

In early August 2013, a team of Lao researchers made an astonishing discovery

in the Sala Hong Tham (lit., ‘Hall for keeping Buddhist scriptures’) of Vat Saen
Sukharam, one of the most prominent monasteries in Luang Prabang, during an
inventory of manuscripts. In the bottom drawer of one of the cabinets were
found two palm-leaf manuscripts, each of which bearing royal seals made of
stick-lac still firmly attached to the palm leaves. This type of sealed manuscript
is very rare in the Thai and Lao world and has so far been little studied.1 Thus,
given its special historical value, it was decided to transfer these two sealed
manuscripts to the collection of the monastery’s museum, a building next to the
abbot’s abode.2
In this article I will give first a brief overview of the use of seals as symbols
of authority in written documents from Laos and present-day Northern Thai-
land. Thereafter, I will discuss the two manuscripts, dated from the mid-
nineteenth century, with regard to their materiality followed by an analysis of
their contents in the context of other extant sources from the same period. Final-
ly, an annotated English translation of the manuscripts will be provided.

||
1 Sealed palm leaves were not unknown in Tamil manuscript culture as Eva Wilden shows in
her analysis of the use of palm-leaf as writing support in Tamil literature in the first millennium.
See Wilden 2012/2013, 71.
2 As for the manuscript collection of Vat Saen Sukharam, see Bounleuth 2015.

Open Access. © 2021 Volker Grabowsky, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-033
668 | Volker Grabowsky

1 Seals as symbols of authority in ancient Laos

and Northern Thailand
As the French historian and epigraphist Michel Lorrillard has shown, the use of
seals as symbols of royal authority in Laos dates back to the fifteenth century
when the kingdom of Lan Sang, founded in 1353, became a Chinese vassal
state.3 Since the founding in June 1404 of the Pacification Commission (xuanwei
si) of Laowo, as the Chinese called the Lao kingdom of Lan Sang (lit., ‘[Country
of] the Million Elephants’), tribute missions were regularly sent to the Imperial
Court until the early seventeenth century.4 Only the bearers of seals issued by
the Ming Court were recognized as rightful rulers. The unauthorized use or de-
struction of such seals would result in severe punishment.5 When issuing mem-
orandums for the Imperial Court, the rulers of Lan Sang and other Tai vassal
states would authenticate them with a Chinese seal.6 Lorrillard provides a few
examples of Chinese seals used by Lao rulers, including one of nine or ten char-
acters engraved in a cartouche of a stone inscription dated 1577.7 The use of
Chinese seals by Lao kings appears until the early nineteenth century, but it still
needs to be investigated how genuinely Lao inscribed seals – the earliest of
which date from the seventeenth century – have evolved from the Chinese model.

||
3 Lorrillard 2015, 8–10.
4 The Ming Shilu (‘Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty’) has a total of 96 entries recording
relations between Ming China and its Lao vassal state of Lao-wo. Most of the entries are from
the fifteenth century with only seven from the sixteenth and four from the seventeenth century.
See Wade 2005.
5 The Ming Shilu reports, for example, that ‘[i]n the year Chenghua 7, 5th month, on bingshen
day (1471), the official seal of the Military-cum-Civilian Pacification Commission of Laos was
burnt and destroyed by bandits (the Kaeo). Officials were sent to find out the truth [before]
casting [another one] for them’, quoted from Liew-Herres 2006, 18.
6 Though no original memorandum from Lan Sang or Lao-wo has been found so far, at least
one manuscript copy of a memorandum from the Pacification Commission of Cheli – the Tai Lü
polity of Sipsòng Panna in southern Yunnan – situated to the north of Lan Sang has been
preserved in the archives of Toyo Bunko in Tokyo. It is a bilingual (Chinese-Tai) memorandum
sent by the ruler of Cheli, Tao Sam Pò Lütai (r. 1457–1497) to the Ming Court. The Tai version of
this document is written in the so-called tamarind pod script (tua aksòn fak kham) and bears
the ruler’s seal at the bottom. See Liew-Herres et al. 2012, 353–357.
7 This inscription has been found at Don Hon, a small island situated in the Mekong river 150
km downstream of Luang Prabang. Since 1915 this inscription has been preserved in a museum
in Hanoi. See Lorrillard 2015, 13.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 669

A seal is called chum (จุม้ ) in ancient Tai. The Shan rulers (or cao fa) used
seals to issue official letters and often appointed their main wives to keep the
seals and to stamp documents with these seals.8 The owners or keepers of such
seals were called chao chum, literally ‘Lord of the Seal’, and exercised consider-
able political influence. The Lan Na and Sipsòng Panna chronicles call in-
scribed seals lai chum (ลายจุม ้ ), or refer to them when accompanied by an
additional written paper document as lai chum lai chia (ลายจุม ้ ลายเจีย).9 This
term appears in twenty-three inscriptions (dated between 1560 CE and 1638 CE)
scattered over the Lao province of Vientiane and the Thai province of Nòng
Khai.10 The lai chum lai chia were kept in the hò chia kham lüang (หอเจียคําเหลือง)
or ‘[Archives of the] Golden Pavilion’ at the Tai ruler’s palace.11

In the following several examples of inscribed artefacts bearing seals are given.
Iconographic features of these seals are discussed to put the two sealed palm-
leaf manuscripts into wider perspective. A royal seal that was once attached to a
silver plate inscription has been preserved in Northern Thailand (see Fig. 1). The
seal, issued by Queen Wisutthithewi,12 has a lotus design on the front and the
queen’s official name, Somdet Chao Ratchawisut (สมเด็จเจ้าราชวิสุทธ์), on the
back. The seal was made of dark brown stick-lac, 5 cm in diameter. The silver
plate resembling the shape of a palm leaf is now broken into two pieces. It is
inscribed on both sides in Thai Nithet script and Tai Yuan (Lan Na Thai)
language. The inscription, dated 1567 CE, contains a royal decree exempting the
inhabitants of a cluster of five villages in a district south of Chiang Mai from
corvée labour in recognition of their taking care for a temple-monastery (wat)
under royal patronage.13

||
8 Somphong (2001, 240) reports that in the Shan state of Hsenwi the governors of subordinate
müang had to pay obeisance to the nang chum when sending tribute to the court of the chao fa.
9 Liew-Herres and Grabowsky 2008, 41; Liew-Herres et al. 2012, 43.
10 Lorrillard 2015, 20, n. 29.
11 See the mention of this expression in the Chiang Mai Chronicle (Wyatt and Aroonrut 1995,
200).
12 Queen Wisutthithewi (also spelled Wisutthathewi) ruled the kingdom of Lan Na from 1564
until 1578. She was the last ruler of the Mangrai dynasty before the country was placed under
Burmese suzerainty. See Sarassawadee 2005, 116.
13 Sarassawadee 2005, 118; see also the German translation of the inscription in Grabowsky
2004, 448.
670 | Volker Grabowsky

Fig. 1: Royal seal of Queen Wisutthithewi of Chiang Mai, dated 1567 CE. Courtesy of Dr. Apiradee
Techasiriwan, Archive of Lan Na Inscriptions, Social Research Institute, Chiang Mai University.

Three royal seals from the Tai Khün principality of Chiang Tung in eastern Bur-
ma, an area which belonged to the kingdom of Lan Na until the mid-sixteenth
century, have recently been published. All three seals are made of dark brown
stick-lac but are no longer attached to their original object, which might have
been a plate made of silver or another type of metal or a palm leaf. The two
seals, each measuring 6–7 cm in diameter have the exalted Khmer-Pali title of
the Chiang Tung ruler – Somdet Kemādhipatirājā (สมเด็จเขมาธิปติราชา) – in-
scribed in Tamarind Pod (Fak Kham) script on the back. Both seals bear the
images of two peacocks facing each other. As the peacock became a state sym-
bol emblazoning the ruler’s seal only after the Burmese conquest (1558),14 the
seals probably date from the second half of the fifteenth or first half of the six-
teenth century. The third seal, measuring 4 cm in diameter, bears on the front
side of the image a war elephant adorned with a howdah on its back, while the
reverse side has been inscribed with the words Phraya Khaek Müang Khemmarat
(พระยาแขกเมืองเขมรัฐ), the title of the liaison officer, a high-ranking minister in
charge of foreign affairs.15

||
14 Originally the special animal of Chiang Tung was the lion while the neighbouring polity of
Moeng Laem chose a golden swan. See Lamun 2007, 36.
15 The three seals are reproduced in black and white images and documented in detail in
Panpen Kruathai and Silao Ketphrom 2013, 289–309.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 671

Fig. 2: Royal seal from Chiang Tung, Burma, c. sixteenth century, front and back sides (Panpen
and Silao 2013, 289).

An elephant also features as the iconic symbol on the front sides of two seals,
each of which are attached to mid-nineteenth-century royal edicts written in
Lao Buhan (Old Lao) script on palm-leaf.16 The back sides of the seals have texts
inscribed in Lao Buhan script as well. The inscription of the first seal reads Braḥ
Rāja-ājñā (พระราชอาชญา), meaning ‘Royal decree’.17 The second seal bears the
inscription Phaya Luang Chum Phu Nòi Soek Khua (พญาหลวงจุม ้ พูน้อยเสิ กขวา),
‘The great seal-carrying official of the Phu Nòi, right-side combat’. This title
most probably signifies a high-ranking Lao military officer in charge of dealing
with the Phu Nòi, a Tibeto-Burman minority living in the remote province of
Phong Saly near the Lao-China border. French social anthropologist Vanina
Bouté discovered these two sealed manuscripts, along with several others, all
made of dark brown stick-lac, during her field research on the ethnogenesis and
integration of this group, which has adopted various features of neighbouring
Tai societies, including Buddhism (see Bouté 2018).

||
16 Of the manuscripts to which the seals were originally attached only fragments are left
which do not contain any dates. However, there are fragments from other manuscripts kept by
her owner in the same small box which have dated from the year CS 1206 (1845/46 CE). I am
grateful to Vanina Bouté for sharing with me the information contained in these fragments.
17 Braḥ (Lao: Pha) is an honorific prefix, rāja (Lao: lasa) means ‘king’, and ājñā (Lao: atnya;
Pali: āñā) means ‘command, order, or authority’.
672 | Volker Grabowsky

Fig. 3: Seal attached to a palm-leaf, from a Phu Nòi (Phunoy) village in Phong Saly province, Laos;
courtesy of Dr. Vanina Bouté from the Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CNRS-EHESS).

2 The sealed manuscripts from Vat Saen

Sukharam
Let us now return to the two sealed manuscript discovered at Vat Saen Sukharam.
The manuscript EAP691_VSS_1_0797 comprises only one single folio written in
Lao Buhan script on both sides (recto: 4 lines, verso: 3 lines). The leaf is 57.4 cm
long and 5.2 cm wide. Attached to the left-hand margin of the recto side is a seal
stating: Pha Akkha Mahesiya (พะอคฺ คะมะเหสี ยา, literally, ‘Her Majesty the Prin-
cipal Queen’). The round-shaped seal has a diameter of 5.5 cm and the seal wax
spills out to the verso side of the leaf. Furthermore, on the right-hand margin of
the recto side is a small piece of white paper (measuring 3 × 4.4 cm) on which
the following text is written with blue ink in modern Lao script: ‘1976 (pink ink),
[the manuscript is dated] CS 1226, BE 2407, 1864 CE (112 years ago)’ (1976 ເມື່ອ
ຈ.ສ. 1226 ພ.ສ. 2407 ຄ.ສ. 1864 [ໄດ້ 112 ປີ]). This means that the manuscript
which contains the text of a royal decree was issued by the Queen of Luang
Prabang in 1864 and rediscovered in 1976, probably by Pha Khamchan
Virachitto (1920–2007), the then abbot of Vat Saen Sukharam. The palm-leaf
folio has ten holes of different sizes which slightly affect the legibility of a few
passages.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 673

The palm-leaf manuscript EAP691_VSS_1_0798 comprises five folios written

in Lao Buhan script on both sides (6 lines for each side), except for the last folio
where only the recto side is written on (5 lines) and the verso side is left blank.
The five leaves are of the same size and measure 56.8 cm in length and 5.3 cm in
width. Attached to the left-hand margin of the recto side of the first palm-leaf
folio is the front side of a seal stating: Braḥ Rāja-ājñā (พระราชอาชญา), meaning
‘royal decree’ or ‘royal order’. The octagonal seal measures 5.8 cm in diameter
and encompasses all five folios. The reverse of the seal attached to the verso
side of the fifth and last folio does not bear any symbol. On the right-hand mar-
gin of the recto side is a small white piece of paper (measuring 3.8 × 4.3 cm) on
which the following text is written in blue ink: ‘1976 (pink ink), [the manuscript
is dated] CS 1219, BE 2400, 1857 CE (119 years ago)’ (1976 ເມື່ອ ຈ.ສ. 1219 ພ.ສ.
2400 ຄ.ສ. 1857 [ໄດ້ 119 ປີ]). This means that the manuscript which contains the
text of a royal decree was issued in 1857 by the King of Luang Prabang
(i.e. Chantharat, r. 1852–1871) and, like the first manuscript, was rediscovered in
1976, probably by Pha Khamchan Virachitto himself. The fourth palm-leaf folio
has one 1.5 cm long crack/hole which runs over the fourth line but only slightly
affects the legibility of some words. Though both manuscripts are written in the
secular old Lao script, the final consonants of a number of words are borrowed
from the subscript variants of the corresponding Dhamma (religious) script
characters. The two seals do not only differ with regard to their shapes, circle
(Queen) versus octagon (King), but also with reference to their colours. Though
both seals are made of dark brown stick-lac, only the front side of the King’s
seal is gilded, emphasizing his highest authority as ‘Lord of the Land’ (chao
phaendin) and ‘Lord of the Great Life’ (chao maha sivit).

3 Contents of the royal decrees

The Queen’s decree is rather short. It stipulates the issuing of letters to a num-
ber of officials admonishing them to act according to the royal orders. Most of
these officials hold the high rank of Saen (literally, ‘one hundred-thousand’),
while others are of slightly lower ranks, such as Thao or Phia. Their responsibili-
ties are unspecified with the exception of Thao Khamphan who is identified as
lam (ล่าม), a term which in modern Thai and Lao refers to a translator or inter-
preter, but in the traditional Tai polities signified the liaison officer in charge of
taking care of visitors having an audience with the king.
The King’s decree begins with his long, exalted title as Lord of the Kingdom
of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol, which runs over more than one
674 | Volker Grabowsky

line. The first part of the decree, running over the first two palm-leaf folios,
deals with a legal conflict between a high-ranking official, Saen Phòng Si Mün,
and many of the commoners (bao phai) who had originally been under his su-
pervision. The commoners, liable to corvée labour, accused their patron (mun
nai) of bad treatment, such as arbitrary punishment and unlawful seizure of
property. Dating back to the reign of the previous king, Sukkhasoem (r. 1839–
1850), the dispute was solved in 1857 by the incumbent ruler, King Chantharat
(r. 1851/1852–1871) who decided to allow the four household clusters comprising
90 households (lang hüan) each to opt for alternative patrons. At the end, 78
households decided to stay with their old patron while the remaining 282
households opted for other patrons that they trusted more. Given the scarcity of
manpower in pre-colonial Laos and most other parts of Southeast Asia, mis-
treatment of the common people by the aristocratic class had its limits. In gen-
eral, commoners had considerable leverage for negotiation when being
confronted with excessive demands from their patron; the choosing of new
patrons as expounded in this royal decree from Luang Prabang also appears in
nineteenth-century Siam whose ruler was the overlord of the King of Luang
Prabang.18
The second part of manuscript EAP691_VSS_1_0798 continues to discuss
the mutual dependence and respect for aristocratic officials (thao khun) and
commoners (bao phai) and the need to treat the latter decently. This request is
most strikingly expressed in the following appeal to the country’s ruling class:

ถ้าและผูใ้ ดยังมานะกระด้างข้างแขง อยูโ่ ดยเอาราชการสมด่าให้ด่า สมพอตีให้ตี สมพอผูกให้ผกู มาใส่

ราชการ คันมาเถิงหน้า เวียก แล้วให้แก่ใส่ราชการ อย่าเอาเบียอย่าเอาเงิน อย่ารักเงินแสนไถ่ ให้รักไพ่
แสนเมือง หล้มให้พอ้ มกันพาย หงายให้พอ้ มกันขี1 ให้เก็บผักใส่ซ้า เก็บข้าใส่เมือง เมืองสันใด-
จักเป็ นราชการ สลองพระเด็จพระคุณคําหนุนพระราชสมภารเราพระองค์
If someone is still disobedient and stubborn when performing public work, then repri-
mand him when he deserves to be reprimanded, beat him when he deserves to be beaten,
and tie him when he deserves to be tied [and] lead him to do his work for the crown. When
he has been tied you must untie him after having reached the workplace so that he can do
his work. Do not take his money. Instead of loving enthusiastically the people’s money
(ngoen thai), you shall love enthusiastically the people (phrai müang) [themselves]. If you
have capsized you should be ready to row, if you are lying on your back you should be

||
18 In fact, the kingdom of Luang Prabang comprising roughly the northern third of present-
day Laos, was a vassal state of Siam since 1779. Whereas the Lao kingdoms of Vientiane and
Champasak in the centre and the south of Laos lost their status as a tributary state, Luang
Prabang retained its status until 1893 when the French seized control over all Siamese territo-
ries on the left bank of the Mekong River.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 675

ready to ride (meaning: you have to stick together in good and bad times.) Gather vegeta-
bles and put them into the baskets, gather subjects and put them into the müang. As for
any public work that will support the glory of His Majesty the King […] (fol. 3v, ll. 5–6)

The underlined phrase (in Thai/Lao: Kep phak sai sa kep kha sai müang) is wide-
ly regarded as a Northern Thai saying that characterizes the forced resettlement
of war captives from regions in the present-day Shan State and Sipsòng Panna
to present-day Northern Thailand during the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.19 The saying was popularized by the late Kraisri Nimmanheminda
who rendered it into English as ‘Put vegetables into baskets, put people into
towns’.20 Turton suggests that the most literal translation is ‘Gather vegetables
(and/to) put [them] into basket(s), gather kha21 (and/to) put [them] into the
müang’ (see Turton 2000, 16).
As Kraisri did not provide any written evidence for the saying, suspicions
arose that the saying might even have been composed by Kraisri himself. How-
ever, the sealed manuscript EAP691_VSS_1_0798 found at Vat Saen Sukharam
clearly confirms the authenticity of the saying which is also documented in
another Lao royal decree from the same period. That decree is written on a white
cotton cloth measuring 96 cm in width and 163 cm in length.22 It is an official
letter sent from the ruler of Luang Prabang (เจ้านครหลวงพระบาง), a vassal of the
Siamese King, to Phrachaiyawongsa, the uparat or deputy governor of Müang
Lan Mat, dated ‘seventh month of the ka pao year [Cula]sakkarat 1215’

||
19 See Grabowsky 1999 and 2004.
20 Kraisri 1965. See also Grabowsky 2001.
21 Kha (ข้า) is a generic term used by the lowland Lao to designate the autochthonous, pre-
dominantly Mon-Khmer speaking tribes of the highlands. Today they make up almost one-
fourth of the population in Lao PDR. In pre-colonial times the kha probably constituted a ma-
jority of the population, notably in the Luang Prabang region (note that the first Lao census
under Sam Saen Thai in the early fifteenth century counted 400,000 Kha but only 300,000 Tai-
Lao!). Many kha moved to the lowlands, where they increased the agricultural workforce of the
Lao rulers and – over several generations – eventually became ‘Lao’.
22 This textile manuscript has been kept in the Thai National Library, along with several
dozen other manuscripts from Hua Phan province in northeastern Laos called bai chum (sealed
letters), which are published in two volumes. The first volume compiles those 21 bai chum
written on textiles (Phimphan 2001), while the second volume publishes another 47 bai chum
written on thin mulberry paper (kradat phlao) or industrial ‘Western’ paper (kradat farang),
along with an analysis of the whole collection of 68 manuscripts (Phimphan 2013). The bai
chum manuscript on textile is published as document no. 9 in volume 1 (Phimphan 2000, 121–
124).
676 | Volker Grabowsky

(June/July 1853).23 The bai chum textile manuscript written in black ink runs
over 47 lines and is authorized by a large red stamped royal seal with a flower
pattern measuring 23.2 cm in width and 22.5 cm in length.

Fig. 4: Royal seal of the ruler of Luang Prabang, dated 1853, in Bai Chum document No. 9
(Phimphan 2000, 17).

The decree deals with several aspects of local administration in Müang Lan Mat,
a dependent müang of Luang Prabang situated in present-day Hua Phan prov-
ince close to the Lao-Vietnamese border. One main aspect of this document
concerns the control of manpower. The Lao king admonishes the local admin-
istration not to exploit the population by raising excessive taxes. On the contra-
ry, the work force is required to be treated decently. Moreover, the local
authorities are given advice to encourage people who had fled to outlying re-
gions to return to areas under government control. In this very context the say-
ing khep phak sai sa kep kha sai müang appears as part of a long phrase which is

||
23 ใบจุม ้ เจ้านครหลวงพระบาง พระราชทานพระไชยวงษาอุปราชเมืองลานมาศ แต่เมื1อศักราช ๑๒๐๕
ตัว, in Phimphan 2000, 117–124.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 677

almost identical with the one quoted above from the palm-leaf manuscript
EAP691_VSS_1_0798 that was produced only four years later. It says:

ถ้าแลผูใ้ ดยังมานะสะหาวขัดแข็งกระด้างกระเดื1องอยู่บ่โดด เอาใจใส่ราชการเราพระองค์ดงั นัน

สมพอด่าให้ ด่าสมพอตีให้ตีสมพอผูกให้ผูกมาใส่ราชการ ถ้าและผูกมาถึงหน้าเวียกแล้วให้แก้
ปล่อยใส่เวียกใส่การ อย่าเอาเบียอย่าเอาเงิน อย่ารักเงินแสนไทยให้รักไพร่แสนเมือง หล่มให้พร้อมกัน
พายหงายให้พร้อมกัน ขวี1 ให้พร้อมกันเก็บผักใส่ซ้าเก็บข้าใส่เมือง เยื1องฉันใดจักเป็ นบ้านเป็ นเมือง
เป็ นรี ตเป็ นคลอง เป็ นราชการ คําหนุนพระราชสมภารพระองค์เรา
If anyone resists the corvée, then reprimand him, when he deserves to be reprimanded,
beat him when he deserves to be beaten, and tie him when he deserves to be tied [and]
lead him to do his work for the crown. When he has been tied you must untie him after
having reached the workplace so that he can do his work. Do not take his money. Instead
of loving enthusiastically the people’s money (ngoen thai), you shall love enthusiastically
the people (phrai müang) [themselves]. You have to stick together in bad times, you have
to stick together in good times. Gather vegetables [and put them] into baskets and gather
people [and put them] into the müang. Thereby the ban-müang (country, political domain)
and the hit-khòng (written: rit-khlòng: customary laws, administrative rules) will be built
up. This is an activity for the crown (ratchakan) supporting His Majesty the King always
more extensively.24

Is it possible that the quotation was a kind of standard phrase used whenever
admonishing provincial governors to treat the King’s subjects with benevolence
so that ‘the Teachings of the Buddha will prosper ever more in the future, and
the people of the country will live in peace and happiness’?25

4 Conclusion
The role and function of seals in Lao and Thai manuscript cultures is still under-
researched. While there are quite a number of extant paper manuscripts and
manuscripts written on textiles which bear seals as symbols of royal or state
authority, sealed palm-leaf manuscripts containing royal orders or decrees are
quite rare. The two well-preserved sealed manuscripts recently discovered in
the monastery of Vat Saen Sukharam in the old royal capital Luang Prabang in
northern Laos bear royal decrees dealing with administrative issues in the prov-
inces (mostly related to the outer province of Hua Phan near the border to

||
24 Lines 35–37 of the manuscript, see Phimphan 2000, 123. The translations offered above is
slightly improved from the one provided in Grabowsky 2001, 69.
25 Line 38 of bai chum no. 9. See Phimphan 2000, p. 119 and 124.
678 | Volker Grabowsky

Vietnam), in particular with the organization and treatment of manpower.

Though only a few other sealed palm-leaf manuscripts of that kind have sur-
vived so far, it seems that they were part of a more widespread cultural practice.
This article includes two of these unique manuscripts, translated for the first
time into English, in the hope of encouraging further in-depth investigation (see
the Appendix below).

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Khamvone Boulyaphonh (Buddhist Archives of Luang Prabang)
for giving me the kind permission to publish the two palm-leaf manuscripts
under study. He also helped improve my translation of these manuscripts.
Thanks go to Apiradee Techasiriwan and to Vanina Bouté for allowing me to
reproduce a seal from the Archives of Lan Na Inscriptions (Social Research Insti-
tute, Chiang Mai University) respectively one from her personal collection.
Moreover, I would like to thank Silpsupa Jaengsawang and Giovanni Cotti for
their valuable comments and suggestions on literature.

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Monastery of Vat Saen Sukharam (Luang Prabang, Laos)’, manuscript cultures, 8: 53–74.
Bouté, Vanina (2018), Mirroring Power: Ethnogenesis and Integration among the Phunoy of
Northern Laos, Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient / Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.
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Rajabhat University.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 679

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Appendix
Translation of manuscript EAP691_VSS_1_0797

Fig. 5: Manuscript EAP691_VSS_1_0797, recto side.

Recto side:

/1/ In Cunlasakkalat [CS] 1226, on the fifth day [of the week], on the twelfth day
of the waning moon of the eleventh lunar month, in a kap chai year,26 Her Maj-
esty the Queen issued the decree that the royal page (mahat lek) Sathu Komsi
Phaisai to the right-hand side, the royal pages to the left-hand side, including
/2/ Phu Nyai Si Sonsai, the official sitting on the feet of the throne, Phu Nyai
Kosa Hatsakot, and Thao Khamphan, [the official] in charge of the royal treas-
ury, issue letters for the Phu Nòi Nguang Kang, commoners of both sides, name-
ly Saen Phòng Luang Sulinyawongsa one letter, Saen Phuak one letter, /3/ Saen
Sutthamma one letter, Saen Khattiya one letter, Saen Siwongsa one letter, Saen
Phòng Si Ban one letter, Phia Su one letter. Of these seven officials (chu), Thao
Khamphan is the liaison officer (lam).27 If the decree of Her Majesty the Queen
requests someone to go, he has to act according to the orders of his own lam /4/
in every respect. Do not disobey, do not persuade other people to work for you.
This is unfair and will be punished. Saen Phòng Luang Mai, Thao Chanthani,
Saen Luang Kuan, Saen Wong, and Saen Si – these five officials (chu) are [under
one] liaison officer. If the decree of Her Majesty the Queen … [End of page]

||
26 1226 Karttika 27 = Friday, 25 November 1864.
27 Though lam is used in modern Thai and Lao for ‘translator’, its primary meaning ‘to tie
(with a rope)’ is still known in modern Thai but is the general meaning in Tai Lü and some
other Tai dialects. According to the late Cia Yaencòng, the institution of pò lam or nai lam was
originally created to exercise tighter political control over the ethnically and culturally hetero-
geneous highlands of Tai polities in southwestern Yunnan but later expanded to the Tai low-
lands. See Liew-Herres et al. 2012, 23–24.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 681

Verso side:

|1/ requires someone to go, he has to follow suit in every aspect. Do not disobey,
do not persuade other people to work for you. This is unfair and will be pun-
ished. According to this stipulation, Saen Phòng Luang Sulinyawongsa, Saen
Phuak, Saen Sutthamma, Saen Khatthiya, Saen Siwongsa, /2/ [Saen] Phòng Si
Ban, and Phia Su paid an audience to Her Majesty the Queen according to the
customs. […] If the liaison officer (lam) places any gifts /3/beneath [the throne],
let anyone of his own servants (luk lam) receive them. Do not rely on other offi-
cials, this is unfair. The decree goes so far. Anyone [who disobeys] will be pun-
ished.

Translation of manuscript EAP691_VSS_1_0798

Fig. 6: Manuscript EAP691_VSS_1_0798, fol. 1r.

Folio 1, recto side:

/1/ The royal power of His Majesty, Lord of the Kingdom of the Million Elephants
and the White Parasol (phrachao lan sang hom khao), Parama Seṭṭha Khattiya
Suriya Phra Rāja Vaṃṣā Pha Mahā Jeyya Cakravarti Bhūminnarindipatti
Paramanāṭṭha Paramapabitra Phra Mahā Dhammamikarājādhirāja Chao /2/ Pha
Nakhòn Müang Luang Phabang Rājadhānī has accomplished a sealed royal
decree as this.28 This royal decree directed at Hua Saen Phòng Luang Suriya-
wongsa Uttamathani Sitthi Saiyamungkhun, Saen Phuak Chanthawongsa, Saen
/3/ Sutthammarasa Bun Hüang, Saen Siwongsa, Saen Luang Chum, Saen Kham
Mungkhun, Thao Phu Luang, Saen Sitthi, Saen Khattiya stipulating that Saen
Phuam and Thao Khun Sam Si Fa, who come down to rely on Khun Kwan, the
nai lam, for paying obeisance to His Majesty the King, /4/ Lord of the Great Life

||
28 Pronounced in Lao: Somdet Pha Pen Chao Lan Sang Hom Khao Bòromma Settha Khattiya
Suriya Pha Rasawongsa Pha Maha Sainya Chakkraphatti Phumintha Narinthathipatti Bòromma-
nattha Bòrommabòphittha Pha Maha Thammikarasathirasa Chao /2/ Pha Nakhòn Müang
Luang Phabang Rasathani Si Ongkha.
682 | Volker Grabowsky

who has already passed away.29 Saen Phòng Si Mün has been oppressing and
mistreating all of the citizens, as I have learned. Therefore, I order the chief
minister (akkha maha senathibòdi) to appoint an appropriate official (thao khun)
to take /5/ Saen Phòng Si Mün to be interrogated and to explain himself. Then
Saen Phòng Si Mün put himself under the shelter of Khun Kwan, his nai lam,
who paid obeisance to His Majesty saying: ‘[There are] Fa Khao Saen Phòng
Kao, Fa Khao Saen Phuak, Fa Khao Saen Nam Pak Theng, and Fa Khao /6/ Thao
Nòt who are all under my supervision. […] Your Majesty has been informed
about this. I ask you to have mercy with Saen Phòng Si Mün and thus consider
that the chief minister (akkha maha senathibòdi) … [End of page]

Folio 1, verso side:

/1/ may take Saen Phuak and all three or four fa khao officials inside the royal
court (hò sanam) to force them to lead a life as commoners (bao phai) of Saen
Phòng Si Mün’. Then Saen Phuak and the three or four fa khao officials in-
formed /2/ the chief minister that since Chao Maha Siwit Luang Fak Nai (i.e., His
Majesty the King) had been pleased to give the order to appoint Saen Phòng Si
Mün to [the rank of] phòng, he forced all of us to pay a fine and took gold and
silver from us. We all could no longer endure this. /3/ We all thus jointly ap-
proached Khun Kwan, their nai lam, and made a complaint to inform His Majes-
ty the King about our sufferings. The King was kind enough to instruct his chief
minister (akkha maha senathibòdi) to let all of us as his subjects, as well as Saen
Phòng Si Mün, to enter for an investigation and interrogation. /4/ Our allega-
tions were heard. Saen Phòng Si Mün argued that he did not suppress us, thus it
would be unfair to punish him because Chao Hak Na had issued a letter and we
had acted accordingly. Thereafter, the chief minister presented /5/ the allega-
tions made by both sides to His Majesty the King who made the judgment that
the chief minister should take the money from Saen Phòng Si Mün and hand it
over to His Majesty the King. /6/ The King felt mercy for both of us and for Saen
Phòng Si Mün, with both sides, and he issued two letters of appointment [stipu-
lating] that we all would no longer be dependent on [Saen Phòng Si Mün].

||
29 This might refer to King Sukhasoem (r. 1838–1850).
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 683

Folio 2, recto side:

/1/ Saen Phuak and Thao Khun Sam Si Fa Khao enjoyed happiness until the
huang khai year.30 His Majesty the King had already passed away, and we all
were suppressed again. Thereafter, in the tao chai year31 the investigation had
not yet been cleared up. Saen Phuak and Thao Khun Thang Sam Si Fa Khao had
not yet been ready to join /2/ Saen Phòng Si Mün. Later, they were confined
until the hap mao year.32 I, the King,33 having a lot of mercy for Saen Phòng Si
Mün, decided to order the chief minister (akkha maha senathibòdi) to take Saen
Phuak and Thao Khun /3/ Nai Sam Si Fa Khao into prison and punish them so
that they could see the essence of their wrongdoing. We do not know whether or
not they realized their deeds. Thereafter, they filed a petition to His Majesty the
King asking for /4/ the chief minister to put us all, as commoners (bao phai),
under the supervision of Saen Phòng Si Mün. We all, though respecting the
royal power to the utmost, claimed that Saen Phòng Si Mün used to molest and
suppress us all. /5/ We all put ourselves under the protection of His Majesty the
King. We begged not to be placed under the supervision of Saen Phòng Si Mün
as mun nai (chief). /6/ We all asked for the royal support and protection of His
Majesty the King in the future. Once there were 90 households of ours under
Saen Phòng Kao, 90 households of ours under Saen Phuak, 90 households of
ours under Saen Nam Pak Theng, ... [End of page]

Folio 2, verso side:

/1/ and 90 households of ours under Thao Nòt. Of the 90 households of ours
under Saen Phòng Kao, six households consented to be under Saen Phòng Si
Mün and 84 households opted to stay with us, with Saen Siwisai as their lord.
/2/ Of the 90 households of ours under Saen Phuak, 15 households consented to
being under Saen Phòng Si Mün [whereas] 75 households opted for staying with
us under Saen Phuak as their chief. Of the 90 households of ours under Saen
Nam Pak Theng, /3/ 31 households sought refuge under the protection of Saen
Phòng Si Mün, [while] 59 households opted for staying with us under Saen
Wang as their chief. Of the 90 households of ours under Thao Nòt, 26 house-

||
30 This was the year CS 1213 or 1851/52 CE.
31 This was the year CS 1214 or 1852/53 CE.
32 This was the year CS 1217 or 1855/56 CE.
33 This was King Chantharat (r. 1852–1871).
684 | Volker Grabowsky

holds sought refuge under the protection of Saen Phòng Si Mün /4/, while the
remaining 64 households, including the 4 fa khao, opted to stay with us under
the protection of Saen Bangkhom. Thus, a total of 78 households opted to stay
under Saen Phòng Si Mün while the remaining 282 households, including the 4
fa khao, stayed with us. /5/ In the twelfth lunar month of each year34 we all
asked to receive the assignment to keep the grass for the King’s sturdy ele-
phants exclusively, as has been the case in the past. Khun Kwan, [our] nai lam,
led us /6/ to have an audience with the King; this has to be done every year
without exception. As for the [other] 78 households who are under the com-
mand of Saen Phòng Si Mün, they ought to perform works for his Majesty the
King according to his pleasure.

Folio 3, recto side:

/1/ I, the King, have issued the order that the chief minister (akkha maha
senathibòdi) had placed them under the command of Saen Phòng Si Mün as his
commoners (bao phai) but they did not consent. They thus made a complaint
/2/ to me in this way. I realized that their complaint was honest and justified.
Therefore, I ordered the chief minister (akkha maha senathibòdi) to appoint
Saen Phuak to the position of Saen Phòng Luang Suriyawongsa Uttamathani,
/3/ to appoint Saen Siwisai to the position of Saen Phuak Chanthawongsa, to
appoint Saen Bangkhom to the position of Saen Sutthamma Rasa Bun Hüang, to
appoint Saen Wang to the position of Saen Siwongsa, to appoint Saen Chum to
the position of Saen Luang Chum, to appoint /4/ Saen Kham Hong to the posi-
tion of Saen Kham Mungkhun, to appoint Khun Chan to the position of Thao
Phu Luang, to appoint Sip Wiak35 to the position of Saen Sitthi, and to appoint
Khanan Khattiya to the position of Saen Khattiya. They shall be ready to safe-
guard, look after and take care of the people of our country. /5/ Do not let them
move elsewhere to the South or to the North. Even if they have been frightened
and were afraid, so that they might flee to all directions to place themselves
under the protection of [the ruler] of any other places, large or small, /6/ ditches
and channels, mountain ridges, and dense forests wherever [people have taken
shelter], Saen Phòng Luang Suriyawongsa shall appoint officials (thao khun) to
persuade [the refugees] to return to their country to become … [End of page]

||
34 November–December, depending on the moon phase.
35 Probably an official in charge of supervising the work (wiak) of a group of ten (sip) com-
moners.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 685

Folio 3, verso side:

/1/ a human resource as before. At the end of a year taxes in cash and kind have
to be paid as well as precious objects such as bracelets. [Cutting] the grass [for
feeding the King’s] elephants is a long-established activity. /2/ Saen Phòng
Luang Suriyawongsa and all the officials (thao khun) have to collect all of this.
Khun Kwan, the nai lam, leads [them] to have an audience with the King every
year as usual. Do not abandon this. /3/ Saen Phòng Luang Suriyawongsa and all
the officials (thao khun) shall join hands to protect the country’s territory, both
on land and water. These are the caves, the cliffs and rocks, the rubber trees, the
bamboo canes, heartwood trees, the teeth and horns of wild animals, ivory,
various kinds of deer, the forests and the highlands. /4/ The fruit of all kinds of
trees, on land and water, everything which belongs to the King has to be report-
ed and presented to the King by Saen Phòng Luang Suriyawongsa according to
the customs without interruption. /5/ Any litigation has to be examined and
decided by Saen Phòng Luang Suriyawongsa and all officials (thao khun). If the
amount in dispute is over 200 [units] and a decision cannot be agreed upon,
they have to come down and let /6/ the chief of the tasaeng consider the case. If
the amount in dispute is over 400 [units] and a decision cannot be agreed upon,
they have to come down and let the chief minister (akkha maha senabòdi) con-
sider the case according to the laws of the country. With regard to the laws and
customs, … [End of page]

Folio 4, recto side:

/1/ if Saen Luang Suriyawongsa has a matter, I, the King, have the mercy to let
him act according to that matter, without any exception. If the laws and cus-
toms do not have [any stipulation], do not add anything, this is not permitted.
As for the construction [carried out] by Saen Luang Suriyawongsa, /2/ which
means the construction of houses and the making of dry and wet rice fields, he
has to inform all the commoners (bao phai) to carry out these construction
works according to the rules and traditions of the country. If they do not keep
pace with these works, do not mistreat them. Do not fine and punish them. Do
not exploit them. This is not permitted. /3/ As for royal works, whether they
occur during daytime or nighttime, all officials (thao khun) have to think about
such works together with Saen Phòng Luang Suriyawongsa. They need to listen
to Saen Phòng Suriyawongsa’s arguments. Nobody has to object. /4/ The com-
moners (bao phai) shall listen to the arguments put forward by the officials
686 | Volker Grabowsky

(thao khun) in a similar way according to the respective positions held by com-
moners and officials. If someone is still disobedient and stubborn /5/ when
performing public work, then reprimand him when he deserves to be repri-
manded, beat him when he deserves to be beaten, and tie him when he deserves
to be tied [and] lead him to do his work for the crown. When he has been tied
you must untie him after having reached the workplace so that he can do his
work. Do not take his money.36 Instead of loving enthusiastically the people’s
money (ngoen thai), you shall love enthusiastically the people (phrai müang)
[themselves].37 /6/ If you have capsized you should be ready to row, if you are
lying on your back you should be ready to ride. Gather vegetables and put them
into the baskets, gather people and put them into the country (müang). As for
any public work that will support the glory of His Majesty the King, ... [End of
page]

Folio 4, verso side:

/1/ […] please jointly consider it and make the works lawful, do not deviate.
Everyone, be it the craftsmen, the servants, the wanderers, the servants of the
officials, the merchants, have to pay a fine and be punished by paying a fine in
kind if they do any harmful acts. /2/ If they molest [someone] they will be ar-
rested and flogged. You need to investigate and interrogate. If a stipulation is
not recorded in the law you need to tell of this and jointly stop it. Do not be
indifferent or ignore this. /3/ You must absolutely not support [such attitude]. If
they still suppress and molest [people] you have to be ready to tie them around

||
36 The phrase ya ao bia ya ao ngoen could be understood as a request not to accept bribes
from people who would like to be exempted from corvée labor.
37 The phrase ya rak ngoen saen thai hai rak phrai saen müang is a rather complex parallel
structure composed of a combination of several parallel pairs: saen + rak (to love exceedingly);
phrai + thai (commoners, population at large). As an excellent analysis of the frequent use of
parallelisms in traditional Lao literature, see Koret 1995. Ignoring the parallelism of the sen-
tence discussed above, several alternative translations might be theoretically possible. Saen,
literally ‘hundred thousand’ can also denote a high rank in government service. However, the
rank of saen thai is unknown both in Lan Na and Lan Sang. Another alternative focuses on the
suggestion that the word thai, written ไท in the original form and interpreted by Phimphan
(2000, 123) as ไท, should be read, adding the tone marker mai ek which is often missing in old
manuscripts. Then thai would mean ‘cloth’ or ‘fiber bag’, and the whole phrase could be ren-
dered as follows: ‘Instead of loving the money [filled in] numerous bags, love the people (phrai,
commoners) of numerous müang’. This translation, however, has to be regarded as rather
unlikely.
 Sealed Manuscripts in Laos | 687

their arms and bring them to the chief of the district (tasaeng) who shall hand
them over to the royal court where they will be punished. /4/ If there is a section
recorded in the law clearly, it must be acted according to the royal power, even
if /5/ all kinds of people have the desire to be subjects of His Majesty the King
and place themselves under his protection. Thus, we need to be ready to per-
suade them with good intentions. Another clause (of the law) says that if ene-
mies, evil persons and thieves /6/ sneak into the territory (of our country) to
commit harmful acts against its people all day and night, Saen Phòng Luang
Suriyawongsa must mobilize the officials and commoners to fight against them
until achieving victory.

Folio 5, recto side:

/1/ If someone is still rebellious and recalcitrant, he has to be punished in ac-

cordance with martial law. According to all agreements of the royal officials, the
officials in charge of the elephant unit and the cavalry, /2/ volunteers, crafts-
men, servants, wanderers, the servants of noblemen, merchants moving back
and forth, everyone is forbidden to molest and suppress people, squeeze mon-
ey, /3/ garments, cows, buffaloes, pigs, dogs, ducks, chicken, granaries, fields,
but also not let their wives and daughters argue that they are [only] commoners
cutting the grass for feeding the royal elephants. The royal decree stipulates just
this. /4/ Whoever disobeys will be severely punished. Everyone has to follow
the royal decree and refrain from doing anything beyond this royal decree. [This
decree was written] on the auspicious year [CS] 1219, a moeng sai year, /5/ on the
twelfth waxing day of the ninth lunar month, the first day of the week,38 at the
time of the morning drum, at the auspicious moment of 20.

||
38 1219 Sravana 12 = Sunday, 2 August 1857.
Eva Wilden
Naming the Author: The Taṇṭi Motif in the
Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition
Abstract: One of the most important early treatises on the figures of speech in
Sanskrit, the Kāvyādarśa (‘Mirror of Poetry’, eighth century CE), was adapted
into Tamil for the first time in about the eleventh century CE as part of a bigger
treatise, and then again a century later as Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram (‘Ornaments of
Taṇṭi’). The author of the Kāvyādarśa, Daṇḍin, became ‘Taṇṭi’ in Tamil and
remained a sort of tag for the tradition concerned with the figures of speech in
poetry; in fact he left his trace as an author’s name as late as the sixteenth cen-
tury in the preface to Māṟaṉalaṅkāram (‘Ornaments of Māṟaṉ’), in the form of a
dialectal variation, Teṇṭi. The preface to the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram that informs us
about ‘Taṇṭi’ does not have a broad basis of sources; it is apparently transmitted
only in a limited number of the manuscripts that contain the frequently copied
and important text Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram. Consequently the preface has found entry
only into few of the editions. Recently a new manuscript has come to light
(MSSML 631) which gives additional information which might have been delib-
erately suppressed in the print tradition. The parentage and education of ‘Taṇṭi’
in the paratexts of this Tamil sub-school of poetics thus may teach us a lesson
not only about the fluidity of transmission but also about the arbitrary choices
of editors and their possible political agendas.

1 Introduction
1.1 The preface as a paratext in the process of transmission
Information about authors is notoriously rare in the whole of Tamil literature.
Literary history in the Western sense started only during the colonial period in
the nineteenth century when a new genre was created, or rather imported,
namely, a narrative interspersed with verse quotations that gives (traditional)
chronological accounts of the lives and works of poets and scholars. The most
well known of these works is Casie Chitty’s Tamil Plutarch. A Summary Account
of the Lives of the Poets and Poetesses of Southern India and Ceylon, first pub-
lished in 1859.

Open Access. © 2021 Eva Wilden, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-034
690 | Eva Wilden

For the earlier period, the sources are references and quotations in the com-
mentary literature and occasional inscriptions,1 but first of all the mostly anony-
mous verses that are transmitted in the wake of the written transmission. Those
verses may be part of textual colophons, even rarer than scribal ones, which are
preserved for about only 10 per cent of the surviving manuscripts. They may be
satellite stanzas added at the beginning of a bundle on an unnumbered folio.
They may have become an integral part of the textual tradition, in which case they
may be found at the beginning of the first numbered folio as a ‘protection’ (kāppu)
or a ‘preface’ (pāyiram). The important thing to note, however, is that as soon as
printing comes into play they are invariably relocated to the beginning of the
book, either as a part of the editor’s preface (quoting or only summarising the
information contained in the verse) or as a ‘laudatory preface’ (ciṟappuppāyiram).
A detailed discussion of the subgenres involved may be found elsewhere;2 it suf-
fices here to say that it appears impossible to reconcile the theoretical discussion
about prefatory material with either manuscript usage (which in our case, how-
ever, may mirror only the late premodern usage of, say, the seventeenth to the
nineteenth centuries) or with print usage (which unsurprisingly simplifies and
standardises complex and fluid states of transmission).
The aim of the present article is to explore, on the one hand, the degree to
which such anonymous stanzas dealing with authorship have become part of
literary subgenres, or in other words, the degree to which they are conventional-
ised and follow a model once they are established in a certain tradition. On the
other hand, the article focuses on the way that tradition can be manipulated
and information changed or even suppressed, and what the possible reasons for
doing so might be.

1.2 Tamil schools of poetics and the ‘ornaments’ of Taṇṭi

When trying to understand how tradition functions in terms of affiliation and
community, the best example is the numerous schools that developed in the
most fruitful theoretical domain of the Tamil people, namely, grammar in the
wider sense, which includes not only phonetics, morphology, and syntax, but
also poetics, metrics, and rhetoric – in other words, most of the language-related
disciplines that were needed for training future generations of poets and the
connoisseurs to appreciate their skills.

||
1 Collected in Govindasamy 1977.
2 Wilden 2017, 170–174.
 The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition | 691

There are two obvious ways of describing and analysing school formation.
One is the traditional Indian way of tracing a lineage beginning with a treatise
and continued by a succession of commentaries. The other is to examine the
development of curricula, a line of investigation recently pursued by Giovanni
Ciotti.3 To reconcile these two approaches is not easy, as, put in a nutshell, we
would expect the followers of a school in the sense of the former model to read
the texts belonging to their own tradition, instead of mixing the works of multi-
ple schools as is done in many of the manuscripts representing a curriculum. A
possible answer may have to take into consideration two aspects, both equally
important. One is the fact that not all the grammatical schools include texts for
all the necessary sub-domains of grammar enumerated above, so that for a
complete education students had to resort to material outside their immediate
tradition. The other aspect is the temporal restriction of our extant sources,
which allows access only to witnesses from the late Premodern Period, when
most of the schools had ceased to be alive and active, which might have made it
easier for scholars to choose freely from what had been inherited.

Table 1: Tamil schools of grammar.

century CE comprehensive phonetics+ figures of speech

morphology/syntax

1st –10th Tolkāppiyam

th
11 Iḷampūraṇar [Vīracōḻiyam]
th
12 Pērāciriyar Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram
th
13 Cēṉāvaraiyar Naṉṉūl
Maiyilainātar
14th Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar
th
15 Teyvaccilaiyār
Kallāṭaṉār
16th Māṟaṉalaṅkāram
th
17 Āntipulavar
Caṅkaranamaccivāyar
18th Civañanamuṉivar
19th Irāmāṉucakkavirāyar
Kūḻaṅkaitampirāṉ

||
3 Ciotti 2021.
692 | Eva Wilden

Table 1 shows examples of what such schools could look like, giving the names
of treatises in italics followed in the same column by the names of their
commentators. Even when a school became inactive in so far as it did not bring
forth new commentators, the transmission and, presumably, the teaching con-
tinued, as is proved by the simple fact that today there are still numerous (in the
cases taken up below very numerous) manuscript copies available.
The Tolkāppiyam (i.e. a treatise composed by somebody from the family of
that name) is the oldest surviving comprehensive grammar, an enormous trea-
tise in three books that was compiled and rearranged probably throughout the
first millennium and then followed by a commentarial tradition of six commen-
tators (not all of them on the complete work) from the eleventh to the fifteenth
century. This work became the role model for all that followed, as will be shown
in the next section with respect to its preface, even though as a description of
language the Tolkāppiyam was superseded by the second school, the Naṉṉūl
(‘Good Treatise’), composed in the early thirteenth century, with a commentary
tradition extending right into the nineteenth century. This, however, was not a
comprehensive text, which means that for teaching purposes it had to team up
with other branch schools. One such partial school was that of Taṇṭi, which is
the focus of this discussion, and its tradition is also noticeable for organising its
credentials in a slightly different manner.
The treatment of the figures of speech or ‘ornaments’ (alaṅkāra in Skt., aṇi
in Tamil) might have entered the Tamil tradition as a treatise in its own right,
but if so, that treatise has been lost.4 The first extant and quite terse Tamil ver-
sion goes back to a Sanskrit source, the Kāvyādarśa, composed by Daṇḍin in
about the eighth century.5 It is found in the eleventh-century Vīracōḻiyam
(named for its patron from the Cōḻa royal dynasty), a considerably less success-
ful attempt at rewriting Tamil grammar by using Sanskrit technical terminology
throughout. The section on ornaments appears as its fifth part. This arrange-
ment may be the most obvious reason why school formation in this case did not
work by means of a line of commentaries. About a century later, a fresh adapta-
tion is found; one hesitates to call it a translation simply because it is describing
the ornaments used in Tamil poetry, which could not have been achieved by a
mere one-to-one re-rendering in the target language. This fresh adaptation is

||
4 For an attempt at tracing the pre-Daṇḍin history of the ‘ornaments’ in Tamil, see Chevillard
2019, as yet unpublished but available online at <https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-
02179709> (accessed on 10 May 2021).
5 On the importance of Daṇḍin’s work (particularly the Sanskrit and Tamil versions) for Indian
poetics as a whole, see Monius 2000.
 The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition | 693

called the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram, no doubt after the author of the Sanskrit original,
Daṇḍin, as mentioned above. The name remained so powerful that the Tamil
author-translator himself was called by the name of that Sanskrit scholar – in
Tamil, Taṇṭi – a fact that may be explained as conferring a badge of honour on
the Tamil scholar: he is as eminent as his Sanskrit counterpart.6 To cut a long
story short that has not yet been explored in the detailed manner it deserves, in
the Tamil treatment of alaṅkāras or aṇis, the sense of tradition is bound up with
this name of the founding figure, Taṇṭi. It is still found in the later treatises on
the topic such as the sixteenth-century Māṟaṉalaṅkāram. Before going into
crucial references to this Taṇṭi in the Tamil tradition, especially the preface to
the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram, it is necessary to look into the model preface provided by
the Tolkāppiyam.

2 The matrix of a preface in the oldest

grammatical treatise
Larger than life looms in the background of the Tamil grammatical tradition the
figure of Tolkāppiyaṉ, the author of the earliest extant treatise, the Tolkāppiyam,
just as is the case with Pāṇini in the Sanskrit tradition. Tolkāppiyaṉ was,
according to grammatical lore, one of the twelve disciples of the Tamil ur-
grammarian Akkatiyaṉ, member of the first literary academy whose work has
been lost in the course of time.7 At first glance it is surprising that nothing of this
relationship has found entry into the famous preface of the Tolkāppiyam,
perhaps the oldest of its kind and an integral part of the textual transmission
(included by the commentaries), printed today as a laudatory preface (ciṟappup-
pāyiram), and in the manuscripts also simply called a preface (pāyiram). The
explanation is delivered by one of the commentators, Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar, in his
own preface to the commentary on the first part of the Tolkāppiyam, which
deals with phonetics: there was a quarrel between master and student, and
Akattiyaṉ unjustly cast off his first disciple, with the consequence that his own

||
6 For another example of this kind, consider the early poet names in classical literature where
the poet is henceforth called after a powerful image created by him, such as Cempulappeyaṉīrār
for the author of Kuṟuntokai 40, that is, ‘He who [sang about] red earth and pouring rain’.
7 A brief but succinct history of the legends surrounding this founding figure is given in
Chevillard 2009.
694 | Eva Wilden

work was lost and his student’s treatise became the ‘primary’, i.e. the founda-
tional treatise (mutal-nūl) of the tradition.
The preface, quoted and translated below in Table 2, with fourteen lines of
verse of medium length, tells us everything that tradition expects its adherents
to know about the great scholar:

Table 2: The preface of the Tolkāppiyam

vaṭa vēṅkaṭam teṉ kumari range From the Northern Vēṅkaṭa hills to
āy iṭai, tamiḻ kūṟu nal ulakattu Southern Kumari,
in the good world where Tamil is spoken,
vaḻakkum ceyyuḷum āy iru mutaliṉ content examining letters, words, and meanings,
eḻuttum collum poruḷum nāṭi beginning with the two [types of] worldly
and poetic [speech],
cem tamiḻ iyaṟkai civaṇiya nilattoṭu credentials seeing, with the field that is intimately
muntu-nūl kaṇṭu muṟaippaṭa eṇṇi related to refined Tamil,
pulam tokuttō ṉē pōkk’ aṟu paṉuval the previous treatise, thinking it through,
nilantaru tiruviṉ pāṇṭiyaṉ avaiyattu he compiled the work, a faultless discourse
in the assembly of Nilantaru Tiruviṉ
Pāṇṭiyaṉ,
aṟaṅ karai nāviṉ nāṉ maṟai muṟṟiya corrector scrutinised, for errors to come to an end, by
ataṅkōṭṭācāṟk' aril tapa terintu Ataṅkōṭṭācāṉ,
who was accomplished in four Vedas, [his]
tongue a bank of virtue,
mayaṅkā marapiṉ eḻuttu muṟai kāṭṭi tradition showing a method [for writing] letters in an
malku nīr varaippiṉ aintiram unambiguous manner,
niṟainta replete [with the knowledge of] Aintiram,
bordered by the abundant water,
tolkāppiyaṉ eṉa taṉ peyar tōṟṟi author manifesting his name as Tolkāppiyaṉ,
pal pukaḻ niṟutta paṭimaiyōṉē. he who is the model that is established in
great fame.

This preface famously starts with the region in which the language that the
grammar deals with is spoken, namely, Tirupati in the North (now in Andhra)
and Cape Comorin in the South. The preface then gives us the content of the
work, that is, three chapters on phonetics, morphology or syntax, and poetics
that describe both worldly and poetic language. Next the preface moves on to
the credentials of the work, that is, the court of the king in which it was present-
ed and approved. It identifies the corrector and the tradition from which the
book comes, here naming the Northern school of Aindra, not its own legendary
 The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition | 695

predecessor, the work of Akkatiyaṉ. And finally the preface adduces the name
of the author, Tolkāppiyaṉ. One might also have expected the name of his father
and his birthplace, but they are not mentioned here. The end brings a single line
of praise for the scholar, not much according to the standard followed by many
later verses of this type. Almost all the elements that make up this preface will
be found again in a slightly different arrangement in the verse that plays the
corresponding role in the Taṇṭi tradition.

3 Taṇṭi as an author in the printed versions

The first mention of Taṇṭi in the Tamil tradition is found in the aforementioned
first adaptation, the Vīracōḻiyam. In this case the reference does not come as a
paratext but is integrated into the first aphorism of the section on ornaments
which, following the general pattern of rhetoric employed in this book, address-
es a girl as the putative listener of the teaching:

! " # # $ !
% $ & !#' ( !

urai ~uṭal āka ~uyir poruḷ āka ~uraitta vaṇṇam

nirai niṟam ā naṭaiyē celav’ ā niṉṟa ceyyuṭkaḷ ām
tarai mali māṉiṭar tam +alaṅkāraṅkaḷ taṇṭi coṉṉa
karai mali nūliṉ paṭiyē ~uraippaṉ kaṉam-kuḻaiyē!8

I shall expound, oh lady with heavy earrings,

in the very manner of the treatise that spreads to the [other] shore [of knowledge],
which Daṇḍin uttered on the ornaments of human beings, abundant on earth,
that are poems in which words stand as [their] body, meaning as [their] soul,
the series of alliterative patterns as [their] complexion, style/[rhythmic] motion as [their] walk.

Befittingly, the section on figures of speech, or ornaments, starts with a convo-

luted image that depicts a text which is beautified by such figures of speech, as
a human body is decorated with ornaments. Apart from the content of the
section which introduces, with heavily Sanskritised terminology, something
that of course already existed in Tamil poetry (as in any other), it is this refer-
ence to the Sanskrit source which allows us to make the direct connection with

||
8 Vīracōḻiyam 143.
696 | Eva Wilden

the Kāvyādarśa and its author. Here the Tamil taṇṭi definitely has to be
understood as a direct reference to Daṇḍin. The topic of translation from
Sanskrit into Tamil is not yet introduced here, and the text itself rather bears
testimony to an effort at understanding a concept.9
For the next version in line, the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram, things are in the process
of being normalised and a verse preface has been produced; only here that pref-
ace does not seem to have taken a very firm hold in the textual tradition and its
transmission. Speaking of the printed text, none of the early editions, as far as I
could get hold of them (see bibliography), contains this preface at all. The first
version I could trace is found in the edition of Cuntaramūrtti (my book of 2016
presumably being a reprint of the 1967 edition), and he quotes the verse in his
introduction instead of putting it as a preface to the text itself. In the popular
edition by Tamiḻaṇṇal of 2004, the preface is printed, as would be expected, as
the ‘laudatory preface’ (ciṟappupāyiram). Such a state of affairs may well be
regarded as suspicious, and a look into the manuscript transmission seems to
offer some explanation: of the five manuscripts currently at my disposal, only
one contains the preface (on which more below). The two print versions availa-
ble at any rate agree with each other on the wording:

Table 3: The ‘ciṟappuppāyiram’ of the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram

vaṭa ticai iruntu teṉ malaikk’ ēki lineage and After – from the Palkāppiyam on the path of
mati tavaḻ kuṭumip potiya māl varai tradition the Tolkāppiyam
irum tavaṉ taṉ-pāl arum tamiḻ that was composed by the first of twelve
uṇarnta scholars,
paṉṉiru pulavariṉ muṉṉavaṉ who had understood difficult Tamil from the
pakarnta great ascetic
tolkāppiyam neṟi palkāppiyattum on the vast Poti mountain of him in whose
top the moon crawls
after going from the northern direction to the
southern mountain –
aṇi peṟum ilakkaṇam aritiṉiṉ content he had understood with difficulty the grammar
terintu that pertains to ornaments
vaṭa nūl vaḻi muṟai marapiṉiṉ Sanskrit without swerving from the custom, sequence,
vaḻāat’ heritage [and] way of the northern treatises,
without transgressing the twice two
boundaries,

||
9 On the development of the trope of a Sanskrit origin for Tamil texts, see Wilden 2021b.
 The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition | 697

Table 3 (continued).

īr-iraṇṭ’ ellaiyiṉ ikavā mummaip credentials in a metrically suitable way he assigned

pārata ilakka ṇam paṇpuṟat taḻīit difficult meaning
tiruntiya maṇi muṭic cempiyaṉ in the assembly of Cempiyaṉ, with a jewel
avaiyatt’ crown, that was perfect
arum poruḷ yāppiṉ amaiv’ uṟa in encompassing excellently Indian grammar
vakuttaṉaṉ threefold,
nāṭaka maṉṟattu nāṭakam naviṟṟum a scholar of the Tamil treatises who had
vaṭa nūl uṇarnta tamiḻ nūl pulavaṉ understood the northern treatises,
having also proclaimed a drama in the drama
hall
pū viri taṇ poḻil kāviri nāṭṭu place in the land of the Kāviri with flower-spread
cool groves,
vamp’ aviḻ teriyal ampikāpati father brought forth by the house of penance that is
mēvarum tavattiṉ il payanta befitting
for Ampikāpati with a wreath on which new
[flowers] open,
tā arum cīrttit taṇṭi eṉpavaṉē. author – the one who is called Taṇṭi, of a fame
difficult to generate.

A comparison with the Tolkāppiyam preface quoted in the last section should
make the dependency obvious as far as the informative elements are concerned,
with the addition that here we also get the birthplace and the father’s name.10
But there is subtle play on some of the details. The reference to the Northern
and Southern boundaries of the area where Tamil is spoken is cleverly
employed to evoke another strand of grammatical folklore, namely, the ur-
grammarian Akattiyaṉ (who was summoned by Lord Śiva to Mount Kailash in
the North and then sent to the South to sit on Mount Potiyil in order to make a
counterweight to Śiva’s assembly of sages in the North so that the earth would
not tilt). The version of the tradition according to which the Akattiyam (the lost
work of Akattiyaṉ) is followed by the Tolkāppiyam, which in turn is followed by
the Palkkāppiyam, can be traced back to another commentator on the
Tolkāppiyam, namely, Pērāciriyar. In other words, the anonymous author of the

||
10 I will not go into the details, used in arguments about the date of the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram, of
the popular stories connected with the name of Taṇṭi’s father, Ampikāpati, putative son of the
poet Kampaṉ, illicit lover of the Cōḻa king’s daughter, and put to death by that king. The stories
are told in the Ampikāpatikōvai (for a summary, see Apitāṉa Cintāmaṇi 2001, 74.1+2). At any
rate, the connection between the two names, Taṇṭi and Ampikāpati, seems to go back to our
preface.
698 | Eva Wilden

current preface gives his Taṇṭi the crème de la crème of the tradition as
antecedents. This is duly followed by an allusion to the Sanskrit heritage (here
called ‘the northern treatise’). The credentials in the form of a royal assembly
where the work was presented are ascribed to the Cōḻa, not the Pāṇṭiya dynasty.
There follows a sentence about Taṇṭi’s education both in Tamil and in Sanskrit,
making Sanskrit his secondary field of expertise; the sentence is underlined
because we will find a different version of it in the next section. Sadly, the
allusion to Taṇṭi’s familiarity with drama is not backed up by anything we
know; no dramatic text in his name appears to have survived.
The verse, although clever and charming, is in itself unremarkable; dozens
of this type have been transmitted. Noteworthy is the previously mentioned fact
that no trace is left of what may have been the proper name of the man called
‘Taṇṭi’.
In order to show how tradition moves on, based on the same pattern but
modifying and extending for the purpose of accommodating new trends in theory
and poetic practice, a brief glimpse into the preface of the next treatise that still
bears the name of alaṅkāram, the Māṟaṉalaṅkāram, shall conclude this section.
This text goes back to the sixteenth century and is Vaiṣṇava in leaning, as can
already be gleaned from its title, which evokes one of the names of the poet
saint Caṭakōpaṉ. This is a considerably bigger book, including, among other
things, a bulky first chapter on the theory of prefaces, so far mostly neglected by
modern scholarship, apart from the 2005 edition by Ti.Vē. Kōpālaiyar, which
contains not only the old commentary but also the explanatory notes of the
great scholar.
This preface is much longer, beginning with the iconic reference to the area
between Tirupati and Cape Comorin, mentioning the assembly of the learned
and ending with the name of the author, Perumāḷ Kavirāyaṉ, but in the current
context lines 11–16 suffice:

*+ , $* - ."
/+ ,& / / 0
1+2 3
1+ ' +" ' +" 4 +"
+ 5 6 7 !7
+ $ 89 ! :

mutumoḻit teṇṭi mutaṉūl aṇiyōṭum

putu moḻip pulavar puṇarttiya aṇiyaiyum
taṉātu nuṇ uṇarvāl taru pala aṇiyaiyum
maṉāt’ uṟat tokuttum vakuttum virittum
potuviyal poruḷ col aṇi eccaviyal eṉac
catur peṟa iraṇṭ’ iṭam taḻīiya cārp’ eṉal āyk
 The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition | 699

Bringing together, dividing and expanding,

so as to be taken in by the mind,
with the poetic figures (aṇi) from the primary
treatise of Teṇṭi with ancient wisdom,
the poetic figures (aṇi) brought together
by scholars in new words
and the many poetic figures (aṇi) given
by his own subtle perception
as a tertiary treatise (cārpu) that encompasses
two sections while obtaining four [chapters in one of them],
namely, Potuviyal, Poruḷ-, Col-, Aṇi- [and] Eccaviyal

These lines describe both the content and the tradition in which the new treatise
stands, and with respect to both there are a couple of new elements. First, the
words ‘bringing together, dividing and expanding, so as to be taken in by the
mind’ refer to the fact the work has gained considerably in size, and the reason
given here is didactic: for the sake of easier understanding, the author has
changed the arrangement and extended the presentation. The content is de-
scribed not only by chapter titles (last two lines), but also by the antecedents
that have provided the material presented here. The poetic figures or ornaments
taken up are said to have three sources, alluding to the common concept of
primary, secondary, and tertiary treatises, where the primary treatise founds a
tradition – the role played for the whole of grammar by the Tolkāppiyam – the
secondary treatise follows in its wake and expands but does not deviate from
the master, and finally the tertiary treatise goes into even more detail.
The role of the primary treatise is attributed here to the work of Teṇṭi (dia-
lectal variant of Taṇṭi), while the further figures collected by later scholars im-
plicitly have to be counted as the secondary treatise(s), because the tertiary
treatise is adduced to the current author, Perumāḷ Kavirāyaṉ, who contributes
his own figures to the collection. There are two possible interpretations for this
series. The name Teṇṭi may refer to the original Sanskrit Daṇḍin, in which case
a slight would have been committed here against the Tamil author known as
Taṇṭi, because he would not have been mentioned by name and not have re-
ceived the proper recognition. Or the primary treatise referred to here is the
Tamil Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram, and the subsequent scholars would be those who de-
veloped new poetry in the period between the twelfth and the sixteenth century,
the time when the Māṟaṉalaṅkāram was conceived. In the latter case, the San-
skrit heritage would have been disavowed, something perfectly conceivable in
the course of a long tradition, but less likely perhaps given the continued San-
skrit element in the very title. The most economic interpretation may be that by
the sixteenth century the figure of Teṇṭi/Taṇṭi has become fully legendary and
700 | Eva Wilden

the distinction between the author of the Kāvyādarśa and the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram
is no longer made.

4 The new evidence from MSSML 631

As stated above, the manuscript transmission of the preface is narrow, as far as
can be determined today. The Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram was a very popular text, and
dozens of additional manuscripts no doubt are out there.11 Of the five manu-
scripts currently at my disposal, what is possibly the oldest one, from
Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai (TAM 330), is in such a bad condition that it is not even possible
to ascertain whether the verse is there. The two manuscripts that went to Paris
(INDIEN 205 and 206, one dependent on the other) clearly belong to a strand
which does not transmit the preface. One beautifully conserved manuscript
from Ceṉṉai (UVSL 181) comes with several pages of as-yet-unexplored satellite
material, but the preface is not found.12 The one witness available is a remarka-
ble MTM of grammatical treatises found in the Sarasvati Mahāl library in
Tañcāvūr (MSSML 631).13 The Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram begins on image 491 (identified
by a marginal title) with the text of the preface, concluded by the words:
pāyiram muṟṟum, ‘here ends the preface’. The first twelve lines are reasonably
identical, but the printed line 13 differs significantly and is preceded as well as
followed by one so far unknown line, and then the verse ends with the familiar
last four lines containing the birthplace, the father’s name, and the name of the
author.

Fig. 1: Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram in MSSML 631; © Mahārājā Serfoji Sarasvati Mahāl Library, Tañcāvūr.

||
11 An impressive list of extant manuscripts is found in the as-yet-unpublished critical edition
of M. Karunanidhi 2007, the author’s dissertation. He includes the preface but cites it in the
known print version, although he lists MSSML 631 among his witnesses.
12 For a first exploration of the devotional satellite material found in the grammatical
tradition, see D’Avella 2020.
13 This manuscript, clearly an important witness for a local school of grammar, contains
unusual material for more than one text; for its version of another treatise on poetics, the
Iṟāiyaṉār Akapporuḷ, see Wilden 2021a. Since the folios are in disorder and the foliation
disrupted, currently the best way of identifying a leaf is by referring to the image number.
 The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition | 701

Fig. 2: The lines of the preface that deviate from the print versions.

* #' : '4; [|] ? %@ %A

/ [ |] ǂ &/ ; & [|]
B 4 ,A 4 1 . [|] " C 4 5 D"/ 0
0! A [|] EF 0
$ !– *AG" –

kāṉ muṟai vaṇaṅku nāṉ maṟaik kuricilat [|] tami nūluṇarnta vaṭa nūṟ
pula[vaṉ |] ǂtavit taṭap pulamai kavucikap peyarōṉ [|]
pū viri taṇ poḻiṟ kāviri ṉāṭṭu [|] vampaviḻ teriyal ampukāpati
mē varun tavattiṉiṟ payanta [|] tāvaruñ cīrttit taṇ
ṭi yeṉpavaṉē – pāyiramuṟṟum –

It is very worthwhile to take a closer look at the new lines 11′, 12 and 12′:

* #' 5 : '4;
?[C] %5 %5 / [ ]
ǂ &/ ; &

kāṉ muṟai vaṇaṅku nāl maṟaik kuricilat

tami[ḻ] nūl uṇarnta vaṭa nūl pula[vaṉ]
ǂtavit taṭap pulamai kavucikap peyarōṉ

one Kaucika by name, of vast erudition,

a scholar of the northern treatises who has understood the Tamil treatises,
master in the four Vedas, who bows at the correct times.

To recall, this text block corresponds to the simple line 12 of the printed version:

%5 ?C %5 /

vaṭa nūl uṇarnta tamiḻ nūl pulavaṉ

a scholar of the Tamil treatises who had understood the northern treatises
702 | Eva Wilden

What has changed and what has been added? The first additional line depicts
Taṇṭi as a master in the Vedas, unlikely for anybody who is not a brahmin. Sec-
ondly, the modified line 12 makes him a Sanskrit scholar who has also mastered
Tamil, and not vice versa, as in the printed line. The second additional line
gives him another name besides Taṇṭi (following in the very last line), namely
Kavucikam, which can reasonably be explained as the Sanskrit gotra name
Kaucika; in other words, Taṇṭi is here positively identified as a brahmin. In the
early print era as well as throughout the twentieth century, this provides an-
other powerful reason either for not printing or for altering the transmitted pref-
ace, namely, nascent Tamil nationalism and its hatred of Sanskrit and brahmins.

5 Conclusions
To sum up the situation:
– The old editions do not contain the verse at all.
– More recent editions quote the verse either in their introduction or as a
‘laudatory preface’ (ciṟappuppāyiram).
– The manuscript transmission was fluid, and some manuscripts did not give
a preface at all.
– MSSML 631 has a significantly different version called a ‘preface’ (pāyiram).

This leaves us with basically two options of interpretation. Either the manu-
scripts that have a preface vary according to context and region and possibly
mirror differences of opinion in the local schools. In order to support such an
interpretation it would be helpful to locate manuscripts that actually corre-
spond to the print reading. Or, and this option cannot be ruled out until further
manuscript evidence has been brought to light, the change and deletion in the
recent editions have to be explained as an act of political correctness: Taṇṭi
should not be considered either a Sanskrit scholar or a brahmin.
Of course there is one general feature of palm-leaf transmission that one
should always keep at the back of one’s mind, namely, that it is difficult to add
material: the dense layout mostly rules out the options of marginal or interline-
ar annotation. This means that if somebody wants to tamper with tradition (or
even simply add a new gloss or a new piece of information) his basic means of
doing so will be to make a fresh copy (needed anyway because of the limited
lifespan of manuscripts in the South-Indian climate) and to integrate (or delete)
according to his lights and prerogatives, with the consequence that the process
in the copy will be virtually undetectable, unless philological and historical
 The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition | 703

analysis can bring forward arguments that make such interference likely, or
other palm-leaf witnesses can be found that read differently. In that respect,
palm-leaf copying in South India resembles print transmission: it has the power
to create a fait accompli which can be reversed only with a lot of digging and
luck.

Acknowledgements
The material discussed in this article was first presented at the 10th NETamil
workshop on school formation, which took place in August 2018 in the EFEO
centre of Pondicherry; my thanks go to all the participants in the ensuing dis-
cussion.

References
Primary sources
! # ", I *" ( " : # J , T.V. Kōpālaiyar (ed.), Ceṉṉai:
Śrīmat Āṇṭavaṉ Ācciramam Śrīraṅkam, 2005.
Thandi Alankaram with Commentary and Explanatory Notes, V.M. Satakoparamanujachariar
and S. Krishnamachariar (eds), Madras: V N Jubilee Press, 1901.
$ # ", K& ; , Ko. Irāmaliṅkat Tampirāṉ (ed.),
Tirunelvēli Teṉṉintiya Caivacittānta Nūṟpatippuk Kaḻakam, 1947 [1st edn: 1938].
$ # ", I *" ( ", Vai. Mu. Kōpālakiruṣṇam (ed.), Ceṉṉai:
Āṉantapārvati Accakattilum Śrīrāmaliṅkam Accakattilum, 1962.
$ # ", /0 * L , Tamiḻaṇṇal (ed.), Maturai: Mīṉāṭci Puttaka
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5 & ", LM 0 ", 5 0 ", 0 ", T.V. Kōpālaiyar (ed.),
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Madras [repr. New Delhi: AES, 2001] [in Tamil].
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and Poetesses of Southern India and Ceylon, Jaffna: Ripley & Strong [repr. 2nd rev. ed.,
New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1982].
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of Agastya’s Twelve Disciples’, in Gérard Colas and Gerdi Gerschheimer (eds), Écrire et
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Orient.
Chevillard, Jean-Luc (2019), ‘The “colourful” retrospective horizon of Vīracōḻiyam-143 at the
advent of the Daṇḍin doctrine in Tamil Nadu’, unpublished paper available at
<https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02179709> (accessed on 10 May 2021).
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Eva Wilden (eds), Education Materialized: Reconstructing Teaching and Learning Contexts
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Dmitry Bondarev
A Typology of West African Ajami
Manuscripts: Languages, Layout and
Research Perspectives
Abstract: In the process of creating their manuscripts, the scribes in West Africa
had two linguistic sets – Arabic and non-Arabic (Ajami) – and they had to visu-
ally express these repertoires following the logic of interplay between these
different sets. The suggested classification of Ajami manuscripts tries to follow
this logic. Besides establishing formal types, the classification provides a
glimpse into specific cultural domains that generated different types of manu-
scripts and suggests research perspectives and methods of study relevant to
each type.

It was October 2011, I was in Mao, Chad, working on a Kanembu dialect spoken
there and looking for commentaries on religious Arabic texts written in Old
Kanembu. I was asking around about the existence of such manuscripts, giving
a description of what they usually look like: A Qur’an text written in large script,
with Kanembu written between the lines of Qur’anic text. One evening, I was
talking to my host’s guest who mentioned a chest of manuscripts inherited from
his late father. To my question about written Kanembu in his collection, he said,
‘You mean Ajami? Yes, I think there is some’. Two weeks later the owner was
pulling out dusty chunks of paper from a wooden chest. ‘This must be what you
are looking for’, he said. I took a thin manuscript and it was indeed an Ajami
text – a poem written in Arabic script in a variant of Kanembu I had never come
across. This manuscript has proved to be important evidence of cross-register
hybridisation of written language,1 but it was not the type I was looking for at
that time. This counter-expectation triggered many years of musings on the
diversity of Ajami manuscripts and their typology, finally leading to the typolo-
gy of Ajami manuscripts presented in the following.2

||
1 Bondarev and Dobronravin 2019.
2 The typology in this paper owes much to collective discussions within the Ajami Lab at
CSMC and in many ways was inspired by Michael Friedrich’s attention to the multiple inter-
faces between text and material object and his kin interest in the study of West African Islamic
manuscripts.

Open Access. © 2021 Dmitry Bondarev, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-035
708 | Dmitry Bondarev

1 The term Ajami

African languages written between the lines and in the margins of the Islamic
manuscripts of West Africa often have a descriptive metalinguistic marker, as-
serting the presence of an Ajami segment. This marker is typically a graphic
variation of the word ʿajamī or ʿajam, an Arabic term for ‘non-Arab’ or ‘non-
Arabic’. Another way of the metalinguistic labelling of the Ajami glosses found
in the manuscripts is the Arabic phrase fī kalāminā ‘in our language’ (‫)ﻓﻲ ﻛﻼﻣﻨﺎ‬
and its variations. If fī kalāminā is not the most frequent device to signal the
presence of a local language (it is mainly reported in the manuscripts of the
Senegambia and Mali regions),3 the ʿajamī/ʿajam label is found in almost all
written traditions of West Africa based on Arabic script. Recent cataloguing and
digitisation projects in Mali and Senegal show that this label occurs with anno-
tations in Soninke, Mandinka, Songhay, Tamasheq, Bamana, and other lan-
guages of the region.
This practice seems to have a long history. The earliest Soninke glosses
marked with the word ʿajamī are found in manuscripts of the Senegambia writ-
ten from around the early nineteenth century. In Hausa Ajami writing, various
stylised forms of ʿajam(ī) were frequently used4 and are datable to the first half
of the nineteenth century5. Moving further east, manuscripts with Old Kanembu
glosses are generally believed to lack the ʿajamī label. However, there is at least
one occurrence of such a label in the Borno Qu’ran, dated 1080 AH / 1669 CE.
This single occurrence of ʿajamī makes it the oldest known case of labelling
non-Arabic writing in West Africa. The term ʿajamī in this manuscript was most
certainly written before 1669 since we know that the Old Kanembu glosses were
added to the main Qur’an text first, while the voluminous Arabic commentary of
al-Qurṭubī, which wraps around the main text, was done afterwards, in 1669.6
Given that the scribes of West Africa have always been conscientious about
pointing to a specific non-Arabic linguistic layer in their writings, it is probably
no surprise that different uses of Ajami were shaped in different ways. In the
process of creating their manuscripts, the scribes had two linguistic sets – Arabic
and non-Arabic – and they had to visually express these repertoires following
the logic of interplay between these different sets. The suggested classification

||
3 For the use of ʿajamī and fī kalāminā in Soninke and other Mande manuscripts see
Ogorodnikova 2017, 122–125.
4 Dobronravin 2013, 91.
5 Bondarev 2019a.
6 See Bondarev 2017, 119–122 and Bondarev 2019a.
 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 709

of Ajami manuscripts tries to follow this logic. Beside establishing formal types,
classification provides a glimpse into specific cultural domains that generated
different types of manuscripts and suggests research perspectives relevant to
such domains.

2 Typology of Ajami manuscripts

The typology is organised according to the relationship between (a) Ajami,
(b) Arabic and (c) layout and is made up of 5 distinct types: 1. Ajami primary
manuscripts; 2. Intralinear Ajami (Ajami phrases following Arabic phrases on
the same line); 3. Interlinear Ajami (Ajami written between the lines);
4. Occasional Ajami in densely written Arabic texts; and 5. Ajami in healing and
esoteric manuscripts.
Each of these types exhibits individual historical dynamics in terms of
change and function that call for different methods of study.

2.1 Ajami Type 1: Ajami primary manuscripts

Ajami primary manuscripts are the best studied and until 2010s were the only
focus of Ajami research. Single Ajami texts can roughly be subdivided into three
subtypes: poetry, history and correspondence.

2.1.1 Sub-type 1a: Poetry

Type 1a is made up of poetic texts. They become more prominent and wide-
spread towards the middle of the twentieth century when manuscripts were
increasingly disseminated in facsimile form. Due to its prominence in a more
recent history of Islam in West Africa (i.e. during the last 200 years), poetry in
Ajami is much better studied than the other two subtypes of single Ajami manu-
scripts.7
These are poems composed by famous Islamic scholars, such as ‘Abd Allāh
b. Fodiye (1764/5–1829), Nana Asmā’u (1793/4–1864) (both writing in Fulfulde

||
7 See for example Brigaglia 2013/2014 on the spread of literacy and Hausa verse in Nigeria
stimulated by Sufi revival, or Hassane 2009 on religious poetry in Songay-Zarma in Niger,
Salvaing and Hunwick 2003 on Fulfulde in Guinea and Ngom 2016 on Wolof in Senegal.
710 | Dmitry Bondarev

and Hausa), Muhammadu Samba Mombeya (1755–1852) (Fulfulde), Man

Shinkafa (1800–1894) (Nupe) or by ‘learned’ griots, such as farba of Futa Jalon
or Baa Hamma (or Maabal) of Bandiagara (late nineteenth century) and copied
from autographs or written down from oral tradition.8
Spanning various genres – didactic and praise verse, elegies and eulogies –
these poems often serve pedagogical ends to transmit basic elements of Islamic
knowledge. They are typically written in a distinct linguistic register and thus
are of special interest for research into register variation. Specialized poetic
registers often disappear. For example, Roger Blench observes that Ajami poems
in Nupe is a ‘highly specialized sub-genre and has almost disappeared today,
along with the use of Ajami script among the Nupe’.9 A good example of how a
specialized register may survive in manuscripts but escape the attention of
scholars is the Nupe poem Miya ‘I begin’ on Muslim conduct and customs com-
posed by Abdullahi b. Ibrahim Man Shinkafa (1800–1894).

Miya mire jin yebo nya tsu na jin yi na

Soko wacin a zankpe ya zana kpau ye na
Jama jati kaye tsu na yi kagboci na
Alhamdu yebo rejin o ya tsoici yi na jii na
Assalatu yeshi be yii yagi Amina nau mana

I begin with gratitude to the Lord, our Creator;

Allah is Exalted and Mighty for one that reflects
(He) causes laughter and cry, an attribute of The Powerful Lord
Thanks be to the Lord who created us…10

Two manuscript copies of the poem shown in Fig. 1 are very similar in text and
orthography (although very different in layout).11
Banfield and Macintyre (1915) who published the beginning of the manu-
scripts (Fig. 1a), transcribed the text correcting archaic and register-specific
features. Thus, the aspect marker re in mire (underlined) was changed to a mod-
ern Nupe aspect marker e which resulted in change of meaning. This is shown
below:

||
8 See a.o.: Hiskett 1975, Boyd and Mack 1997 and Dobronravin 2004 on Hausa, Muhammadu
1963, Sow 1971, Haafkens 1985, Salvaing and Hunwick 2003 and Seydou 2008 on Fulfulde,
Ndagi 2011 on Nupe.
9 Blench 2010, 6.
10 Ndagi 2011, 28.
11 I am grateful to Nikolay Dobronravin who was the first to have identified Nupe as the lan-
guage in MS Or.954 and who pointed to the change of aspect markers in Banfield and
Macintyre 1915.
 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 711

Numbers and abbreviations in examples below: 1 = MS Banfield and

Macintyre 1915; 2 = Cambridge, University Library, MS Or. 954; 3 = Banfield and
Macintyre’s transcription; 1s/p, 3s/p = first/third singular/plural; IMPF
= imperfective; REL = relativizer.

1. miyā mi-rē yabū yāθū nā jā θijīnā

2. miya mi-rē (ye?) yabū yāθū nā jā θījinā
1s.begin 1s-IMPF love to lord REL do.3p and.3s.do.1p.REL
‘I begin, with gratitude to (lit.: I loving) the Lord who made them and us.’

3. miya mi e-be yebo ya’tsu na jin a ci ajin yi na

1s.begin 1s IMPF-add love to.lord REL do 3p and 3s.do 1p REL
‘I have begun, I am adding thanks to the King who made them and us.’

2.1.2 Sub-type 1b: Historical texts

Type 1b is represented by various historical texts. They range from narratives

about the history of towns and polities to simple lists of rulers or scholarly line-
ages.12 Unlike religious poetry, historical manuscripts are not numerous. They
usually represent discontinued practice of recording collective memories which
may nevertheless continue in the oral tradition. Occasional copies of such man-
uscripts made in the twentieth century do exist but the rationale for creating
them is not always clear.
These manuscripts are good sources for proper names: places, peoples,
ethnic groups, learned lineages, etc. Special attention should be paid to differ-
ent spelling subsystems. Some formulaic expressions or frequent grammatical
items may be written in a more unified way than proper names. For example, in
Borno gargams (genealogical lists), the word <kargō> ‘he lived’ is written identi-
cally across all gargams. This verb form occurs at the end of each description of
a ruler and therefore is one of the most frequent items in the genealogical lists.
However, the place name Gazargamu – the most famous city in the Borno histo-
ry – is written differently in four gargams: MS H/279: <gasarkmu>, MS H/280:
<gazarkmu>, MS H/281: <gazarkumu>, and MS H/282: <qasargmu>13. This differ-
ence in spelling consistency may betray the coexistence of two distinct phenom-
ena in such historical narratives. One is a fixed frame controlled by formulaic
expressions and the other is fluid content selected on circumstantial demand.

||
12 Schaffer 1975, Giesing and Vydrin 2007, Wilks 2011, Bondarev 2014.
13 Bondarev 2014.
712 | Dmitry Bondarev

2.1.3 Sub-type 1c: Correspondence in Ajami

This subtype is poorly studied despite frequent allusions to Ajami being used in
personal letters.14 In some areas of sub-Saharan Africa, writing personal letters
in Ajami was a common practice.15 In other areas, correspondence in Ajami was
rather an exception from a more common practice of writing letters in Arabic.16
One such exceptional case are letters in Hausa written in the early twentieth
century in Bauchi (Northeast Nigeria). The letters were issued by the British
colonial office, namely by Oliver Howard, the Resident of Bauchi (i.e. Head of
colonial office) and were addressed to the emir of Gombe. The emirs of Bauchi
also wrote to the colonial residents in Hausa at that time.

2.2 Ajami Type 2: Intralinear

‘Intralinear Ajami’ refers to African language phrases following Arabic ones
written on the same line. Similarly to Type 1, such Ajami is written in a continu-
ous act of writing.
Unlike Type 1, however, but similarly to Type 3, such manuscripts provide
translations of Arabic into a local language. They have a rigid pattern of alterna-
tion between short Arabic noun/verb phrases and their translation into the
target language. This is the most enigmatic Ajami type because the context and
intended purpose of this layout are unclear. We do not yet understand why, but
this layout is used restrictively for only two types of text.
The most frequent – popularly known as Umm al-Barāhīn ‘The Major Evi-
dence’ – is the short theological treatise al-ʿAqīda al-Sughrā (‘Small Creed’) of
Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Sanūsī (d. 1486) and various derivatives of the text.
Sanūsī’s work deals with the oneness of God (so-called tawḥīd), proofs of God’s
existence and God’s attributes.17
It is possible that these manuscripts are related to fixed texts transmitted in
oral domain, such as kaɓɓe (‘creed’) texts in Fulfulde which are largely based

||
14 See for example Mumin and Versteegh 2014 and chapters therein by Meikal Mumin,
Maarten Kossmann and Ramada Elghamis, Valentin Vydrin, Andy Warren-Rothlin, Xavier Luffin,
Kees Versteegh.
15 Ngom 2010 on letters in Wolofal, Ngom et al. 2018 in Mandinka.
16 Dobronravin 2004.
17 Gutova 2011 is a detailed study of Umm al-Barāhīn translated into Kabyle Berber, which
however is not written in the Ajami Type 2 layout.
 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 713

on Sanusi’s creed and are equivalent to popular Arabic texts on belief translated
into local languages and circulated in spoken medium in poetic form.18
Fig. 2 shows two copies of Umm al-Barāhīn written in Ajami Type 2 layout
with alternating phrases in Arabic (red ink) and Old Kanembu (black ink). There
are striking similarities between the older manuscript from Mamma Haidara
Library, Timbuktu (no one knows how it got there), and a recent one from
Dr Kyari Sherif’s collection, Maiduguri.19
Both manuscripts have exactly the same pattern of parsing the Arabic text
into smaller units, and they share a large amount of identical Old Kanembu
phraseology and grammatical structures, suggesting remarkable stability of
transmission.
For example, the first phrase in Arabic bi-smi’llāhi ‘in the name of God’ is
followed in both manuscripts by identical translation into Old Kanembu ala-be
θu-n badinuskī (God-of name-by I.start) ‘I start by God’s name’. (Compare it with
the same ‘beginning’ formula in the Nupe poem discussed under Type 1 Ajami).
The other text written in Type 2 layout is a popular elementary textbook on
ritual duties Mukhtaṣar fī l-ʿibādāt al-Akhḍārī of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Akhḍārī
(d. 1585). As of now, however, we are only aware of one copy with intralinear
translation in Mandinka.20
Interestingly, despite the popularity of these two elementary treatises, their
intralinear translations are only found in manuscript form. This stands in con-
trast to Types 1 and 3 which in more recent times are disseminated as facsimiles.

2.3 Ajami Type 3: Interlinear Ajami (systematic annotations)

This type of Ajami refers to local languages mostly written between the lines of
the Arabic text. The annotations in vernacular are in fixed specialist registers
cutting across regions and ethno-linguistic groups. In the Soninke data from
wider Senegambia and Mali, it is a variety of Soninke which has almost uniform
grammatical structures across different manuscripts. In the Old Kanembu man-
uscripts from the Lake Chad region where the Kanuri and Kanembu languages
are spoken, it is an archaic variety related to Kanuri and Kanembu, but unintel-
ligible to the modern speakers of these languages. Type 3 seems to be stable in
Senegambia/Mali manuscripts in terms of layout. In the twentieth century,

||
18 Brenner and Last 1985.
19 See the whole manuscript at BOKIM/SOAS website.
20 Ngom et al. 2018.
714 | Dmitry Bondarev

however, it starts appearing in facsimile form and in southwest Senegal the

language configuration changes: if in earlier manuscripts the language of trans-
lation is Soninke, in later period it changes to Mandinka.21 The layout of the Old
Kanembu manuscripts pushes this type to its most extreme; some manuscripts
have only one line of the main text – the remaining space being taken by anno-
tations.22 Many such manuscripts move to facsimile reproduction in the twenti-
eth century. However, the most dramatic change is observed in the Borno
Qur’an manuscripts with Old Kanembu annotation: this type of Qur’an disap-
peared by the mid-nineteenth century.
In these manuscripts, glosses in Ajami are systematically applied to the
source Arabic text in order to explicate its grammatical structures and render
accurate translations.
The annotations are systematic in the sense that rather than being random
occasional translations, they are written methodically above (or sometimes
below) the elements of the Arabic text. The phrases in the target language are
written above the corresponding phrases in Arabic and the output translations
have a high degree of consistency in their lexical and grammatical features
across manuscripts.
The interlinear annotations reflect the spoken translation of Arabic texts
that is widely practiced in sub-Saharan Islamic Africa. In many West African
cultures such translational practices had a codification effect on vernacular
languages whereby the registers used for translation developed into special
scholarly linguistic codes, often venerated and considered second to Arabic,
prompting the terms ‘awkward translation’, ‘learned vernaculars’, ‘translational
reading’ and ‘metalanguages’.23 Whatever the accuracy of the terms, they all
point to the unique property of these linguistic codes as being (a) used in the
context of translation, (b) part of scholarly and pedagogical milieu, and (c) for-
mally acquired.
Ajami Type 3 has high potential for various areas of research. It gives clues
to the scribal practices during the process of Islamic education, most typically at
intermediate phases of education.24 Additionally, it reveals cultural and ethno-
linguistic identities,25 and helps us understand the formation and stabilisation
of core curricula in traditional Islamic learning. Type 3 provides rich linguistic

||
21 Ogorodnikova 2016.
22 Bondarev 2017.
23 Egouchi 1975, Brenner and Last 1984, Bondarev 2013b.
24 Bondarev 2017.
25 Ogorodnikova 2016.
 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 715

data for specialized registers used in Islamic education. As they shed light on
earlier stages of language, they are useful data for historical linguistics. Some
manuscripts of this type are important sources on interaction between lan-
guages in diglossic or multiglossic situations. Soninke for example, was used as
a scholarly language for interpretation of Arabic texts in Mandinka-speaking
communities.26
The examples in Figs 3a and 3b are from Old Kanembu manuscript tradition
developed in the pre-nineteenth century Borno Sultanate. The Islamic scholars
of Borno used several interpretational levels, or layers, in order to present the
Qur’anic Arabic in Old Kanembu with minimal loss of grammatical and seman-
tic content. These layers include morphosyntactic analysis, and phrase-by-
phrase and sentential translation and interpretation. The samples in Figs 3a, 3b
and 3c are from three different Qur’an manuscripts separated by space and
time. The first sample (Fig. 3a) is from the so called ‘Gwandu Qur’an’ from
Gwandu Emirate, in what is now northwest Nigeria/southwest Niger. The sec-
ond manuscript (Fig. 3b) probably originates from the old Borno capital
Gazargamu, in what is now northeast Nigeria, and the third sample (Fig. 3c)
comes from Katsina which is situated between Gwandu and Gazargamu. The
Gwandu and Gazargamu manuscripts are datable to the late seventeenth centu-
ry, and the Katsina manuscript to sometime between the eighteenth century to
early nineteenth century. The glosses in the three manuscripts exhibit a re-
markable uniformity in translating the Qur’anic Arabic into Old Kanembu and
thus illustrate a fixed and systematic nature of specialist registers associated
with this type of Ajami manuscripts.
Table 1 provides transliteration and translation of Old Kanembu glosses ap-
plied to the Qur’anic verse of Surat al-Qasas (The Story): ‘Indeed, Pharaoh ex-
alted himself in the land and made its people into factions, oppressing a sector
among them, slaughtering their [newborn] sons and keeping their females
alive.’ (Corpus.quran.com). The emphasised part in italics is the section exempli-
fied by the translation into Old Kanembu. Although there is significant spelling
variation, the lexical and grammatical elements of translation as well as syntac-
tic structures are very similar in the three unrelated manuscripts, as the under-
lined elements in the Old Kanembu texts demonstrate. For example, the
possessive pronoun sǝ ‘its’ (spelled as <s>, <jī> and <θ> in respective manu-
scripts) is systematically followed by the direct object (DO) clitic -ka to translate
the grammatical function of the Arabic noun phrase ’ahlaha ‘its people’ as
direct object of the Arabic verb jaʿala ‘he made’. The clitic -ro is used as a marker

||
26 Ogorodnikova 2017.
716 | Dmitry Bondarev

of the second direct object (which corresponds to the Arabic grammatical cate-
gory mafʿul bihi al-thani – second direct object expressed by the accusative form
shiya’an of the noun shiya’ ‘sects’) and -halan is consistently used in all three
manuscripts to indicate the adverbial clause of manner ‘by weakening them’.

Table 1: Comparison of Old Kanembu glosses in three Borno Qur’an manuscripts.

Chapter: verse of the Arabic

Qur’an

Q.28:4 jaʿala ’ahlaha shiyaʿan yastaḍʿifu ṭā’ifatan minhum

‘made its people into factions, oppressing a sector among them’
MS (origin or provenance) gloss in Old Kanembu
4MM (Gwandu) sdī s-ka jamāʿa yagōlōbu-ro kisadirai-ḥalan
‘he.made its-DO people being.split-IO weakening.them’
‘he made its [people] into split communities, weakening them’
1YM (Gazargamu) yāl-jī-ka jamāʿa yagōlōgnro θidī jamāʿa-ka kisdrai-ḥalan
people-its-DO being.split he.made people-DO weakening.them
‘he made its people into a split community, weakening (this)
community’
A33 (Katsina) θdī ahl-θ-ka… jamāʿaro yākoloro θdī … -s-ḥalan
he.made… to.people into.split he.made… -ing
‘he made its people into a split community, [weaken]-ing (them)’

2.4 Ajami Type 4. Occasional annotations

Occasional and random translation of some Arabic words into a local language
occur in the margins of densely written Arabic texts. This type varies relative to
specific parameters, such as time (more recent manuscripts have less Ajami),
domain of study (tafsīr manuscripts may have fewer Ajami annotations than
fiqh ones which deal with conduct and legal issues), and region (more occa-
sional glosses in Soninke than in Old Kanembu). However, the lack of any sys-
tematic research renders these observations very tentative.
These manuscripts usually reflect a more advanced level of Islamic educa-
tion when Arabic becomes the sole scholarly language with less need to use
local languages as props at the intermediate phases of learning. Compared to a
systematic nature of Type 3, the occasional Ajami manuscripts are not so rich in
linguistic data. Yet they have a potential for understanding why local languages
were still required even at this stage of education.
 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 717

Type 4 manuscripts are very difficult to identify because the Ajami writing
is much less conspicuous than in the other types. This partly explains why these
manuscripts have rarely been studied.27
Our recent findings from the African voices project suggest that Type 4 Aja-
mi might constitute the bulk of Ajami material. Unfortunately, to find all Ajami
in occasionally annotated manuscripts would mean turning each page of ALL
available manuscripts in West African collections – a task beyond any one per-
son’s capacities and life span, let alone academic funding.
As an example of what can be found in these manuscripts, we will have a
look at the following page from Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, a very popular commentary of
the Qur’an.
In the upper right hand side corner (marked with a red tick), there are two
words in Hausa written upside down. The first Hausa word reads <giginiya>
which most likely corresponds to gigī́nyā ‘deleb palm’. The second word is writ-
ten as <tufāfiyā> which is tumfā́fiyā́ ‘apple of Sodom’. Both words show an at-
tempt of the scribe to translate the Qur’anic Arabic ʔaθl (‫‘ )ﺃﺛﻞ‬tamarisk’ Q. 34:16
(written in red ink) which is also explained in Arabic by a synonymous word
ṭarfāʔu (‫( )ﻁﺮﻓﺎء‬in black ink) with the same meaning ‘tamarisk’.
Note that the scribe also included a helpful indicator ( ) above the Arabic
ʔaθl (‫ )ﺃﺛﻞ‬and repeated it in front of the Hausa word gigī́nyā to make sure that
readers like us find the corresponding Arabic words easily.

2.5 Ajami Type 5: Healing and esoteric manuscripts

Type 5 Ajami manuscripts differ from the previous three (Type 2 – Type 4) in
that the Ajami is not used for translation of Arabic. This type represents healing,
talismanic and esoteric practices. These manuscripts are diglossic: Arabic has
the agentive function towards the recipient of the amulet whereas the vernacu-
lar provides metadata about the uses and benefits of the amulet. There seems to
be specific distribution of local languages in such manuscripts. In the
Senegambia and Mali, Mandinka and other Manding languages predominate
rather than Soninke; in Nigeria, it is mostly Hausa, rather than Old Kanembu or
Kanuri. This type is most numerous in terms of individual manuscript items,
currently estimated at several hundred thousand in Mali only (SaMaT 2018).

||
27 See Dobronravin 2013 as a good exception.
718 | Dmitry Bondarev

Although the popularity of talismanic manuscripts is recognized in the sec-

ondary literature,28 the function of Ajami content in these manuscripts has rare-
ly been studied.29
Compared to Type 4 however, it is easier to find Ajami in such manuscripts.
They usually consist of just one or two folios (leaves) and their esoteric nature
can be inferred from visual characteristics, such as magic squares, long strings of
letters conveying numerical values, and the conspicuous shapes of some words.
Medical and talismanic manuscripts are rich in socio-economic realities. For
example, amulets with Bozo words and phrases are related to the social and
occupational status of the Bozo ethnic group as professional fishermen. Thus,
many Ajami texts from the Bozo area contain protective formulae against large
fish or water animals, such as hippos (‘binding hippo’s mouth’ is one such for-
mula). The Ajami terms are usually used for describing the names of plants,
animals, ingredients of medicinal potions and terms for diseases. As such, Aja-
mi Type 5 is a good source for ethnobotanical and ethnomedical research.
But why do the esoteric branches of Islamic knowledge expressed in amu-
lets and healing manuscripts require the use of African languages alongside the
Arabic? One possible answer is that Arabic and vernacular serve different func-
tional domains, as in a typical diglossic situation. Arabic has an agentive func-
tion towards the recipient of the amulet whereas the vernacular serves for
instructions (e.g., how to use a healing amulet), labelling (e.g. the purpose of
the amulet) and production manuals (e.g., how to produce an amulet to achieve
the intended results).
When knowledge of Arabic is insufficient by the scribe, he switches to fa-
miliar terms in the language he knows best, the process resembling code-
switching in speech.

3 Conclusion
The above typology is based on the relationship between Ajami, Arabic and
layout, yielding five distinct types: 1. Ajami primary manuscripts; 2. Intralinear
Ajami (Ajami phrases following Arabic phrases on the same line); 3. Interlinear
Ajami (Ajami written between the lines); 4. Occasional Ajami in densely written

||
28 Levtzion 1965, Goody 1968, Hamès 1997 and 2007 a.o.
29 Rare exceptions are Hamès 1987, Dobronravin 2005, Donaldson 2013, Vydrin and Dumestre
2014.
 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 719

Arabic texts; and 5. Ajami in healing and esoteric manuscripts. Table 2 summa-
rises these types in accordance with five parameters whose combination consti-
tutes a type. Parameter (a) is the configuration of two distinct linguistic sets,
Arabic (Ar.) and Ajami (Aj.). Most of Ajami manuscripts have both Arabic and
Ajami, except for Type 1. Parameter (b) is the placement of Ajami relative to the
lines and margins of the main text. Parameter (c) indicates whether Ajami is
used as translation from Arabic. Parameter (d) is the density of the main text
and parameter (e) signals what kind of genre is represented in the main text.

Table 2: A summary of five types of Ajami manuscripts.

type (a) (b) placement: (c) translation (d) density (e) genre
Ar &/or Aj line/margin of main text

1 Aj – – dense poetry, history, letters

2 Ar, Aj same line yes dense popular theology and
ritual duties
3 Ar, Aj between lines yes sparse treatises used in
intermediate to
advanced education
4 Ar, Aj margin yes dense advanced level
treatises
5 Ar, Aj same line/margin no dense esoteric, healing

The table represents tendencies rather than absolute categories. Overlaps may
occur between some types in terms of different parameters. For example, Type 1
may have parameter (c) ‘translations’ activated. This happens when a poem in
Ajami is translated into Arabic and thus, by parameters (b) and (d), it should be
considered Type 3. The Arabic commentary is written in between the lines of the
main Ajami text and by implication the main text is written with ample space
between the lines. However, this kind of ‘reverse’ translation will not hold up as
Type 3 by parameter (e) because the poems in Ajami are usually outside of the
domain of advanced education.
This typology may be helpful in applying specific approaches to specific types
of Ajami manuscripts and designing research pathways pertinent to each type.
Given that monolingual manuscript cultures are rather uncommon in hu-
man history, it would be interesting to compare this West Africa specific typolo-
gy with multilingual and multiformat phenomena across the world.
720 | Dmitry Bondarev

Acknowledgements
This paper draws on a series of my blog posts.30 A special thank you to Darya
Ogorodnikova for lively discussions and insightful ideas related to this topic. I
am grateful to Coleman Donaldson for his valuable comments on earlier drafts
of the text and for his various contributions to the Ajami Lab’s research. My
thanks also go to Scott Reese for helpful comments and corrections.

Abbreviation
BOKIM/SOAS Borno and Old Kanembu Islamic Manuscripts digital collection at SOAS,
University of London <https://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA000035/00001/
citation> (accessed on 25 Jan. 2021).

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uni-hamburg.de/ajami-lab/projects/ajami-2029.html> (accessed on 25 Jan. 2021).
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 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 723

Fig. 1b: Cambridge, University Library,

Or. 954, fol. 1v (c. early twentieth
century); reproduced by kind
permission of the Syndics of
Cambridge University Library.

Fig. 1a: a facsimile from Banfield and Macintyre 1915,

frontispiece.

Figs 1a–b: Poem Miya mire in Nupe, comparison of two manuscripts.

724 | Dmitry Bondarev

Fig. 2a: CSMC/Mamma Haidara, fol. 1v, Fig. 2b: SOAS Digital Collections, Borno and Old
c. late nineteenth century. © Mamma Kanembu Islamic Manuscripts, fol. 1r, c. early
Haidara Library. twentieth century. © SOAS, University of
London. All rights reserved.
<http://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA000035/00001>

Figs 2a–b: Umm al-Barāhīn text in manuscript form.

 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 725

Birnin Kebbi, Vizier of

Gwandu, MS 4MM, Q.28:4.

Fig. 3a: Qur’an, 28:4, SOAS Digital Collections, Borno and Old Kanembu Islamic Manuscripts,
MS 4MM (the ‘Malam Muhammadu manuscript’ or ‘Waziri of Gwandu manuscript’), c. late
seventeenth century. © SOAS, University of London. All rights reserved.
<https://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA003340/00001/172>.

Figs 3a–c: Comparison of Old Kanembu glosses in three Borno Qur’an manuscripts.
726 | Dmitry Bondarev

Maiduguri,
Vizier of Borno,
MS 1YM,
Q.28:4.

Fig. 3b: Qur’an, 28:4, SOAS Digital Collections, Borno and Old Kanembu Islamic Manuscripts,
MS 1YM (the ‘Yerima Mustafa manuscript’), c. late seventeenth century. © SOAS, University of
London. All rights reserved. <http://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA003335/00001/481>
 A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts | 727

Kaduna, NAK, MS AR33,

Q.28:4

Fig. 3c: Qur’an, 28:4, SOAS Digital Collections, Borno and Old Kanembu Islamic Manuscripts,
MS AR33 (‘Arabic manuscript collections’ from Kaduna National Archives), c. between the
eighteenth century to early nineteenth century. © SOAS, University of London. All rights
reserved. <https://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA003342/00001/742>
728 | Dmitry Bondarev

Fig. 4: Tafsīr al-Jalālayn. Arabic commentaries written in brown ink on Sūrat Saba’ (Qur’an
34:16) written in red ink, with annotations in Hausa. Waziri Junaidu Bureau. Sokoto. c. mid-
nineteenth century. SOAS Digital Collections, Sokoto Caliphate Islamic Manuscripts. © SOAS,
University of London. All rights reserved. <https://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA003428/00001/6x>.
Andreas Janke
Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books
in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Abstract: The nineteenth century saw a revival in the illumination of manu-
scripts in Europe, involving amateurs as well as professional painters. Today,
however, a significant part of the resulting written artefacts are declared to be
forgeries without strong evidence, which often hinders further investigation
into their context of origin and use. The current study aims to precisely investi-
gate these contexts in Italy. Manuscripts, that contain musical notation as well
as illuminations will be focused on as case studies. Overall, this article illus-
trates the broad 19th-century interest in illuminated manuscripts and discusses
contemporary ideas of the terms ‘original’ and ‘copy’ in relation to newly pro-
duced written artefacts.

1 Introduction
At some point during his term as President of the United States of America,
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) met the publisher, book designer, and book
historian William Dana Orcutt (1870–1953) and showed him an illuminated
manuscript that he had received as a gift from King Menelik of Abyssinia (1844–
1913). Although ‘someone’ had told the president that this was a manuscript
from the twelfth or thirteenth century, he asked Orcutt: ‘Is this an original man-
uscript?’ Orcutt, realising that it was, in fact, a ‘modern copy’, steered the con-
versation to different topics so as not to have to reveal his opinion on the
manuscript.1 It is not clear when exactly Roosevelt received this gift; however, a
letter from Menelik to Roosevelt attests to other items exchanged by the two
men in 1903. No additional manuscripts are listed in this document that makes
reference to a photograph, a typewriter, guns, lions, and elephant tusks.2

||
1 This anecdote is reported in Orcutt 1926, 104–105.
2 See ‘Translation of letter from Emperor Menelik II to Theodore Roosevelt’, Theodore Roosevelt
Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, available on the Theodore Roosevelt Digital
Library (Dickinson State University): <https://theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-
Library/Record?libID=o43319> (accessed on 17 March 2021).

Open Access. © 2021 Andreas Janke, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-036
730 | Andreas Janke

The situation just described reveals some of the difficulties encountered

when using the terms ‘original’ and ‘copy’ in relation to manuscripts: while the
illuminated manuscript was identified as an original by an unnamed individual,
this was obviously not completely convincing to the president. The expert
Orcutt, who had studied many illuminated manuscripts, judged the manuscript
to be modern based on the parchment and the colours employed.3 If Orcutt was
right, should the manuscript have been considered a forgery?
The terms ‘original,’ ‘copy,’ and ‘forgery’ are still controversial4 and are not
used consistently when applied to the nineteenth- or twentieth-century illumi-
nated manuscripts: The term ‘original’ often refers to an old manuscript only,
and a nineteenth-century copy or imitation of a medieval manuscript is often
described as a forgery. When such written artefacts are classified as forgeries
today, the descriptions often resemble detective stories in which the guilty one
– the forger – is pinpointed; there is often considerable drama involved.5 While
this may be an exciting read for some, analysis of the respective manuscripts as
written artefacts is usually neglected. This applies to a specific group of Europe-
an sources in particular, on which I will focus in the following.
Fig. 1 shows fol. 69r from the manuscript Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Library, MSS 09700 (‘Fisher Antiphonary’), a liturgical book that was most
likely made in Northern Italy in the fifteenth or early sixteenth century and that
belonged to the Franciscan order. There are some later additions suggesting
that the manuscript was in liturgical use until the eighteenth century.6 In the
second half of the nineteenth century,7 22 folios received new historiated
initials, bas-de-page miniatures, and border decorations. It is probable that the
manuscript later made its way to the Libreria Franceschini in Florence; Wilfrid
Voynich (1864–1930) purchased the bookshop and its inventory in 1908. In
September of the following year, Voynich sold the antiphonary to the Royal
Ontario Museum in Toronto, from where it was transferred to the Thomas Fisher
Rare Book Library in 1964.8
The Royal Ontario Museum’s 1909 card catalogue entry draws attention to a
peculiar feature of the folio in Fig. 1, namely that the ‘miniature scenes in the

||
3 Orcutt 1926, 104–105.
4 See Michel and Friedrich 2020.
5 Römer 2006, 347.
6 Piazza 2019.
7 This has been proven through material analysis – using the CSMC’s mobile lab – conducted
by Sebastian Bosch and Andreas Janke on-site at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library,
Toronto. See Bosch and Janke 2021.
8 See Bosch and Janke 2021.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 731

capital letter’ contain a ‘Praying Madonna (from Fra Filippo Lippi: Madonna in
Adoration, c. 1435)’.9 The cataloguer drew attention to the fact that a section of
the Florentine painting, now in the Uffizi Gallery, served as the model for this
nineteenth-century illumination. The border decoration and the initial ‘P’ were
copied from different illuminated manuscripts, for the most part choir books,
and the initial ‘P’ does not relate to any text on this folio. Finally, it is important
to point out that the historiated initial obscures text and musical notation in the
antiphonary.
In addition to the Fisher Antiphonary, which contains many more such ex-
amples (e.g. Fig. 3), there is a growing number of single leaves, stemming from
Late Medieval or Early Renaissance choir books, which have received additional
illuminations that do not align with the liturgical content. These are listed as
nos 1–4 in the Appendix, which includes additional leaves illuminated in the
nineteenth or early twentieth century and which I will refer to in the following
by the numbers I have assigned. Based on style and technique, no. 5, for exam-
ple, seems to originate from the workshop in which the Fisher Antiphonary
received its new decoration and it contains a full-page miniature, likewise cop-
ied from Lippi’s painting, and additional decorative elements reproduced from
different choir books. In this case, however, a piece of parchment was reused,
one that had served as a credit contract in eighteenth-century Florence.
The Fisher Antiphonary and leaves nos 2 and 3 have been described as for-
geries.10 In the following, however, I would like to try to interpret such written
artefacts principally in their role as copies or imitations of ‘original’ late Medie-
val or Renaissance choir books. First, I will use the example of the well-known
‘Spanish Forger’11 to highlight problems with common criteria for labelling illu-
minated manuscripts as forgeries. Secondly, I will demonstrate the broad inter-
est in and access to Late Medieval and Renaissance illuminated choir books in
nineteenth-century Italy. This is fundamental for, thirdly, gaining greater in-
sights into the popular nineteenth-century practices of illuminating manu-
scripts and ideas on the relationship between original and copy. Finally, I will
emphasize how a genuine interest in the visual organisation and materiality of
choir books emerged at that time, which continues to this day.

||
9 I thank Kathleen Ruffo for granting me access to the card catalogue at the Royal Ontario
Museum.
10 See Michael Scott Cuthbert’s online comment, <https://gregorian-chant.ning.com/group/
arsnovaetarssubtilior/forum/topics/copy-of-squarcialupi-codex-auction-2014> (unless otherwise
stated, all sites were accessed on 1 Sept. 2020), and W. M. Voelkle in Holy Hoaxes 2019, 41 and 44.
11 On the ‘Spanish Forger’ see Voelkle 1978 and 2007, The Spanish Forger 1987, and Holy
Hoaxes 2019.
732 | Andreas Janke

2 How to not unmask a forger

When it comes to what are identified as forged illuminated manuscripts in nine-
teenth- or early twentieth-century Europe, it is often assumed that they were
created in forgery workshops. Such workshops, however, cannot be described
in detail, let alone documented. Therefore, all investigative approaches are
inevitably based almost exclusively on the objects identified as forgeries.
A frequently used example is that of the so-called ‘Spanish Forger’, to
whom an extensive oeuvre of forgeries is ascribed, including 284 illuminated
parchment leaves, 11 codices, and 117 panels, most of them have been consid-
ered to stem from the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, at some point.12 He is
often described as ‘one of the most skilful, successful, and prolific forgers of all
time’,13 ‘master of deception’,14 and ‘master of manuscript chicanery’.15 So far,
only a few assumptions have been made about his identity: he might have been
active in France, first as a chromolithographer at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury and then, from about 1900, as a forger. Based on material analysis, some of
his works could be proven to be not older than 1814, which does not allow for a
medieval or Renaissance origin of the artefacts.16 Attribution to the Spanish
Forger is usually determined by specific and consistent features in the illumina-
tions including, among others, ‘[…] sugary faces, daring décolletage, page cos-
tumes, theatrical postures and hand gestures, stock figures, tapestry-like
foliage, swirling waters, and stage set architecture’.17
A large part of the literature on forgery focuses on the forger’s techniques,
usually described exhaustively.18 Of particular interest are details by which a
forgery can be exposed. The most common characteristics attributed to the
Spanish Forger’s manuscripts, for example, include:19
– the copying of miniatures and border decorations from contemporary re-
productions of medieval manuscripts in printed volumes;

||
12 Holy Hoaxes 2019, 12.
13 Voelkle 1978, 9; The Spanish Forger 1987, 13; Hindman and Rowe 2001, 157; Voelkle 2007,
207; Holy Hoaxes 2019, 12.
14 The Spanish Forger 1987.
15 Voelkle 2007, 207.
16 Holy Hoaxes 2019, 12.
17 Voelkle 2007, 207.
18 Römer 2006, 348–349.
19 See for example Voelkle 2007, 207–210, 212–213, 216–217, 219, 224; The Spanish Forger 1987,
32; Hindman and Rowe 2001, 158–159; Holy Hoaxes 2019, 3–4, 23.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 733

– development of his own personal style;

– use of old vellum, usually from late medieval choir books;
– erasure of musical notation and text before a new miniature was painted;
– if original chant from the choir book is still visible it typically bears no rela-
tionship to the new illumination; and
– when gold paint or leaf are used they are treated to create an ‘antiqued’
look.

The term ‘forgery’ is typically used without a clear definition, since a general
understanding of the term is assumed. One of the unquestionable characteris-
tics of a forgery is that it was created with the intent to deceive someone for
profit. The word ‘fake’ is mostly used as a synonym for ‘forgery’, but there are
also other uses of ‘fake’, for example synonymous to ‘hoax’, meaning a forgery
with the intention of being exposed as such after a certain period of time.20
In the recent exhibition catalogue Holy Hoaxes (2019) some manuscripts are
identified as forgeries, although they were obviously not created with the intent
to deceive21 and should therefore instead be described as copies, pastiches, or
imitations.22 The classification of a written artefact as forgery is indeed no trivial
act, as can be seen from semiotician Umberto Eco’s discussion of what consti-
tutes a forgery:

[T]he necessary conditions for a forgery are that, given the actual or supposed existence of
an object Oa, made by A (be it a human author or whatever) under specific historical cir-
cumstances t1, there is a different object Ob, made by B (be it a human author or whatev-
er) under circumstances t2, which under a certain description displays strong similarities
to Oa (or with a traditional image of Oa). The sufficient condition for a forgery is that it be
claimed by some Claimant that Ob is indiscernibly identical with Oa.
The current notion of forgery generally implies a specific intention on the part of the forg-
er, that is, it presupposes dolus malus. However, the question whether B, the author of Ob,
was guilty of dolus malus is irrelevant (even when B is a human author). B knows that Ob
is not identical with Oa, and he or she may have produced it with no intention to deceive,
either for practice or as a joke, or even by chance. Rather, we are concerned with any
Claimant who claims that Oa is identical to Ob or can be substituted for it – though of
course the Claimant may coincide with B.
However, not even Claimant’s dolus malus is indispensable, since he or she may honestly
believe in the identity he or she asserts.

||
20 See Doll 2012, 21–25 and Keazor 2018, 12 and 29.
21 For example, Holy Hoaxes 2019, item no. 64, p. 73 and the comment on p. 3.
22 On these terms see, for example Keazor 2018, 12.
734 | Andreas Janke

Thus a forgery is always such only for an external observer – the Judge – who, knowing
that Oa and Ob are two different objects, understand that the Claimant, whether viciously
or in good faith, has made a false identification. 23

With regard to the Spanish Forger (B), difficulties arise immediately in defining
the manuscripts on which he worked (Ob) as very similar to known printed
originals (Oa), on the one hand because of the different materials used and, on
the other hand, because of recognisable alterations he made. What is missing is
the ‘Claimant’ claiming that Ob is identical with Oa. Oa can also be an object
that no longer exists, in which case it would be a forgery ex nihilo.24 It is im-
portant to emphasise that none of the criteria listed above allow the works of the
Spanish Forger to be understood as ‘false identifications’.
At this point, even scientific material analysis is only of limited help.25 The
hope of many scholars in the humanities – who are accustomed to weighing
plausibilities – that they might use scientific methods to arrive at an unambigu-
ous determination of whether a forgery is present must inevitably fail in most
cases. Certainly, the composition of the colours in illuminated manuscripts can
be determined. However, if modern pigments are identified, the analytical tech-
nique does not rise to the level of proof of intent to deceive.
Future research should focus more on the ‘Claimant’ in cases of suspected
counterfeiting, who can either be the originator of a written artefact or the seller
of a manuscript, for example. The challenges in the identification of forgeries I
addressed here for a specific region and time frame are not limited to Europe or
the nineteenth or early twentieth century, but remain relevant today.26

3 Tourist guides to illuminated choir books

Looking back in 1926, Orcutt states that no ‘true lover of art’ would travel to
Europe without preparation and explicitly refers to illuminated manuscripts,
adding that one should ‘make an equal effort to prepare himself to understand
and enjoy those rich treasures in the art of illumination which are now so easily

||
23 Eco 1990, 180–181. On Eco see also Doll 2012, 34–39.
24 Eco 1990, 186.
25 As, for example, described in Voelkle 2007, 219–220. On the limits of material analysis, see
Rabin and Hahn 2020.
26 See, for example, Gallop 2017.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 735

accessible’.27 In the nineteenth century, illuminations in Late Medieval or Re-

naissance manuscripts were considered works of arts and were, along with
other important artworks, among the objects travellers were most eager to see.28
Although scholars often assume these travellers had no access to original
manuscripts and knew them only from chromolithographic reproductions, for
example,29 there were in fact specific institutions with large numbers of choir
books on display. Florence and Siena are particularly good examples of this.
Even for the ‘unlettered visitor’30 there were countless instructions in travel
guides which revealed where the most important illuminated manuscripts –
many of them choir books – were located. The three most relevant sites are
briefly highlighted here: Florence’s Laurentian Library and the Museum of San
Marco and, in Siena, the Cathedral’s Piccolomini Library.
The Laurentian Library was usually open from 9 am to 3 pm. From Murray’s
Handbook of Florence and its Environs the traveller learns that:

The assistant will expect a small gratuity. The chief librarian is generally in attendance,
and those who wish to consult or use the manuscripts will experience, as in the other pub-
lic establishments of this city, all the facilities they can desire. 31

The most valuable manuscripts of the library are listed as ‘sights’.32 Their popu-
larity was such that in 1872 there were more tourists interested in ‘the beauty of
the place and the rarities that are preserved there’ than scholars.33 The place
itself was certainly part of the experience, with its connections to the Medici
family, Michelangelo Buonarotti, and Giorgio Vasari, among others.34 In her
‘new artistic and practical hand-book for English and American tourists’, Saun-
terings in Florence (1896), Elvira Grifi reports that in the Laurentian Library ‘an-
other room has been opened for the choral books especially those of Sta. Maria
del Fiore and Sta. Maria Angioli’. She remarks as well that ‘the Librarian is usu-
ally willing to show any desired Mss.’35
The Museum of San Marco has been a similarly attractive destination for
tourists since 1869; there, in addition to the illuminated choir books exhibited in

||
27 Orcutt 1926, 152.
28 This interest began well before the nineteenth century. See Chapron 2004.
29 Wieck 1996, 243; Hindman and Rowe 2001, 160; Voelkle 2007, 216.
30 Murray 1867, 37.
31 Murray 1867, 38.
32 Murray 1867, 37.
33 Anziani 1872, 36.
34 See Horner’s Walks in Florence 1884, vol. I, 134–140.
35 Grifi 1896, 128.
736 | Andreas Janke

vitrines (organised according to their provenance)36 travellers could also admire

frescoes and the former monastery. In 1872 the director, Ferdinando Rondoni,
published an extensive inventory including, among other items, all miniatures
found in the library’s 82 choir books and identifying the respective miniaturists
when known.37 Choir books could be examined in detail by the visitors by mak-
ing a request.38 The vitrines are explicitly referred to in travel guides,39 and in
Horner’s Walks in Florence it is even suggested that visitors purchase Rondoni’s
guide at the museum’s entrance.40
Before Rondoni’s work, Gaetano Milanesi wrote a history of Italian minia-
ture painting in 1850, which, in addition to biographies of individual miniatur-
ists, lists about 40 choir books in different archives and describes their
miniatures in detail.41 His interests were scholarly in nature and he was con-
cerned about the preservation of the manuscripts. He stated that the illuminated
choir books should be stored as carefully as possible and – where still in use –
replaced with copies. This had apparently already been done at Siena Cathe-
dral, where the old choir books were now exhibited in the Piccolomini Library.
Milanesi noted, however, that ‘those codices are not completely saved from the
slow but continuous offense that they receive from the everyday opening and
unfolding to the curiosity of visitors’.42

4 Designing manuscripts
Nineteenth-century interest in illuminated manuscripts was quite diverse and
included collection and research, among others. Often initials and miniatures
were cut from the manuscripts and the cuttings then often rearranged in collag-
es. In addition to these practices, manuscripts or parts of manuscripts were
more and more frequently copied.43 In London in particular, institutions such as

||
36 For a recent study of the twenty-two choir books that originate from different Franciscan
houses, see Labriola 2020.
37 Rondoni 1872.
38 Rondoni 1872, VI.
39 E.g. Grifi 1896, 158.
40 Horner 1884, vol. I, 422 (footnote).
41 Milanesi 1850. On Milanesi see Labriola 2016.
42 ‘Ma questo non basta, imperciòcche quei Codici non sono del tutto salvati dalla lenta ma
continua offesa che ricevano dal quotidiano aprirli e svolgerli alla curiosità de’visitatori della
Sala Piccolominea’ (Milanesi 1850, 192).
43 See Hindman and Rowe 2001.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 737

the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the
Arundel Society commissioned professional facsimilists to produce high-quality
copies especially of Late Medieval and Renaissance frescoes and illuminated
manuscripts. The facsimilists were active in the places I have highlighted above.
Fig. 2 shows a parchment leaf commissioned by the Arundel Society that was
copied from fol. 3r of the ‘Gradual B’ (MS 516) in San Marco.44 Arranged as a
collage, only the initial ‘R’ and some border decorations were copied and rear-
ranged.45 In addition, a hand-painted facsimile of the complete folio, including
a correct reproduction of the chants, was created by Jacopo Olivotto (Appendix,
no. 6). It seems, therefore, that certain manuscripts had become especially at-
tractive as templates and the direct access to original choir books was not only
of importance for tourists and scholars, but also for all those who wanted to use
the manuscripts directly as templates from which to copy.46
The monastery of San Marco was already a destination for illuminators and
copyists even before it opened as a museum. The English writer and art histori-
an Elizabeth Eastlake (1809–1893), for example, who studied choir books in
Brussels and Bologna in 1860,47 was at San Marco on 30 September 1863 to copy
from choir books.48
Such interests were fuelled by publication of numerous – principally Brit-
ish – manuals offering step-by-step instructions on how to illuminate manu-
scripts. A major motivation for this was commercial interest on the part of paint
manufacturers, who published most of the manuals.49 Some of these included
reproductions of initials and miniatures, particularly those from the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, along with instructions for tracing which enabled ama-
teur painters to quickly achieve good results without much practice. Many of the
manuals also promulgated a revival of manuscript illumination as the higher
goal for ambitious amateurs and professional illuminators. In Italy, the first
such known manual of this type was published in 1905 by Vittorio Vulten.50

||
44 The manuscript is described in Rondoni’s Guida (Rondoni 1872, 33–34).
45 The Arundel Society also commissioned copies from the Siena choir books in the
Piccolomini Library, many of which were made by Ernesto Sprega (Ledger 1978, 128 and 292).
46 At the time the monastery of San Marco received special mention in travel guides for its
illuminated manuscripts. See Murray 1867, 40.
47 Rigby 1895, vol. 2, 148 and 156.
48 Ribgy 1895, vol. 2, 171–172.
49 Watson 2007, esp. 93.
50 Vulten 1905.
738 | Andreas Janke

However, template books with initials, miniatures, and border decorations from
different manuscripts had been published earlier as chromolithographs.51
The appeal certain manuscripts held for painters is documented at the Lau-
rentian Library; for example, a Breviarium Romanum (Florence, Biblioteca Medi-
cea Laurenziana, Pluteo 17,1), illuminated by Boccardino the Elder (1460–1529),
attracted a particularly large number of painters towards the end of the nine-
teenth century. The library’s ‘list of readers’52 of this manuscript contains the
name of the aforementioned Jacopo Olivotto several times, as well as many
others whose professions were clearly given as painters. The director of the
Laurentian Library was not unaware of the attention given his collection of
illuminated manuscripts and so in 1890 he published an article connecting the
most famous illuminator from this group – Nestore Leoni (1862–1947)53 – with
the miniaturist Boccardino the Elder, after he explained that ‘today it is fash-
ionable to have diplomas and parchments executed in imitation of ancient min-
iatures […]’.54
Returning to the examples from the Fisher Antiphonary (Figs 1 and 3), it be-
comes clear, based on these parameters, that they were not intended to serve as
facsimiles – they are, rather, pastiches. In Fig. 3 the same initial ‘P’ seen in Fig. 1
recurs, though the border decoration is based on different models. The painted
scene within the initial also has a different source, it is based on Benozzo
Gozzoli’s frescoes in the chapel of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi (see also Fig. 4).
This is not unprecedented, as frescoes served as models for the decoration of
other manuscripts (see Appendix, no. 7).
Gozzoli’s frescoes had long been one of the main tourist attractions in Flor-
ence55 and the group of angels that served as the model for Fig. 3 was particular-
ly renowned: ‘The most beautiful group is of kneeling angels with their hands

||
51 Melani 1896. The intended audience included not only illuminators, but also calligraphers,
sign painters, embroiderers, engravers, and type designers. Tables XVII–XVIII and XI contain
initials copied from choir books located in Venice and Pistoia.
52 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Elenco dei Lettori che hanno studiato il seguente
Manoscritto: Plut. 17,1, from 6 Nov. 1889 to 23 May 1998.
53 Nestore Leoni saw manuscript Plut. 17,1 in the Laurentian Library on 6 Nov. 1889. See
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Elenco dei Lettori che hanno studiato il seguente
Manoscritto: Plut. 17,1, no. 1. On Nestore Leoni in the context of an Italian revival of the
manuscript illumination tradition see Ascoli 2007 and Guernelli 2011.
54 Biagi 1890, 269.
55 The frescoes are highlighted in almost every tourist guide to the city. See, for example, Grifi
1896, 145: ‘The frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli [...]. They constitute one of the most interesting
works in Florence both for their merits as pictures as well for their excellent preservation’.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 739

joined, for when they arrive at the crib, where the Redeemer is, they worship
and pray.’56 Gozzoli’s works also received considerable attention in England,
where he was considered ‘a “God” among Painters’ in Pre-Raphaelite circles.57
The Arundel Society made many efforts to have the frescoes at the Palazzo
Medici-Riccardi copied on-site and then reproduced as lithographs or chromo-
lithographs.58 This undertaking was especially complicated due to unfavourable
lighting conditions in the chapel.59 But, following the advent of photography,
copyists were not limited to making reproductions on-site. A wide range of pho-
tographic reproductions were available as templates, including detailed shots of
the adoring angels.60 The connection between the late nineteenth-century pho-
tograph (Fig. 4) and the example in Fig. 3, from the Fisher Antiphonary, is not
limited to the possibility that this sort of photograph might have served as a
model for Fig. 3 and leaf no. 1 in the Appendix. Both the copying of illumina-
tions and the colouring of photographs were considered possible activities for
‘wet mornings’. 61 Fig. 4 is such a hand-coloured photograph.
To understand the rationale that lies behind these modern illuminations it
is necessary to trace the nineteenth-century interest in manuscript production
and, specifically, illumination practices. The manuals that instruct students in
the art of illumination are very informative regarding how a manuscript should
be designed. One of the most successful of these, A Manual of Illumination on
Paper and Vellum,62 was in its eighteenth edition by 1870. In this volume, under
the headings ‘conception’, ‘invention’, and ‘completion’, the stated rules for
manuscript design can be related to the examples from the Fisher Antiphonary.
‘Conception’ addresses selection of the individual elements to be copied,
such as border decoration, initials, and text. The purpose is not to create a fac-
simile but, rather, to rearrange and borrow, and the reader is advised to: ‘First
dispossess yourself of the idea that good “design” must be entirely original’.63 It
is with ‘invention’ that deviations from the template are encouraged:

||
56 ‘Il gruppo più bello è di angioli genuflessi con le mani giunte, perchè arrivati al presepio,
dove è il Redentore, adorano e pregano’ (Benvenuti 1901, 19–20).
57 Ledger 1978, 181.
58 Ledger 1978, 181, 183, 278 and 295.
59 Ledger 1978, 123 and 131.
60 See, for example, the sales catalogues from two different shops: Alinari 1873, 138 and Brogi
1878, 75.
61 Watson 2007, 94.
62 Bradley et al. 1870.
63 Bradley et al. 1870, 95–96.
740 | Andreas Janke

For our second point – invention – the beginner, with a view to gradual improvement,
should at first copy a part of an illuminated page, the mere border for instance, and the
miniature capital or great initials (according to word required to begin a certain passage)
from another page of the same MSS., so as to ensure same style, and unite it to [the] bor-
der, […]. In your next attempt you might alter the details a little, such as the setting of
leaves.64

However, not only illuminated manuscripts were put forward as models; in

principle, everything could be used according to one’s taste. The reader is ad-
vised that ‘[…] when you see a good thing in drawing and colour that strikes you
as adapted for illumination, to take note thereof, and try something like it’.65
The aspiring illuminator should ideally create a personal model book and anno-
tate the copies with dates of their originals,66 because mixing elements from
different centuries was not recommended.67 Finally, colours and additional
decorative elements complete the newly created manuscript page.68
With such ideas for designing manuscripts, the Fisher Antiphonary – and
related objects –69 can be better located within the nineteenth century, at least
as far as its new decoration system and related decisions are concerned.

5 Music as image
In A Manual of Illumination on Paper and Vellum the reader is informed that, as
part of the ‘conception’, the textual content plays an essential role and the text
should coordinate with the illumination.70 The primary deviation of the Fisher
Antiphonary, and leaves nos 1–4 from the manual’s design rules lies in the dis-
junction between motifs in the modern miniatures and initials, and the liturgi-
cal contents of the Late Medieval or Renaissance choir book pages that were
used to paint on (e.g. Figs 1 and 3).71

||
64 Bradley et al. 1870, 96.
65 Bradley et al. 1870, 98. Architecture and glass paintings are explicitly mentioned.
66 Bradley et al. 1870, 73.
67 Bradley et al. 1870, 36.
68 Bradley et al. 1870, 98.
69 Discussion of the Spanish Forger’s manuscripts may profit from including the ideas of
conception, invention, and completion.
70 Bradley et al. 1870, 39.
71 The use of parchment to paint on was recommended in the manuals, because ‘it is obvious
that good copies of ancient illuminated manuscripts can be made on this material only, for
there is a charm about the colour and texture of well-prepared calf-skin, which no paper can be
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 741

There is no question that the musical notation of the chants no longer

served their function of celebrating Mass or Office. However, in leaving most of
the musical notation intact and visible it could serve as part of the ‘conception’,
which was not intended to be a collage of single elements (as in Fig. 2), but
rather an imitation of the layout of choir books that travellers could marvel at in
Florence and Siena. This function of musical notation becomes particularly
clear in cases in which new parchment was used, and invented notation was
entered as part of the design (Appendix, no. 8).
Musical notation as an image can also be found in the painting templates of
Vittorio Vultens’s La Miniatura sulla Pergamena. Fig. 5 shows one of his paint-
ing templates. An initial ‘P’ contains a scene showing Saint Cecilia, the patron
saint of music, standing in front of a huge choir book with two angels behind
her. While Cecilia is usually represented with an organ or other instruments,
here it is the choir book that stands out. To the best of my knowledge, this is a
representation of Cecilia originating in the nineteenth century and especially
popular among nineteenth-century painters, who not only collected illuminated
choir books and single leaves, but also integrated them into their paintings.72 In
fact, this depiction comes not from Vulten himself, but is a copy of a painting by
Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860–1932), which was reproduced as an engraving in
the magazines L’Illustrazione Italiana and L’illustrazione popolare.73 Several
differences between these two can be identified. While Sartorio’s choir book, for
example, only shows large initials, Vulten adds invented notation. Although
Vulten uses a contemporary model, he describes the style of his initials as ‘stile
antico’ – which he defines as the period between the ninth and sixteenth centu-
ries.74
Taken as a whole, in the late nineteenth century we can see a shift from
specific interest in single initials or miniatures to general interest in the com-
plete parchment leaf or codex. Additionally, by the beginning of the twentieth
century, a large number of printed books were available that imitated the look
of illuminated manuscripts, as, for example, Jacopo Olivotto’s S. Francesco

||
made to possess’. On the other hand, new parchment was considered costly (Tymms and Wyatt
1860, 50, and Bradley et al. 1870, 29).
72 For example, John William Waterhouse, Saint Cecilia (1895), <https://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:Waterhouse,_John_William_-_Saint_Cecilia_-_1895.jpg>.
73 L’Illustrazione Italiana, 5 April 1891, L’illustrazione popolare. Giornale per le famiglie, 20
December 1891, 803, 804, and 812. Later Sartorio created a similar work including an enormous
notated Missal, published in L’Illustrazione Italiana, 6 January 1895, p. 1 and 15.
74 Vulten 1905, 18–20.
742 | Andreas Janke

d’Assisi nel Poema di Dante e negli Affreschi di Giotto (Florence, 1905), which
was reviewed with a great deal of interest:

The Canto XI of Dante’s Paradiso is printed with characters, with friezes and initials,
which perfectly imitate the most beautiful manuscripts of that century, and the chromo-
lithographs reproducing Giotto’s most beautiful paintings lead us to the originals […]. 75

In this spirit, the Fisher Antiphonary and Appendix nos 1–4 can be understood
as souvenirs of a sort. The ‘conception’ of each newly illuminated leaf imitates
the old choir book openings in the display cases and each of the individual ele-
ments copied refers to a different original. In the case of the folios, which in-
clude motifs from Gozzoli and Lippi, reference is made to especially well-known
Florentine tourist attractions. In the two folios with copies of Gozzoli’s adoring
angels (Fig. 3 and Appendix, no. 1), one might even interpret the notation as a
representation of the angelic singing, as the choirs of angels in the two Palazzo
Medici-Riccardi altar panels sing the Gloria. This point is emphasised in the
travel guides:

[…] with the heavenly expression of the angels who, hand in hand, advance singing the
praises of the Virgin. The illusion is so complete that it seems as if, looking intently for a
few minutes, one must hear their voices’. 76

This study set out to gain a better understanding of manuscript illumination in

Nineteenth-Century Italy, which so far has received only little attention com-
pared to studies on Great Britain, France, or Belgium. One task was to explore
the different agents in the context of contemporary manuscript admiration,
which was mostly centred on strong visual characteristics and the material
object as such, rather than on the actual content. In some cases the content was
of interest only because of its visual quality, as for example the musical notation
in the Fisher Antiphonary. It is beyond the scope of this article to examine the
relationship between the illuminations made in the nineteenth century or early
twentieth century and their models in detail, however, in a future study, I will
analyse a music manuscript which was copied from frequently in Nineteenth-
Century Florence.

||
75 ‘Il Canto XI del Paradiso di Dante è stampato con caratteri, con fregi ed iniziali, che imitano
perfettamente i più bei manoscritti di quel secolo, e le cromo-litografie riproducenti i più bei
quadri di Giotto ci portano col pensiero agli originali che in quell’epoca furono fissati nelle
artistiche pareti di S. Francesco in Assisi e di S. Croce in Firenze.’ Fiumi Roncalli 1906, 36.
76 Grifi 1896, 145. See also Benevenuti 1901, 19–23.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 743

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XX secolo’, Opus Incertum, 6–7: 30–41.
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recovery and reconstruction [this catalogue was published in conjunction with the Exhibi-
tion, Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 11
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 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 745

Appendix:
Modern illuminations on parchment leaves
No. 1
New York, Doyle, Auction, 3 May 2006, Books and Print, Sale 06BP01, Lot 300477
Dimensions: c. 381 mm × 260 mm.
Description: The framed fragment from a Late Medieval choir book was sold for
$2,400; the current owner is unknown. The modern miniature includes three
adoring angels copied on top of musical notation and text. The template was the
left panel of Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco in the Chapel of the Magi in the Palazzo
Medici-Riccardi in Florence, or some other media that reproduced the fresco;
see, for example, the hand-coloured photograph from the late nineteenth centu-
ry at <http://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.1881>.
The decorations around the miniature stem from different Florentine illumi-
nated manuscripts coeval with the creation of Gozzoli’s fresco. The artefact was
most likely illuminated in the same environment as the Fisher Antiphonary.

No. 2
New York, Private Collection, William Voelkle (acquired from Thomas Carson,
1987).
Dimensions: 425 mm × 315 mm.
Description: A leaf from an Italian Antiphonary. A modern historiated initial ‘B’
was entered in the upper left corner, covering the musical notation and text.
Voelkle demonstrates that the historiated initial does not relate liturgically to
the leaf’s contents.
Bibliography: The Spanish Forger, 1987, 32, no. 24; Holy Hoaxes 2019, 41.

No. 3
San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts,
2564478 (Gift of Sarah M. Spooner, acquired 3 March 1904).
Dimensions: 387 mm × 274 mm.
Description: A leaf from an Italian choir book. On its recto the parchment leaf
contains the foliation number ‘vi’. More than half of the recto side is taken up by

||
77 <https://doyle.com/auctions/06bp01-books-and-prints/catalogue/3004-illuminated-
manuscript>.
78 <https://art.famsf.org/anonymous/page-choral-miniature-resurrection-christ-25644>.
746 | Andreas Janke

a large historiated initial ‘R’ which obscures the chant. The leaf was probably
illuminated in the same environment as the Fisher Antiphonary.

No. 4
New York, Private Collection, William Voelkle (from the collection of Cornelius
J. Hauck).
Dimensions: 245 mm × 310 mm.
Description: The incomplete parchment leaf was acquired at Sotheby’s New
York auction ‘The History of the Book: The Cornelius J. Hauck Collection’ (27–28
June 2006) for $720. It is a palimpsest; the lower script contains a Jewish mar-
riage contract from the eighteenth century, whereas the overwriting shows part
of a Gradual with border decorations and an initial N that were copied from the
same template as no. 8. The scene within the initial, however, does not fit litur-
gically as Voelkle points out.
Bibliography: Holy Hoaxes 2019, 44.79

No. 5
San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts,
2565080 (Gift of Sarah M. Spooner, acquired 3 March 1904).
Dimensions: 264 mm × 180 mm.
Description: This parchment leaf contains a Florentine credit contract from
2 October 1800, main text printed with handwritten inserts. On the verso a full-
page miniature was added in the nineteenth century. The image was copied
from Fra Filippo Lippi’s Adoration of the Child, c. 1435, now in the Uffizi Galler-
ies, Florence, and it resembles the style of the historiated initial in fol. 69r of the
Fisher Antiphonary (Fig. 1).

No. 6
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Manuscript M.260e81
Dimensions: not indicated.
Description: Facsimile of Florence, Museo di San Marco, gradual B, MS 516, fol. 3r.
The lower left corner contains the name of the illuminator, Jacopo Olivotto.

||
79 See also <https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-4747496/?hdnSaleID=20680&LN=140&intsaleid=
20680>.
80 <https://art.famsf.org/anonymous/parchment-miniature-nativity-25650>.
81 <corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=278210>.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 747

No. 7
Milwaukee, Haggerty Museum of Art, 79.2182 (Gift of Eva K. Ford, Genoa, Nebraska)
Dimensions: 533 mm × 432 mm.
Description: Leaf from a choir book with a modern historiated initial M. The
scene within the initial was copied in 1908 – and signed – by E. Giandotti from
Fra Angelico’s fresco The Annunciation in the monastery of San Marco.
Bibliography: Voelkle, The Spanish Forger 1987, 33 (No. 37).

No. 8
Vienna (Deutsch Auctioneers), Lot 53, two framed folios83
Dimensions: 420 mm × 300 mm.
Description: The two framed leaves were offered at auction on 25 September
2018 with an estimated price range of €1600–2800. From the online images it
can be seen that the two leaves were created in the nineteenth or early twentieth
century on new parchment. The first leaf is a facsimile of fol. 7v in manuscript
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Pal. 87. The second leaf is an
imitation of decorations in the same codex – the initial ‘N’ and most of the mar-
ginal decoration are taken from the same exemplar as no. 4. The musical nota-
tion is invented.

||
82 <http://museum.marquette.edu/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=
collection&objectId=3591&viewType=detailView>.
83 I thank Margaret Bent for bringing this auction to my attention. Lot 53 was advertised under
the following link – accessed 18 Sept. 2018 – the images and descriptions are no longer availa-
ble online at the auctioneer’s website (<deuart.at/index.php/auction/upcoming-auction/detail-
view/116-lot53-detail>). But see: <https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/pair-of-illuminated-
incunables-53-c-7864ec2a06>.
748 | Andreas Janke

Fig. 1: Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, MSS 09700, fol. 69r. Manuscript digitised:
<https://collections.library.utoronto.ca/view/fisher2:F6521>. © Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Library, Toronto.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 749

Fig. 2: London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum number E.120-1996, recto.
<https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O94146/manuscript-strozzi-zanobi>. © Victoria and
Albert Museum, London.
750 | Andreas Janke

Fig. 3: Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, MSS 09700, fol. 139r. © Thomas Fisher Rare
Book Library, Toronto.
 Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in the 19th Century | 751

Fig. 4: Photograph of Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco on the wall at the right of the altar in the chapel
of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, late nineteenth century, hand-coloured (private collection).
High-resolution colour images are available at <doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.1881>.
752 | Andreas Janke

Fig. 5: Detail from Table 8 in Vulten 1905.

Luigi Orlandi
A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s
Milieu: The Scribe-Bishop Makarios
Abstract: This paper aims to examine some Greek manuscripts produced in the
mid-fifteenth century. Prosopographic, palaeographic and codicological pieces
of evidence lead to the identification of the handwriting of the scribe-bishop
Makarios.

1
Coordinated by Cardinal Bessarion, the intense campaign of transcription of
manuscripts that led to the rescue of many works of ancient Greek literature has
long been the subject of historical, philological, codicological, and, above all,
palaeographic studies. Fundamental works about the activity of the copyists
recruited by Bessarion between the 1440s and the 1470s represented the basis
for all later studies which, in turn, contributed towards progressively detailing
the graphic and intellectual environment of that period.1
Within the framework of this fruitful field of research, recent studies are
gradually bringing to light some lesser-known Byzantine émigrés in fifteenth
century-Italy who performed, either intensely or marginally, the task of copying
manuscripts in the cardinal’s milieu.2 These are mostly neglected characters,
who have been left in the shadows for different reasons.
More than once the impossibility of associating a name and a well-defined
historical background with the manuscripts copied by scribes working for the
Cardinal has been complained about, despite considerable discoveries; and this
is the case, for instance, with some anonymous scribes who were grouped to-
gether a few decades ago by Dieter Harlfinger. Only in more recent times has it
been possible to recognize historical personalities among them: consider the

||
1 The articles by Diller 1967 and Mioni 1976 have been pioneering in investigating this topic.
Most of the copyists working for Bessarion are recorded among the specimina published in
Harlfinger 1974.
2 Fundamental are the findings of Speranzi 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018; see also Giacomelli and
Speranzi 2019, Martínez Manzano 2013, Martinelli Tempesta 2013 and 2015, Orlandi 2015, 2019b
and 2020b.

Open Access. © 2021 Luigi Orlandi, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-037
754 | Luigi Orlandi

case of the monk Gregorios (formerly Anonymus KB)3 or that of Emmanuel of

Constantinople (formerly Anonymus Ly).4
In contrast, historical personalities – well-known to contemporary literary
and documentary sources and yet lacking a definite shape from a palaeographic
point of view – had to wait many years before they were finally assigned a
handwriting. The long path that led to the identification of the hand of the
Moreote émigré Alexios Keladenos is striking.5 When he was still a boy, Alexios
was greeted by Bessarion at the time of the Turkish conquest of the Peloponnese
(which led to the surrender of Mystras in 1460), and he was initiated by the
Cardinal himself into an undemanding ecclesiastical career in Italy. Much about
him was known, save for his writing.
Eventually, under peculiar circumstances, it was only a change of perspective
that made it possible to gather together manuscripts that appeared incongruent
to each other. This is the case with Theodoros Gazes6 – whose writing bears two
stylistic forms (calligraphic and cursive, the latter resembling Bessarion’s own
writing) – and with Athanasios Chalkeopulos,7 whose manuscripts have some-
times been unduly attributed to the Cardinal.

2
A similar case, briefly outlined in these pages, concerns a scribe who has re-
mained anonymous until now, and yet had already been inscribed among
Bessarion’s collaborators for some time; this copyist contributed to the making
of at least two manuscripts produced in the Cardinal’s milieu: most of Proclus’

||
3 See Harlfinger 2011, 289 n. 13 and Martinelli Tempesta 2013, 126–130. A detailed biographical
account of Gregorios (along with an update on his movements in Italy and his contacts to
Italian humanists) is now provided in Giacomelli and Speranzi 2019.
4 See Orlandi 2019b.
5 For Keladenos, who has long been known as ‘Anonymus δ-καί Harlfinger’ (= no. ‘2’ of the list
by Harlfinger 1971, 418) see Speranzi 2015 (with previous bibliography, necessary to follow the
steps leading to the identification). Outside of the circle of Bessarion, we can refer to the case of
Georgios Amirutzes; for a tentative identification of his writing see Orlandi 2019a.
6 For a study on the versatility of Gazes’ writing refer to Speranzi 2012. This contribution pro-
vided the basis for a series of new findings: see Martinelli Tempesta 2013, 144; Orlandi 2015;
Speranzi 2016, 83–87; Speranzi 2018, 195; Orlandi 2020a and 2020b.
7 See Speranzi 2018.
 A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu | 755

Munich, BSB, Cod.graec. 547 (hereafter Monac. gr. 547) and a great number of
folios within Aristotle’s Vienna, ÖNB, phil. gr. 64 (hereafter Vind. phil. gr. 64).8
Within the manuscript Monac. gr. 547 (see Fig. 1), a small fifteenth-century
paper codex,9 dating to c. 1455–1460 as both internal and external evidence
shows,10 Henri-Dominique Saffrey found autograph notes, written by the hand
of Bessarion himself,11 including some accounting for the Cretan properties of
the Latin Patriarchate of Constantinople:12 this is a first clue to a connection
between the activity of the scribe and the Cardinal’s milieu. Moreover, the
Munich manuscript, which was still preserved in Venice in 1562,13 was proved to
have been part of Bessarion’s collection, as its inclusion in the inventories of the
Marciana studied by Lotte Labowsky clearly shows: in the catalogue ‘B’, com-
piled in 1474, it corresponds to item 529 Theologiae Platonis per Proculum.14 The
results of philological investigations confirm in turn that the Munich manu-
script originated in Bessarion’s circle,15 as the text of Proclus’ Theologia Platonica
at fols 1r–301r is supposed to be a ‘clean’ transcription of that from another
book owned by the Cardinal (that is Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,
gr. Z. 192).16 Then, in a codicological unit which is independent of the previous
one, the transcription of the text of Proclus’ Institutio theologica (fols 304r–354r)
– descending from the more ancient Marc. gr. Z. 512 (thirteenth century)17 – was
started by a still-unidentified Byzantine hand (fols 304r–335v l. 3) and was then
completed by Bessarion himself (fols 335v l. 4–354r).18
In the Vienna Aristotle, Phil. gr. 64, completed in Rome on March 25, 1457
(‘in the second year of the papacy of Callistus III’, as explicitly mentioned in the

||
8 Diktyon 71178. See Speranzi 2013, 126–128 and Speranzi 2018, 197–198.
9 Diktyon 44995. See a description by Paolo Eleuteri in Fiaccadori 1994, 419 no. 35 (with a
specimen of the writing).
10 For further details regarding these chronological terms see here below.
11 Saffrey 1965.
12 These notes have been published and studied by Saffrey 1979.
13 See more below, n. 18.
14 Labowsky 1979, 219 and 487.
15 See Saffrey and Westerink 1968, CXXVII. See also Giacomelli 2020, 284–288.
16 Diktyon 69663. Details about the making of this ‘allogenetic’ manuscript – which is in fact a
result of a project that took place over the sixth decade of the fifteenth century at different
times and places (between Bologna and Rome), and involved more than one scribe working for
Bessarion – are in Speranzi 2016, 63 n. 55.
17 Diktyon 69983. More information on the manuscript tradition of this work in Dodds 1963,
XXXIII-XLI.
18 A copy of the text transmitted by the Monac. gr. 547 is found in Paris, BnF, gr. 1828 (Diktyon
51454), copied in Venice by Nicola Della Torre in the year 1562; see Dodds 1963, XXXVIII.
756 | Luigi Orlandi

subscription),19 the anonymous copyist of the Munich Proclus – collaborating in

this case with Manuel Atrapes, Iohannes Rhosos, Hysaias of Cyprus (formerly
known as ‘Anonymus 25 Harlfinger’) and the ‘Anonymus 26 Harlfinger’20 – was
responsible for fols 139r–216v (see Fig. 2).21 The Vienna manuscript, which be-
longed to Hysaias of Cyprus, provides therefore a first precise chronological and
geographical frame of reference to date and locate the activity of this copyist:
Rome, at the end of the 1450s.

3
On closer inspection, it is possible to associate the Greek hand of Monac. gr. 547
and Vind. phil. gr. 64 with a name. If we compare Figs 1–2 to Fig. 3, we will im-
mediately notice the identity of the hands. The folio shown in Fig. 3 is from a
volume of miscellaneous content, Arundel 528, currently in the British Library
in London.22
As already indicated in the first volume of the Repertorium der griechischen
Kopisten,23 the main copyist of Arundel 528 (fols 9r–60v, 111r–181r, 185r–192v)24
signed his name in the London manuscript four times, presenting himself as
Makarios, Bishop of Halicz (or Galyč),25 which is the eponymous city of the

||
19 ἐτελειώθη τὸ παρὸν βιβλίον ἐν ἔτει ἀπὸ Χριστοῦ α-ῶυ-ῶνζ-ω ἰνδικτιώνος (sic) πέμπτης μηνὸς
μαρτίου κε-η, τῆς ἀρχιερωσύνης τοῦ μακαριωτάτου κυρίου ἡμῶν κυρίου Καλλίστου πάπα Γ´ ἔτει
β-ω […].
20 Harlfinger 1971, 419. See more about this scribe below, p. 757 and 758 n. 33.
21 A detailed description of the hands involved in the making of codex Vindobonensis (stud-
ied by Harlfinger 1971, 409, 419 and Rashed 2001, 31–32, 295–304) can be found in Speranzi
2013, 126–128. Speranzi was the first to connect the writing of fols 139r–216v with that of Monac.
gr. 547. A full-page reproduction of this copyist’s writing is already in Rashed 2001, Plate 46
(fol. 139r). For the critical edition of Theodoros Gazes’ Solutiones (that is, solutions to problems
dealing with Aristotelian physics) see Brockmann, Lorusso and Martinelli Tempesta 2017.
22 Dyktion 39279. A complete digitisation, including an analytical description of the content,
is available at <bl.uk/manuscripts/>. From a philological point of view the manuscript was
studied in Darrouzès 1961 and was used for the publication of the writings and letters of the
monk Niketas Stethatos (for details on the manuscript transmission see Darrouzès 1961, 40–51).
23 See RGK I 244.
24 Fols 1r–8v and 63r–110v are the work of other hands (see more below).
25 Here is the text of the four subscriptions: τοῦ ταπεινοῦ ἐπισκόπου τοῦ γαλίτζης μακαρίου
(‘by the humble Bishop of Halicz, Makarios’, fol. 60v); ὁ γαλίζης μακάριος (‘Makarios of Halicz’,
fols 162r and 181v, both as a monokondylion); μακάριος (‘Makarios’, fol. 182v).
 A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu | 757

historical region of Galicia, incorporated during the fifteenth century into the
Kingdom of Hungary and today under the jurisdiction of Ukraine.
Before moving on with further considerations about Makarios’ activity, we
shall examine other palaeographic aspects of the London manuscript, for two
more hands appear in this book. While the one responsible for fols 1r–8v cannot
be identified for now, the hand of fols 63r–110v is not at all unknown: we are
dealing with a little-known Byzantine copyist, whose name is Philippos. The
identity of this scribe was acknowledged some time ago by Rudolf S. Stefec.26 To
the documentation collected by Stefec we can add evidence highlighted by oth-
er scholars. In a recent paper David Speranzi has attributed to an anonymous
copyist – who is actually none other than Philippos – the following pieces:27
Vatican City, BAV, Vat. gr. 133 (Dyktion 66764); Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana,
A 159 sup. (Dyktion 42245); part of Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,
gr. Z. 523 (Dyktion 69994) (fols 166r–186v, 187v–198r), copied in collaboration
with Emmanuel Zacharides, whose activity on the island of Crete is well-
known.28 In a detailed description of the Venice manuscript,29 Ciro Giacomelli
pointed out that part of London, BL, Add. 58224 (Dyktion 39250) (fols 1r–65r) is
work of the same scribe; the collaboration with Zacharides in this manuscript,
just as in Marc. gr. 523, is remarkable. Of Philippos’ hand, in addition to Arundel
528, I have found three more witnesses, which I report here for the first time: the
whole manuscript Paris, BnF, gr. 1969 (Dyktion 51596) (containing Plotinus’
Enneads and dating to March 1467); Paris, Bnf, gr. 2141 (Dyktion 51770) (with
exception of fols 348r l. 10 [ἠρτύετο]–349r); parts of Paris, BnF, gr. 1815 (Dyktion
51441) (fols 71r–82v, 221r col. B–269r, 267r–307v l. 20, 325r–348v).30
Besides the subscriptions by Makarios, Arundel 528, a small paper volume,
also stands out due to the presence of some sections (fols 61r–62v, 183r–184v) con-
taining religious writings in mixed ecclesiastical Slavonic, Bulgarian and Serbian.
In his surveys of manuscripts in Cyrillic alphabet kept in English and Irish collec-
tions,31 Ralph Cleminson already pointed out that Arundel 528 shows some simi-
larities in language, writing and content with Arundel 527, another Greek codex
(with musical writings) containing short Slavonic texts (fols 129v–131v).32 It will not

||
26 See Stefec 2013, 308–310.
27 See Speranzi 2018, 214.
28 See RGK I 114 = II 146 = III 189.
29 Available online at <cagb-db.bbwa.de>.
30 In a forthcoming study I shall present further insights into Philippos’ activity as a scribe.
31 Cleminson 1988, 144–147.
32 A full digitisation and a detailed description of this manuscript is available at <bl.uk/
manuscripts/> as well.
758 | Luigi Orlandi

come as a surprise to find here, too, though only on the two folios (5v–6r), the
hand of Makarios, which had so far gone unnoticed (see Fig. 4).33
With the group of the four manuscripts entirely or partially written by
Makarios it is possible to associate a further witness, Paris, BnF, gr. 1312 (Dyk-
tion 50921; see Fig. 5). This small-sized paper manuscript, which is entirely writ-
ten by Makarios’ hand, contains an anonymous collection of 137 Capita moralia
et theologica, to which a long index covering almost the whole first two quires
(fols 1r–15r, l. 5) is premised. In order to support the arguments addressed by
these Capita, statements have been extracted from various types of texts:
religious, liturgical, patristic, juridical, council acts.34 Copied in the monastery
of St John the Prodrome-Petra, Par. gr. 1312 still preserves its original Byzantine
binding. This kind of binding has been studied by a specialist such as Dominique
Grosdidier de Matons, who called it ‘couture provisoire par surfilage’.35 Accord-
ing to these elements, the Paris manuscript should therefore be considered a
product of Makarios’ scribal activity in the Byzantine East, which had remained
in the shadows until now.
The Greek handwriting of Makarios, as it appears from the examination of
the collected material (see Figs 1–5), is characterized first of all by a significant
inclination of the axis to the right; generally speaking, it appears accurate and
confident, not without a certain tendency to a calligraphic style. It is possible to
give an account of some of its peculiar features (see Table 1): delta (1) is provid-
ed with a hook at its upper extremity and is mainly capital shaped; zeta, when
tied with the previous letter (2), is traced in a peculiar way by means of the se-
quence of two left-handed loops; rho (3), as well as tau, ordinarily ties at the
bottom with the following letter; peculiar is the sigma in ligature with the cir-
cumflex accent (4), produced by the upward extension of the horizontal stroke
of the letter; very showy and characteristic is, finally, a flourish on the lower
margin in the shaping of the abbreviation for the word καὶ (5), when it occurs
within the text on the last line of the written area.36

||
33 Fols 1r–5r and 100v–116r are the work of different hands. On the name and the activity of the
main scribe (see, for instance, fols 11r–100r, containing musical works, ἀναγραμματισμοὶ and
τροπάρια), whom I here identify as the so-called ‘Anonymus 26 Harlfinger’, who worked for
Bessarion too, I shall give further insights in a forthcoming paper.
34 In the first chapter, for instance, which addresses the question of obedience to the monarch
as the guarantor of divine order on earth, there are excerpts from St Peter and St Paul’s sayings,
a short passage Περὶ ὕβρεων from the Synopsis basilicorum and, at the end, a few lines from the
liturgy of St Basil.
35 See Grosdidier de Matons 2008.
36 See also Figs 2, 3 and 5.
 A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu | 759

Table 1: The handwriting of Makarios of Halicz (details)

1. delta 2. zeta 3. rho 4. sigma 5. καὶ

(in ligature) (in ligature) (+ circumflex) (abbreviation)

Vind.
phil. gr. 64

Monac.
gr. 547

Lond.
|
Arundel 527

Lond.
Arundel 528

Par.
|
gr. 1312

4
Having completed these first palaeographic surveys concerning the five manu-
scripts which are witnesses to the activity of Makarios as a copyist, it is possible
to proceed further to some biographical remarks.
The personality of Makarios is not unknown in the studies of Byzantine
prosopography, as an entry in the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit
(PLP 16192) was dedicated to him. A member of the clergy and of Serbian origin,
Makarios, before becoming bishop, had been a monk of the Basilian monastery
760 | Luigi Orlandi

of St Cyprian in Constantinople. His appointment as bishop of Halicz took place

in Rome on January 16, 1458 on the initiative of Pope Callistus III.37 This histori-
cal event matches perfectly in terms of chronology with what we already knew
about the activity of Makarios; that is his participation in the making of the
Vienna manuscript Phil. gr. 64, which was completed in Rome in 1457 in co-
operation with other scribes working for Bessarion.
In the frame of a structural reorganisation of the Byzantine-Slavic metropo-
lis, the aim of the Roman Curia in those years was to gain jurisdiction over peo-
ple following the Eastern rite and living in the Kingdom of Hungary (which also
included the region of Halicz) by appointing a Byzantine-Slavic orthodox bishop
who was not at odds with the stance of the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1437–
1439); a project strongly contested by the Hungarian bishops and Latin clergy,
who had never even officially signed the definitive document of the Union in
1439. Cardinal Isidoros, who had signed the Council Acts as Metropolitan of
Kiev and All Russia, was at that time pontifical legate for those regions but not
for the lands of Hungary, whose rulers were continuously quarrelling with the
popes of Rome due to the long-standing issue of the direct nomination of the
bishops.38
Makarios seems to have distinguished himself in the eyes of Callistus III for
his many qualities (religionis zelus, litterarum scientia, vite mundicia, honestas,
morum spiritualium prudencia, and temporalium circumspetio).39 Given his inti-
macy with Cardinal Bessarion, Makarios could have been appointed bishop of
Halicz through the intercession of the Cardinal himself (and of the former
Metropolitan Isidoros of Kiev). He certainly maintained his office, despite oppo-
sition from the Latin Hungarian clergy, at least until some time after 1466, when
he was confirmed by Pope Paul II.40 From this date on, there is no more evi-
dence about the activity of this scribe-bishop.

||
37 The text of the letter granting Makarios the nomination as bishop is published in Prochaska
1923, 64–65.
38 For a reconstruction of the story see Hofmann 1946, 227–229 and, more recently, Adam
2008. An updated biographical account of Isidoros is found in Philippides and Hanak 2018.
Makarios’ predecessor in Halicz was another orthodox monk, a certain Matthaios (remaining in
office for the years 1440–1458): see Adam 2008, 333–336.
39 See Prochaska 1923, 65.
40 See Adam 2008, 336–337; the text of the letter of Paul II to the Archbishops of Esztergom
and Kalocsa confirming the authority and jurisdiction of Makarios can be found in Bunea 1904,
301–303.
 A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu | 761

5
We will now try to take a further step in the shaping of the biographical and
intellectual profile of Makarios of Halicz by examining the possibility of a
shared identity with other contemporary namesake individuals.
The first figure to be taken into consideration is the half-unknown Makarios
of Serres, who has also been recorded, under different entry numbers, in the
prosopographic and palaeographic repertoires (PLP 16274; RGK III 402). The
only information referring to this Makarios, otherwise unknown to the docu-
mentary sources of the time, comes from a short letter handed down by the
manuscript Vatican City, BAV, Vat. gr. 1858 (Dyktion 68487) (fols 2v–3r). The text
of the epistle dates to the year <1447> and is in all likelihood autograph, as some
editorial corrections show.41 Makarios, who presents himself in the first lines as
the Metropolitan of Serres, addresses a request to an orthodox monk and hegu-
menos, named Isidoros:42 the purpose of the letter is to obtain permission to
return to the monastery he belonged to – unfortunately it is not specified which
one – provided that Makarios refuses the unionist positions of the Council of
Ferrara-Florence which he had supported for some time.43
The handwriting of Makarios of Serres as it appears in the Vatican manu-
script (fols 2v–3r) is marked by an extremely cursive style, which perfectly fits
the ‘personal’ character of the document, but which does not easily match with
the pieces of evidence previously ascribed to the hand of Makarios of Halicz, as
they were are all quite calligraphic. Because of this formal distance, the two
writings would therefore seem, at first sight, completely foreign to each other.
Nevertheless, as shown by some palaeographic features (listed below in
Table 2), the main characteristics of the writing of Makarios of Serres overlap
with those of the Greek hand of the Bishop of Halicz, some of which have

||
41 See Mercati 1926, 36, who pointed out the autography and the dating of the epistle. In this
regard, convincing arguments have been presented by Mercati for dating the manuscript at
<1447> on the basis of the indication of the month (August) and of the indiction (the tenth).
During the middle decades of the fifteenth century the indiction fell in August only in the years
1432, 1447, 1462, 1477: the first date is for obvious reasons impossible since the text mentions
the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1437–1439); the last two appear far away in time from the
events reported and are therefore not suitable.
42 Not to be confused with the better known Isidoros of Kiev, who had already embraced the
cause of the Union of Churches for several years.
43 The text, which is also preserved in manuscript Vatican City, BAV, Vat. gr. 1147 (Dyktion
67778) (sixteenth century; fols 215r–216r), has been published and translated into French by
Laurent 1959, 198–200.
762 | Luigi Orlandi

already been highlighted earlier. Consider, for example: the ligature of rho with
the following letter, traced from the descender stroke (1); the sequence pi-alpha-
rho (2), with an upwards bending of the head-stroke of the minuscule letter pi,
letter alpha above the headline and the bow of rho originating from the de-
scender stroke of alpha (the same occurs in the sequence alpha-rho in ligature
with the following letter [3]); sigma conjoined with the circumflex accent (4), as
already noticed above; the ligature sigma-omega (5), realised by means of a
series of left-turning curves leading to the making of two bows for the closed
omega; sigma conjoined with iota (6); the sequence tau-rho-iota, made up of the
succession of four strokes (7); finally, the ligature iota-omega realised beneath
the baseline (8).

Table 2: Makarios of Halicz and Makarios of Serres: two hands or one?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Makarios Vat. gr.

of Serres 1858
(PLP
16274)

Makarios Lond.
of Halicz Arundel
(PLP 528
16192)
Monac. gr.
547

6
The palaeographic examination carried out on Vat. gr. 1858 unexpectedly raises
the question – not uncommon in the case of Byzantine scholars and copyists of
the Renaissance period – whether two different styles and graphic expressions
may actually be attributed to a single historical personality. Here are some ob-
servations on this topic by David Speranzi:

The gap between the different expressions of the same hand [...] and the difficulty of clear-
ly tracing the boundaries of the variability of a writing are the reasons why works by
several scribes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have been assigned to their
 A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu | 763

‘palaeographic Doppelgänger’, who proved later to be lacking in historical consistency.

[…] A problem […] that can be summarised in the question ‘two or one?’.44

An unintentional conflation of the two figures – which probably originated from

the indication by Mercati – had already emerged in a study by Georg Hofmann,
in which, about the Greek monk Makarios appointed as bishop of Halicz by
Pope Callistus III, is said: ‘Es ist bis jetzt kein Beweis dafür gebracht worden,
dass Makarios von der katholischen Kirche wieder abgefallen sei’;45 the state-
ment made by Hofmann, as is easy to understand, makes sense only if one iden-
tifies Makarios of Halicz as a well-known member of the clergy who had already
rejected the Union promoted by the Catholic Church, such as Makarios the
Metropolitan of Serres.
Provided that the hypothesis of a conflation is right, it might be easier to
understand at this point the decision taken by the Roman Curia on the issue of
the appointment of a bishop charged with task of safeguarding the concerns of
the Eastern-rite Greeks of Galicia: an orthodox monk of some reputation, who
had already been a metropolitan and who had in the past – even if only tempo-
rarily – embraced the concepts of the Council of Ferrara-Florence, might be in
the end the most suitable candidate.
A last, a not insignificant detail pointing to a shared identity between the
two Makarioi comes from the manuscript itself which preserves the letter of the
Metropolitan of Serres. In fact, some sections of the Vatican codex, which is
composed of multiple independent codicological units to be ascribed to differ-
ent periods, most probably belonged to Isidoros of Kiev, who also transcribed
some folios (fols 44r–47r, 49r–50r);46 with these sections, in addition to the letter
by Makarios, it should also be associated the first sheet, containing the draft of
Bessarion’s epistle to the sons of Georgios Gemistos Plethon, in the hand of
Bessarion himself (fol. 1rv).47 It is difficult to imagine that the recurrence of these

||
44 Speranzi 2013, 15–16: ‘Proprio la distanza tra le diverse manifestazioni di una stessa mano
[…] associata alla difficoltà di tracciare con nettezza i possibili limiti della variabilità di una
scrittura, ha fatto sì che diversi scribi dei secoli XV e XVI abbiano visto alcuni dei propri
prodotti assegnati a loro “doppi paleografici”, rivelatisi poi privi di consistenza storica. […] Un
problema […] sintetizzabile nell’interrogativo “due o uno?”’.
45 Hofmann 1946, 228–229.
46 Within this quire one finds a fair copy of the text Sermo V inter concilium Florentinum,
edited by Hofmann and Candal 1971, 81–94; regarding the manuscript’s belonging to Isidoros,
see Mercati 1936, 36–39.
47 Identification by Mercati 1917. The known hands recognized in the Vatican manuscript are
those of Dositheos of Drama (4r–5r), Manuel Kalekas (fols 7r–8r), Makarios of Ancyra (fols 28r–
42r), Gregorios Alyates (fols 60r–62v), Georgios Moschos (fols 250r–257v); for these attributions
764 | Luigi Orlandi

figures (Isirodos and Bessarion), who are central to the biography of Makarios of
Halicz,48 in the only manuscript that has preserved the memory of the Metro-
politan of Serres is due to a mere coincidence.

Table 3: The manuscripts of Makarios (overview)

# Manuscript Contents

1. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, phil. gr. 64, fols 139r–216v Aristotle

r
2. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, gr. 547, fols 1r–301 Proclus
3. London, British Library, Arundel 527, fols 5v–6r music
r v r r r v
4. London, British Library, Arundel 528, fols 9 –60 , 111 –181 , 185 –192 miscellany
5. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, gr. 1312 ethics, theology
6. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 1858, fols 2v–3r miscellany

7
All the data collected so far about Makarios – former metropolitan of Serres
(before 1447), later a monk of the Basilian monastery of St Cyprian in Constantino-
ple and then, once he arrived in Italy, a copyist working in the circle of Bessarion
before his nomination as bishop of Halicz at the end of the 1450s – match with
another namesake personality. We learn from Athanasios Chalkeopulos (a
Byzantine scholar from the Cardinal’s circle), the author of the Liber Visitationis,
that he was accompanied on his journey to the monasteries of southern Italy by
a certain Makarios, archimandrite of the Basilian monastery of St Bartholomew
of Trigona.49 The journey was undertaken at the behest of Pope Callistus III; it
began in Rome on 1 October 1457 and ended on 5 April 1458. The purpose of the

||
see RGK III 182, 413, 401, 145, 111 (with bibliography). The scribe of fol. 6rv is to be identified
with the so-called ‘Anonymus χ-λ [= 29] Harlfinger’, who was in contact with Bessarion: see
Harlfinger 1971, 419; Harlfinger 1974, 18 (no. 15); Stefec 2014, 197. Other anonymous hands
appear in other leaves: fols 63r–88v; 89r–110r; 111r–202v; 203r–233v; 258r–259r (Otrantine
scribe?); 260r–262v. A full digitisation of the manuscript is available at <digi.vatlib.it/>.
48 See above, p. 759–760.
49 It is worth remembering that the ecclesiastical dignity of archimandrite was mostly a title of
honour and did not require settlement in the eponymous monastery; for the history of this
cloister refer to Falkenhausen 1999.
 A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu | 765

mission was to gather information on the history of southern monasticism

through the exploration of 78 Basilian monasteries.50
The coincidence of characters (again Pope Callistus III and Bessarion),
times (the months between the end of 1457 and the beginning of 1458) and places
(the city of Rome) is undoubtedly striking. The hypothesis of a shared identity
between the one Makarios (first metropolitan of Serres and later bishop of
Halicz) and the other, archimandrite of Trigona, may not rely on a mere combi-
nation of coincidences. Unfortunately, nothing emerges from the pages of the
Liber Visitationis. It will be the task of future investigations to find new evidence
that will enable us to give this hypothesis a confirmation.

Abbreviations
PLP Erich Trapp (ed.), Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, Vienna:
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1976–1996.
RGK I-III Herbert Hunger, Ernst Gamillscheg and Dieter Harlfinger, Repertorium der
griechischen Kopisten 800-1600,
I: Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Großbritanniens, Vienna: Verlag der
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981;
II: Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Frankreichs und Nachträge zu den
Bibliotheken Großbritanniens, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 1989;
III: Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Roms mit dem Vatikan, Vienna: Verlag der
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997.

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50 The results of the enquiry by Makarios and Athanasios reported in the Liber Visitationis were
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Bizantini e Neoellenici, 56: 1-30.
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768 | Luigi Orlandi

Fig. 1: Munich, BSB, Cod.graec. 547, fol. 1v (part.). © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

Fig. 2: Vienna, ÖNB, phil. gr. 64, fol. 205r (part.). © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.
 A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu | 769

Fig. 3: London, BL, Arundel 528, fol. 113r. © British Library.

770 | Luigi Orlandi

Fig. 4: London, BL, Arundel 527, fol. 6r. © British Library.

 A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu | 771

Fig. 5: Paris, BnF, gr. 1312, fol. 9r. © Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Bruno Reudenbach
Enigmatic Calligraphy: Lettering as
Visualized Hermeneutic of Sacred Scripture
Abstract: The introductory pages, which in early medieval gospel books are
placed at the beginning of a gospel, often stage an antithesis of enigmatic cal-
ligraphy and clear legibility. As a visual reflection on writing and script this
juxtaposition is related to a hermeneutic of Holy Scripture. The initial pages in
particular demonstratively break the rules of readable and linearly ordered
script. They do not require reading in the usual sense, which linearly follows the
succession of words. As ‘script-images’ they must be contemplated by simulta-
neous consideration, that should reveal a meaning behind the material letters.
Their illegibility can be understood as a visual cue for the transition from medi-
tative reading to contemplatively seeing the purely intelligible.

1 Incipit openings as ‘critical form’

In a gospel book from the Leipzig Universitätsbibliothek (Ms. 76), written in the
first half of the tenth century in the monastery of Corvey in Westphalia, each of
the four gospels is introduced by two double pages.1 Their sequence is the same
for each gospel. The first opening starts with the incipit on the verso page, five
or six lines with large capitals written in gold. The recto page opposite displays
an initial and the first letters or words of the Gospel, also written in gold and
richly decorated (Figs 2 and 3). The following opening is written in uncial script.
On the left page the continuation of the gospel text appears in silver on a field of
purple. The parchment on the right is uncoloured, and the lines of text are dou-
ble spaced. On the verso of this folio, the text continues in Carolingian minus-
cule. The whole series is structured according to a hierarchy of script that starts
with large capitals and ends with minuscule. The artistic effort follows this hier-
archy and marks the first opening as the highpoint of the sequence. Both pages
of this opening are surrounded by a wide and ornamented frame, and the page
with the beginning of the gospel shows an artistic arrangement of letters and
ornamentation.

||
1 <http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/dokumente/html/obj31560411> (accessed on 28 Oct.
2020). Bauer 1977, 2: 89–100; Kahsnitz 2001.

Open Access. © 2021 Bruno Reudenbach, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-038
774 | Bruno Reudenbach

Initial pages featuring a composition of letters, words, ornamentation, and

sometimes images, all artfully combined and interwoven with each other as in
the Leipzig gospel book, are widespread in early medieval European manuscript
culture. Regarded as highlights of the art of writing and book illumination in the
Medieval Latin West, these initial pages exhibit the artistic imagination and
creativity of scribes and painters.2 Since the late eighteenth century, this estima-
tion of decorated pages has also led to them being separated from their respec-
tive manuscripts and traded and collected as single sheets, like autonomous
works of art.3 For a long time, this perception has obscured the important role
these pages play in the overall structure of their original manuscripts. Usually
placed at the beginning of a work, a chapter, or an important passage, such
pages help to structure the codex. In early medieval gospel books, these initial
pages are regularly found at the beginning of each of the four gospels, and such
pages are at the same time part of a sequence introducing those gospels. In
addition to the initial page, this sequence can include incipit pages, the respec-
tive evangelist’s image, and pages exhibiting only ornamentation, a coloured
field, or, as in the case of the Leipzig gospels, a specially written text. In a some-
times slightly varied order, all these pages form a fixed set of decorated pages,
such as developed early on in insular manuscript culture.4 This set that clearly
marks, on the one hand, the four parts of the gospel book and, on the other
hand, its unified appearance expresses the unity and harmony of the fourfold
gospel.
There is no fixed terminology for labelling pages with display script, that is,
with decorated and enlarged characters. According to their content, one can
speak of incipit and initial pages. Terms such as ‘ornamental’, ‘decorated’, or
‘decorative pages’ primarily refer to their aesthetic and artistic value. It is obvi-
ous that these terms focus on functions such as decoration and embellishment,
and of course, embellishment and decor are among the aims of these pages.
They invite aesthetic appreciation and contribute to the manuscript’s aura,
which may be due to many factors.5 Gospel books, for example, represent Christ
himself and contain his Holy Word.6 Accordingly the artistic and material effort
expended on these pages, evident in rich ornamentation, in colours, and in gold

||
2 The basics and a general overview about the form and function of initials are given by Gutbrod
1965; Nordenfalk 1970, esp. 117–134; Alexander 1978; Pächt 1985, 45–95; Jakobi-Mirwald 2004,
178–187.
3 Wieck 1996.
4 Brown 2017.
5 Rohrbach 2008, 200–202.
6 Kendrick 1999, 65–109; Heinzer 2009; Palazzo 2010; Reudenbach 2014.
 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 775

and silver, make visible the preciousness and sacredness of the word of God,
even though, especially in early Christianity, precious writing material could
also be regarded with scepticism and reserve.7 Above all, however, it has often
been shown that ornamented pages with decorated letters cannot be regarded
as only decorative; they also visually convey a lot of other information, in addi-
tion to the wording of the script.
From half a century ago in the field of insular art, we have path-breaking
studies by Werckmeister or Lewis, which deal with insular examples such as the
famous Chi-Rho-page of the Book of Kells.8 Such scholars discussed the con-
crete meaning of ornamental motifs beyond the aspect of embellishment, and
they explained the often highly sophisticated iconography of initial letters.
Recently, scholars of medieval art have further developed this approach, refer-
ring in their discussion of such pages to a methodological concept called
‘graphicacy’, which focuses on the meaning of non-figural graphic forms.9 It
seems that insular art and a proximity to an iconographic methodology remain
the dominant interests of most of these studies.10 Their great merit is that they
reveal these pictorial elements as a complex, coherent, and meaningful visual
system composed of decorated letters, ornamentation, geometric forms, and
images, rather than understanding such elements as merely decorative or as an
external adjunct to the script. It is obvious that in addition to the general visual
organization of the pages, and in addition to the design or ornamental framing
of the text, decorated initials are particularly suitable objects of study for schol-
ars interested in the extra-linguistic properties of writing.11 This aspect of letter-
ing is also central to the concept of Schriftbildlichkeit, which in this respect
bears some similarity to the term ‘graphicacy’. For Schriftbildlichkeit also deals
with the iconic dimension of writing, with the connection of script to imagery
rather than to language.12

||
7 See n. 28.
8 Werckmeister 1964, 1967, esp. 147–170; Lewis 1980.
9 Garipzanov 2015; see also the introduction in Brown et al. 2017. Related is the approach to
unfigürlicher Ikonographie (‘non-figural iconography’) by Victor H. Elbern; see his summary
article, Elbern 1983.
10 Tilghman 2011a, b, 2016, 2017; Garipzanov 2017; Karkov 2017.
11 Tilghman 2011a; Garipzanov 2017; Karkov 2017. See also the article by Erika Loic, which
deals with the materiality of script and focuses on self-reflexive initials that contain images of
authorship and scribal practice, which the author describes as a ‘networking structure’ (Loic
2020).
12 Krämer et al. 2012. See also Hamburger 2011; Christin 2016; Polaschegg 2018, 177. For the
relationship between display scripts and ornament, see Bonne 1996 and Ganz 2017a, 126–127.
776 | Bruno Reudenbach

These scholarly impulses are taken up in this article, but the focus is neither
on insular art nor on the iconography of letter shapes, ornamentation, or non-
figural motifs. This article’s focus is rather on a certain combination of pages, as
can be found several times in liturgical books written in the Carolingian and
Ottonian empires from the ninth to the eleventh century. The gospel books of
this era almost always contain the aforementioned series of pages introducing
each gospel. Within this sequence, the actual beginning of the text, the so-
called initial page, is often so dominated by the ornamental mode that decipher-
ing letters and reading words is very difficult or even impossible. This illegibility
cannot a priori be explained as a sign of appreciation and esteem for writing
and Sacred Scripture, especially when we are talking about manuscripts that
are, at least in part, intended for liturgical reading. Of course, no cleric needed
to actually read the beginning of a gospel because everyone knew it by heart. In
fact it can be said that display script was often used for formulas or beginnings
that most readers knew by heart.13 Nevertheless, that illegibility is associated
with great artistic effort in manuscripts intended for reading, is not self-evident
and requires an explanation. Moreover, the initial page that is difficult or im-
possible to read is juxtaposed with clear legibility and a completely different
mode of writing on the following or preceding page; an example is the incipit of
the previously mentioned Leipzig gospels, which is written in capital letters
(Fig. 2).
This remarkable arrangement is difficult to notice if one considers decorat-
ed initials to be an isolated phenomenon, and if one understands them solely as
an artistic form and an aesthetic sensation to be explained by the methods of
analysing form, style, or iconography.14 No page of an elaborately designed
manuscript, however, is an isolated work, despite the practice of cutting out
and collecting single leaves. Rather, that leaf forms a continuum with the pre-
ceding and following pages and occupies a very specific place in the architec-
ture of the manuscript.15 Particularly the introductory sequence of the gospels is
consciously and calculatedly designed such that every element is related to
each other. In this respect, the presentation of two fundamentally different
modes of writing and the direct juxtaposition of legibility and illegibility is re-
markable and meaningful. Such an opening appears as a ‘critical form’ that

||
13 Ganz 2017a, 131.
14 An exception is O’Driscoll 2011.
15 For the importance of double pages as units, see Toubert 1990; Schneider 2000, 2002;
Hamburger 2010; Ganz 2016.
 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 777

pertains to the specific status of script in a gospel book. It visually expresses an

attitude towards the written word of God.16

2 Initial pages between legibility and illegibility

To pursue and justify this thesis, we shall first take a closer look at the set of
pages introducing each gospel in the gospel book from Leipzig. As already ex-
plained, the incipit and the beginning of the respective gospel text are placed
next to each other on the first double page, e. g. in Luke's Gospel (Figs 2 and 3)
‘INCIPIT EVANGELIVM SECVNDVM LVCAM’ on the left (fol. 109v) and ‘QVONIAM
QVIDEM’ on the right (fol. 110r). Both pages are clearly marked as belonging
together, as their size, colour, and an ornamented frame indicate. But at the
same time, they are quite different. The wording of the incipit is written in large
capitals and exactly in five lines, clearly legible, while the ‘QVONIAM QVIDEM’
can hardly be deciphered at all. The usual arrangement of letters, which consti-
tutes words and makes them readable, and the sequence of characters in hori-
zontal lines from left to right are completely negated and destroyed, with the
result that we see more of an ornamental mesh than two written words. The
large and ornamented initial letter Q is placed in the centre. The following let-
ters, of different sizes, are freely grouped around it but interwoven with each
other and with golden interlace in such a way that they are very difficult to iden-
tify completely. The visual organization of the page is closer to that of a mono-
gram or a centralized image than to continuous script.17 These observations
equally apply to the other three gospel beginnings in the Leipzig gospel book.
Examination of another gospel book, which was also written in the tenth
century at the Corvey monastery and is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library
(M. 755), reveals similar features.18 In this case, however, the introductory se-
quence of all four gospels is arranged in an unusual way; incipit and initial page
do not appear as a double page, but on recto and verso of the same folio.19 Be-
cause of this arrangement, the beginning of the gospel text is in the centre of the
sequence, starting with the initial page and continuing on the opposite recto.

||
16 Here I follow the important and stimulating considerations Tobias Frese has offered on a
special constellation, namely, the double page at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark in the
Hildesheim Guntbald Gospel (1011): Frese 2014, 4–8.
17 Otto Pächt uses the term Monogrammseite (‘monogram page’): Pächt 1985, 63–76.
18 Bauer 1977, 2: 41–49; Euw 1991, 59–61, no. 10 (Gerd Bauer); O’Driscoll 2011.
19 Bauer 1977, 1: 128–132, 156–183; O’Driscoll 2011, 314.
778 | Bruno Reudenbach

All pages of the introductory sequence are emphasized by frames and by pat-
terned and coloured writing surfaces. The initial page with the first words of the
gospel text is especially prominent due to the size of the decorated initial, which
takes up the entire height of the full-page framed area, and exhibits a systematic
disturbance or even destruction of readability.
The initial page of Matthew (fol. 17v) ‘LIBER GENERATIONIS IHV XRI FILII
DAVID FILII ABRAHAM’ (‘The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of
David, the son of Abraham’) (Fig. 1), for example, displays the large initial L on
the left, in the upper part of which the following I is set. To the right of this are
four groups of large golden letters − (LI) BER / GENE / RATIO / NIS − which are
intertwined with each other and with tendrils to form a dense network that can
hardly be disentangled by the eye. The following words IHV XRI FILII DAVID,
on the other hand, are written in much smaller golden capitals. But they are not
directly connected to LIBER GENERATIONIS at the bottom. Rather, they appear
in a single line at the top and continue in descending order with FILII ABRAHAM
immediately next to the initial L.
The visual organization of the page thus follows the hierarchy of fonts, from
the large initial in descending order to the small capitals. At the same time,
however, the usual arrangement of words, one after the other from left to right
and in lines from top to bottom, has been destroyed. The reader’s eye is forced
to change directions and make abrupt jumps on the page. In addition, the clear
and concise capitals are juxtaposed with letters that are difficult or even impos-
sible to identify due to the interwoven ornamentation.
The beginning of the Gospel of John (fol. 157v) ‘IN PRINCIPIO ERAT VER-
BUM’ (In the beginning was the Word) is similarly designed and composed; it
contains the same formal elements: initials, large gold letters intertwined with
ornamentation, and small capitals (Fig. 4). Here the large initial I forms the
central axis of the page, spanning its entire height; on the right are three groups
of large decorated letters, N / PR / IN, arranged like a column and correspond-
ing to the letters CI / PI / O on the left of the large initial I. This arrangement is
augmented by the small capitals ERAT VERBV(m) that are written at the top of
the page, beneath the upper frame.
Here, too, reading directions are from right to left or in vertical instead of
horizontal sequence. The organization of the entire page is oriented more to-
wards the mode of an image than that of writing. The shaft of the large initial I,
with the letters PI and PR on the left and the right, forms an ornamented cross,
dividing the framed field into four quadrants. In this way the beginning of the
Gospel, which formulates the equation of the body of Christ with the Holy Word,
is connected with the cross. The written ‘image’ puts the incarnation and
 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 779

Christ’s death on the cross in a relationship and thus also confirms that letters
do not merely record the words of the gospel. The broad field of theological
discourse and symbolic interpretation that the appearance of the page opens up
cannot be pursued here. Of particular interest for present purposes, however, is
the function of illegibility and the visual and artistic procedures that make read-
ing difficult or impossible. These procedures include hiding letters in an orna-
mental mesh, abruptly changing the font and letter size, disrupting words, and
negating the usual reading direction by arranging letters either from right to left
or in a vertical instead of horizontal order.
Obviously, these principles of visual organization go beyond the qualities
that scholars have always attributed to decorated letters alone. As a combina-
tion of letter form and ornament, decorated initials have an ‘illogical connec-
tion’ with a resulting ‘loss of legibility’.20 This may be true for the individual
decorated letter; but on the pages that have been described here, pages which
contain complete word sequences apart from the initial, the reduced legibility is
only partially due to the ornamentalisation of the letters. Rather, a systematic
break with the rules of normal writing is evident here, through the unexpected
alteration of font, letter size, and reading direction or through the abandonment
of ruled writing in favour of a free and seemingly arbitrary positioning of the
letters on the writing area.
We are not dealing with pages that show a generally illegible script, but ra-
ther with pages that oscillate between legibility and illegibility. Individual,
clearly identifiable, and legible letters challenge the reader to read, while the
writing in the immediate vicinity may be closed off to legibility by a texture of
ornamentation.21 This simultaneity of openness and enigma can be present on a
single page, as in the Liber generationis page of the Morgan gospels (Fig. 1). But
it can also determine the composition of an opening, in which an ornamentally
closed page is juxtaposed with a page that displays the text in large letters, as in
an inscription on a stone tablet (Figs 2 and 3).22
In addition, on the remaining pages of the introductory sequence, we ob-
serve another method that can obscure the script and disguise the text, a meth-
od that was very popular in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In these cases the

||
20 Alexander 1978, 8–9.
21 Polaschegg 2018, 176–182, with general remarks on the history of the perception and use of
illegible scripts, i.e. ‘really existing writings that can be recognised but not read’ (176).
22 This arrangement can be found, e.g. in the Leipzig gospels at the beginning of each gospel
(fols 12v/13r; 71v/72r; 109v/110r; 177v/178r) or in Morgan gospels at the beginning of Mark
(fols 64v/65r) and Luke (fols 99v/100r).
780 | Bruno Reudenbach

text is written on a patterned writing surface. The background can be so domi-

nant that it is difficult to see the golden lines of the text. The patterned writing
area often alludes to the patterns of textiles, mostly of precious silk from the
East. 23 From here it is only a small step to pages that are part of the introductory
series, but on which only coloured areas or fields with textile patterns appear,
without any writing at all. In the famous Codex aureus Epternacensis (c. 1030)
from Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Hs. 156142), each of the ex-
tensive sequence of pages introducing the four gospels even includes a double
page, up to the outermost edge of the parchment, that is exclusively and com-
pletely covered with a pattern reminiscent of textiles.24
In a Gospel book from the treasury of St. Gereon, which was written around
990/1000 in Cologne, the page preceding the images of the evangelist contains
only a framed blueish-purple or reddish-purple field.25 The same is the case with
a gospel book that was also made in Cologne, perhaps originating from
St. Andreas, and which is dated to the first half of the eleventh century.26 These
pages are usually referred to only as ‘coloured’ or ‘decorated’, as ‘textile’ or
even very misleadingly as ‘carpet’ pages. Because they appear without writing,
they have often been considered unfinished, even though the respective manu-
script does not otherwise provide any evidence of this unfinished state. In this
respect, the famous Gospel of St. Maria ad Gradus in Cologne (c. 1030) is reveal-
ing.27 The first page introduces not the first gospel but the manuscript as a
whole and contains a purple field without any writing on fol. 1r, followed by an
illumination of the Maiestas Domini on fol. 1v. In a sequence of this sort, no text
should be expected on the purple field at all.
If pages that are not covered with writing and contain only colour or orna-
mentation are also part of the introductory sequence, along with the initial pages,
the pages with patterned background, or pages with capitals of demonstrative
clarity, then it is necessary to include the wordless pages in the spectrum of the
different forms of writing presented there. It is as if letters and words are not
hidden in an enigmatic visual organization, but are instead completely invisi-
ble. To exaggerate, one could say that these are not pages without writing, but
pages with invisible writing. The introductory series thus covers a wide range,

||
23 Bücheler 2014, 2016.
24 Fols 17v/18r (Matthew), fols 51v/52r (Mark), fols 75v/76r (Luke) and fols 109v/110r (John)
<http://dlib.gnm.de/item/Hs156142/1> (accessed on 28 Oct. 2020).
25 Cologne, Historisches Archiv, Cod. W 312. Euw 1991, 30–34, no. 2.
26 Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum, AE 679. Märker and Jülich 2001, 27–37.
27 Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 1001a.
 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 781

from hard-to-read, to illegible, to invisible script – often in juxtaposition with

the almost demonstrative clarity of large capitals. This arrangement, which
unfolds programmatically at the beginning of each gospel, is to be understood
as a visualized reflection on the nature and status of writing and script, which in
this case is Holy Scripture, as well as on the recognition of God in the divine
Word.

3 Enigmatic calligraphy and the ‘veil of the letter’

If one looks at the elaborate ornamentation and decorated letters which can be
seen on the aforementioned initial pages, it is obvious that such elements do
not fit into the ideas and definitions that medieval Christian scholars had of
script and letters. Even the Church Fathers rejected more or less the visual luxu-
ry of manuscripts containing the word of God.28 This attitude was based on a
purely functional understanding of writing as a representation of spoken words.
For speech, however, the material preciousness of writing is irrelevant. When
the Church Fathers condemned and rejected preciously elaborate script, their
arguments followed, in some respects, older theories of language and writing,
which can be traced back to Aristotle and the Stoics. This attitude was no longer
shared by the writers and painters of the Early and High Middle Ages, as the
large number of ornamental pages and decorated letters proves. This is true
even though Aristotle’s teachings remained authoritative for most late antique
and medieval scholars and for the early medieval ars grammatica.29
Medieval treatises on the ars grammatica, almost all of which go back to an-
cient Greek and Roman authors, often deal with letters and writing. The defini-
tion of letters that exercised the most influence during the Middle Ages comes
from the late classical grammarians Diomedes (fourth century) and Priscian
(sixth century). The definition states that a letter is determined by three prop-
erties, nomen, figura, and postestas,30 that is, name (‘what is said’), figure (‘what
is observed or noted with writing’), and phonic value (potestas).31 This definition,
which is also reported by Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) in his Etymologiae,32 is
the consensus definition among early medieval scholars − and it is irrelevant for

||
28 Nordenfalk 1970, 89–96; Kendrick 1999, 36–39; Tilghman 2011a, 294.
29 Irvine 1994, 30–33.
30 Vogt-Spira 1991, 304–311; Irvine 1994, 97–104; Assmann 1992, 1420.
31 Irvine 1994, 98–100.
32 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, I, 4.16.
782 | Bruno Reudenbach

the decorated letters discussed here, for which sometimes neither nomen nor
figura can be identified. But in a short paragraph about five Greek letters,
Isidore also reports on what he calls litterae mysticae (‘mystical letters’).33 ‘Mys-
tical’ here means that a letter has a disguised meaning beyond its sound, a
meaning that is only visually recognizable; Isidore offers symbolic explana-
tions, some of which are deduced directly from the shape of the letters.34 These
explanations exhibit an awareness of the materiality of writing or even of dis-
play lettering, a materiality that can be accessed through iconography; Isidore’s
specific explanations of Greek letters are less important here than the fact that
the ‘mystical letters’ are not Greek letters by chance. Like all medieval scholars
and commentators, Isidore understood Hebrew, Greek, and Latin to be the three
sacred languages, with Greek and Latin descending from Hebrew, the original
source. 35 He and many other grammatical sources constructed a genealogy of
script from biblical origins, thus touching on a broad tradition of creation myths
in which the invention of script or the origin of texts was linked to supernatural
events.36
Within the biblical narratives, this tradition is exemplified by the events on
Mount Sinai (Ex. 31,18), when God dedit quoque Mosi […] in monte Sinai duas
tabulas testimonii lapideas scriptas digito Dei (‘gave to Moses [...] the two tablets
of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God’) and by the
scriptura Dei (‘the writing of God’) (Ex. 32,16).37 Narratives such as this one can
give people who are concerned with letters and writing a sacred aura.38 In this
sense writing is understood as bound up with supernatural mysteries and not
accessible to everyone. Isidore reports this constellation of ideas and mentions
that among the Egyptians the priests and the people had different scripts.39
So it can be supposed that this idea of writing – the idea of a script that only
a few can understand, a script that appears enigmatic and seems to contain a
secret – is still alive in the enigmatic visual organization of the decorated pages.

||
33 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, I, 4.8–9. Ernst 2006, 210. For the
iconographic potential of Greek letters in insular manuscripts, see Tilghman 2011b, 101.
34 For other sources, besides Isidore, about the symbolic meaning of letters, see Ganz 2017a,
130; cf. Schreiner 2002, 278–292; Kiening 2008, 31–32.
35 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, I, 3.4. Tilghman 2011b, 96.
36 Irvine 1994, 102.
37 Kiening 2008, 22–26. Even the emergence of different languages due to human hubris at the
Tower of Babel was ‘healed’ by divine power, through the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pente-
cost. For this idea and the use of mixed scripts in gospel books, see Tilghman, 2011b, 101–104.
38 Kiening, 2008.
39 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, I, 3.5.
 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 783

This enigmatic dimension of writing touches on the fundamental question

about the relationship between seeing the written text of Sacred Scripture and a
true understanding of these texts as divine revelation and as a means of access
to God; this relationship is a special one in Christianity. A famous passage from
the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians sums up this relationship
concisely. Paul, referring to the report in Exodus of the stone tablets, writes:

Manifestati quoniam epistula estis Christi ministrata a nobis et scripta non atramento sed
Spiritu Dei vivi non in tabulis lapideis sed in tabulis cordis carnalibus.

And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but
with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshy tables of the heart.
(2 Cor. 3,3).

And he continued with the much-quoted striking formula: Littera enim occidit
Spiritus autem vivicat (‘For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’) (2 Cor. 3,6).40
In contrasting littera et spiritus, letter and Spirit, the apostle refers to the dif-
ference between old and new, that is, the Old Testament, which could only be
based on the letter of the law, and the New Testament, in which the life-giving
Spirit of God could be experienced through Christ himself. Besides this salvation-
historical meaning, in early Christianity Origen in particular understood the
Pauline word in the sense of a scriptural hermeneutic, namely, that letters are
only external signs, a visible veiling of the actual truth, which is spiritual and
invisible.41 This position of scepticism towards script is different from the view
of Aristotle and rather reflects the view of Plato, who in his dialogue Phaidros
narrates the anecdote of Thoth, the inventor of letters in Egypt.42 When he ad-
vertised it to King Thamos, Thoth claimed that this invention would make the
Egyptians wiser and strengthen their memories. King Thamos replied that the
opposite would be true; trusting in writing produced by external characters
which are no part of ourselves would produce forgetfulness. In the remarks that
follow his account of this myth, Plato puts writing and painting on the same
level; both are dumb and lifeless. If one asks them, they cannot answer, and
they always say the same words. Script is only a pale shadow or imitation of
lively and inspired speech.

||
40 Assmann 1994, 327–329; Walter 1995.
41 Walter 1995, 377; Kiening 2008, 24.
42 Plato, Phaidros, 274d–276a. Assmann 1994.
784 | Bruno Reudenbach

It is not surprising that in the third century Origen interprets Paul’s formula
and the contrast between letter and spirit in this sense. As he argues in De
principiis:

‘Littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat’. In quo [apostolus] sine dubio per litteram
corporalia significat, per spiritum intellectualia, quae et spiritualia dicimus.

‘The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’. By ‘letter’ [the apostle] undoubtedly means the
physical things; by ‘spirit’ the intelligible ones, which we also call spiritual.43

Without a spiritual understanding of Scripture, and here Origen again quotes

the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 3,15), velamen est positum super cor eorum (‘a veil covers
their hearts’), the truth remains veiled. In this sense, Paul’s juxtaposition of
littera and spiritus characterizes words and letters as visible but merely external
and dead signs, written in ink or carved in stone, while the living truth is in-
scribed on the heart as immaterial, spiritual writing.
In this respect, the idea of the littera that kills and the life-giving spiritus
can be related on the one hand to the doctrine of the multiple senses of Sacred
Scripture, including allegory, as a method for interpreting texts, and, on the
other hand, to the epistemological model that understands the knowledge and
vision of God as a multi-level ascent from the material to the immaterial. Medie-
val exegetes agreed that the true, spiritual meaning of Sacred Scripture is hid-
den behind the literal meaning of words and letters.44 Like Paul and Origen,
medieval theologians talked about this idea via metaphors of veiling and reveal-
ing.45
In the early ninth century, Claudius of Turin took Origen’s argument literal-
ly, in part, and concisely explained the idea of the letter as a velamen (‘veil’).46

Ita et cum per prophetas vel legislatorem Verbum Dei profertur ad homines, non absque
competentibus profertur indumentis. Nam sicut ibi carnis, ita hic litterae velamine tegitur:
ut littera quidem aspicitur tanquam caro, latens vero spiritalis intrinsecus sensus tan-
quam divinitas sentitur. […] Beati sunt illi oculi qui velamen litterae obtectum intrinsecus
divinum spiritum vident.

||
43 Origen, De principiis, I,1.2.
44 For the basics of this idea and its consequences for the medieval hermeneutics of Scripture,
see the concise summary by Ohly 1958.
45 Spitz 1972, 23–39.
46 Claudius of Turin, In libros informationum litterae et spiritus, in Jacques-Paul Migne,
Patrologia Latina, 104, 617AB. Translation by Smalley 1983, 1; Kessler 2000, 187.
 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 785

When the Word of God was shown to men through the lawgiver and the prophets, it was
not shown them without suitable clothing. There it was covered by the veil of flesh, here
by the veil of the letter. The letter appears as flesh; but the true spiritual sense within is
known as divinity. […] Blessed are the eyes which see divine spirit through the letters veil.

The true meaning of Sacred Scripture, the spiritual meaning, cannot be under-
stood by simply reading the words; it is instead revealed through intensive con-
sideration, continuous repetition of words and sentences, meditation, and
careful thinking about the text. In medieval monasteries this way of reading was
called ruminatio, which refers to the permanent and constantly repeated inter-
nalization of a text, as if one were ingesting and ruminating on it.47 This ap-
proach is fundamentally different from normal reading, that is, simple and
cursory reading. For this reason, in examining the calligraphy of the initial pag-
es, we may conclude that their writing does not have to obey the rules of normal
reading. Instead, such pages activate a concentrated and meditative seeing of
the text as the right way to understand the divine word and unveil its meaning.
This intent was often enhanced by the coloured or patterned pages which
are often, as in the Morgan gospels, part of the introductory sequence. These
pages evoke patterned textiles and are therefore to be understood as a visualiza-
tion of the metaphor of velatio and revelatio, of veiling and unveiling.48 Such
textile allusions can also be seen in the name of the gospel book, which
changed in the eleventh century when it was increasingly no longer referred to
as liber or codex but as textus Evangelii.49 In this way, the twofold meaning of
textus, as textile and as text, comes into play, both senses deriving from the
Latin texere, which means ‘to weave’. Not only textile background patterns but
also the interweaving of letters and ornamentation, the under- and over-
layering of letters, tendrils, and interlaced ornaments allude to this etymology
and to the idea of the ‘veil of the letter’ concealing the truth.
The pages of the introductory series thus show, in summary, various forms
of distance from the common, readable script. Especially the initial pages as-
sume pictorial qualities and provoke a form of perception different from simple
reading – more viewing and contemplation than just reading.50 In this way, the
introductory pages can also be related to a widespread epistemological model
originating in Antiquity, a model which understands the knowledge and vision
of God as a gradual ascent from the material to the immaterial. This model

||
47 Ruppert 1977; Carruthers 1990, 164–166, 170–172; Illich 1993, 54–57.
48 Bücheler 2014, 70–114.
49 Lentes 2006.
50 Czerwinski 1997; Kiening 2008, 39–40.
786 | Bruno Reudenbach

touches on the hermeneutics of Scripture as outlined above: the view behind

the curtain of the script and the letters is not a physical viewing but rather a
spiritual viewing and ultimately the vision of God.
In the twelfth century, especially in the school of Saint-Victor, the method
of a knowledge that ascended in stages was widely discussed and systematized
with a clear definition of terms. Its main features, however, can also be traced
back to Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In his three-stage model, Hugh of
Saint-Victor (c. 1096/7–1141) defines meditatio as the persistent pursuit of an
object, which leads to contemplatio, the highest level of knowledge, which in
turn grants access to the purely intelligible and therefore to the vision of God. 51
Intensive reading in permanent repetition can thus be the starting point of med-
itation; interestingly, Augustine already saw a close connection between rumi-
natio and meditatio.52
The page sequence, which in early medieval gospel books is always placed
at the beginning of a gospel, i.e. in an important, distinctive, and prominent
position, can be understood as a visual reflection on writing, script, and the
nature of Holy Scripture. The entire sequence offers readers a wide range of
visual organization, writing surfaces with frames and coloured or patterned
backgrounds and scripts that differ greatly from the continuously flowing text
on the following pages. The sequence contains a wide spectrum that can in-
clude writing that is clearly legible, difficult to read and illegible, and even in-
visible, often staging an antithesis of enigmatic calligraphy and clear legibility.
In this way, the sequence of pages activates different forms of perception that
challenge normal reading. Within that sequence, it is above all in the initial
pages that the rules of readable script, which is linearly ordered word by word,
are demonstratively broken. Here the identification of the words is made impos-
sible by abrupt changes in the size of the letters or the reading direction, by
arbitrary grouping of the letters, and by ornamental interweaving: the initial
pages are not organized as text pages, but as images and ornaments.53
The eye must walk on the page with careful and thorough consideration.
The illegibility of the initial pages activates an attitude which makes the readers
aware that there is a meaning behind the material and readable letters that must
be revealed. Such pages therefore do not require reading in the usual sense,
which linearly follows the succession of words. Their disposition as, often cen-
tralized (Figs 3 and 4), ‘script-images’ must be contemplated by simultaneous

||
51 Meier 1990, passim, esp. 40.
52 Ruppert 1977, 86–87.
53 Werckmeister 1967, 162–167.
 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 787

consideration and contemplative synopsis. Such consideration detaches itself

from the material letter and enables the transition to contemplatio, to the high-
est level of knowledge.54
Understood in this way, these pages are proof of a great artistic dilemma.
How could medieval artists, scribes, and painters, follow the apostle’s doctrine
that the letter kills, and only the invisible Spirit gives life? How could they show
that their own work, the material script, is worthless? Their way out of this di-
lemma was a paradox that satisfied both artistic ambition and the demands of
theology. It was precisely the most elaborate parts of the manuscript with or-
namented letters and lavishly decorated script that drew attention to the worth-
lessness of material writing by their demonstratively presented illegibility. At
the same time, the illegibility of the page was a visual cue for the transition from
meditative reading to contemplatively seeing the purely intelligible, that is, to
the visio Dei.

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 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 791

Fig. 1: Gospel book from Corvey, 9th c.; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 755, fol. 17v:
LIBER GENERATIONIS IHV XRI FILII DAVID FILII ABRAHAM. © The Morgan Library & Museum, New
York.
792 | Bruno Reudenbach

Fig. 2: Gospel book from Corvey, 9th c.; Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Ms 76, fol. 109v: INCIPIT
EVANGELIVM SECVNDVM LVCAM. © Universitätsbibliothek, Leipzig.
 Enigmatic Calligraphy | 793

Fig. 3: Gospel book from Corvey, 9th c.; Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Ms 76, fol. 110r:
QVONIAM QVIDEM. © Universitätsbibliothek, Leipzig.
794 | Bruno Reudenbach

Fig. 4: Gospel book from Corvey, 9th c.; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 755, fol. 157v: IN
PRINCIPIO ERAT VERBVM. © The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.
Dick van der Meij
Sailing-Ships and Character Illustrations in
Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts
Abstract: This paper will look at three manuscripts from the collections of the
British Library and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin to explore the various ways
sailing-ships and characters that play a role in the stories are portrayed. Also
some attention will be paid to the combinations we find of ships, other illustrat-
ed elements, and the wayang-like figures in the illustrations. The manuscripts
we are concerned with in this contribution are Serat Selarasa, British Library
MSS Jav. 28, Serat Damar Wulan, British Library MSS Jav. 89, and Serat Panji
Jaya Kusuma, Berlin Ms. or. quart. 2112. Below some illustrations will be pre-
sented and commented upon. We will see that manuscripts may have been pro-
duced in various ways. However, at present due to lack of detailed studies of
illustrated Javanese manuscripts no definitive answers can be given to many
questions about Javanese manuscript production in the past.

1 Introduction
The text-oriented approach of philologists working on Javanese texts often had
interesting and prejudicial consequences for the appreciation and understand-
ing of the manuscripts they worked with. In textual studies of Javanese manu-
scripts, the presence of illustrations and illuminations, indeed, any adorn-
ments, were and often still are, silently passed over. This is a pity as they form
essential parts of the manuscripts and of the texts they adorn and they add to
the understanding and appreciation people have of the texts and the manu-
scripts in which they are contained. A similar situation exists for other features
of manuscripts. In their recently published edited book In the Author's Hand.
Holographs and Authorial Manuscripts in the Islamic Handwritten Tradition,
Frédéric Bauden and Élise Franssen write in their introduction: ‘The lack of a
general study of the holograph manuscripts produced in the Islamic world is
probably because holographs are only mentioned casually in catalogues, arti-
cles and studies, and the researcher does not have access to an exhaustive and
unique repertoire which he/she could browse through to identify the particular

Open Access. © 2021 Dick van der Meij, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Interational License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-039
796 | Dick van der Meij

handwriting of a given person.’1 Because of this dearth of data, researchers may

thus miss information and clues that may be important for their understanding
of the material they work with.
The same situation applies to the study of manuscripts in Indonesia and
those from the Javanese tradition are no exception. The inclusion of illustrations
and illuminations in Javanese manuscripts is not always stated in catalogues or
text editions and when their presence is mentioned, it is not infrequently done
in a derogatory manner but appreciation has changed over time. In 1977, for
instance, catalogue compilers wrote that MSS Jav. 89 in the British Library was
‘[i]llustrated throughout with drawings in colours and gilt, which are of great
interest although not of a high artistic standard (emphasis mine)’.2 However,
some 35 years later, for Annabel Teh Gallop, the same manuscript is ‘one of the
loveliest Indonesian manuscripts in the British Library, with a treasury of illus-
trations depicting Javanese society in the late eighteenth century. The pictures
are rich in humor and the artist had a marvellous eye for facial expressions and
bodily postures (for example, a woman sleeping with her arm across her eyes, a
sandal just balanced on a foot).’3 The study of illustrations in Javanese manu-
scripts is also hampered by the relatively few illustrations in publications. Apart
from the odd illustrations in other places, some publications that contain in-
formation on and pictures of illustrated Javanese manuscripts are Pigeaud’s
third volume of his four-volume catalogue of Javanese manuscripts in the Neth-
erlands (1967–1980); Golden Letters published by Annabel Teh Gallop and Ben
Arps in 1991; Illuminations edited by Ann Kumar and John McGlynn of 1996
where Tim Behrend published a chapter on Javanese manuscripts with many
illustrations from Javanese manuscripts; the catalogue of an exhibition of Indo-
nesian manuscripts in Berlin published by Wieringa and Hanstein of 2015; and
my Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok of
2017. Luckily, many manuscripts have nowadays been digitized so that we can
explore these manuscripts much more easily than was ever the case before. All
three manuscripts used in this contribution have been digitised and can be
accessed on-line.
Illustrated Javanese manuscripts come in all sorts and sizes and most of
these manuscripts contain Javanese narrative literary poems with stories that

||
1 Bauden and Franssen 2020, 8–9.
2 Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977, 71.
3 See <https://southeastasianlibrarygroup.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/everyday-life-in-java-in-
the-late-18th-century-serat-damar-wulan/> (all internet sites mentioned in this article were
accessed on 18 May 2021).
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 797

were once popular among the Javanese. These poems concern the exploits of
princes and kings in Java and elsewhere and are written using Javanese poetic
structures and conventions.4 Other manuscripts contain illustrated divination
almanacs (pawukon) of which a large variety exists in public and private collec-
tions,5 and illustrated versions of the Asthabrata (variously glossed as ‘the
eightfold teachings’, ‘the eight ways of life’, and ‘the eight royal virtues’).6 Ap-
parently the eighteenth to nineteenth century was a time when illustrated and
illuminated manuscripts of literary texts were en vogue in Java. To mention
some examples preserved in the National Library of Indonesia, these manu-
scripts include beautiful richly coloured illustrated versions of the Serat Panji
Jayakusuma made c. 1840, Serat Angling Darma made c. 1845, Serat Dewakusuma
Kembar made c. 1850, Menak Jobin made 1862, and Serat Asmarasupi made in
1893.7 Other collections, both inside and outside Indonesia, also contain illus-
trated Javanese manuscripts, such as the Library of the University of Indonesia
in Jakarta, Museum Sonobudoyo in Yogyakarta and the various palaces in
Yogyakarta and Surakarta in Central Java. Outside Indonesia one might look for
these manuscripts in the collections of the British Library, Leiden University
Libraries and the Staatsbibliothek (Stabi) zu Berlin, to mention the most im-
portant of them.
Although many literary poetic stories in Javanese manuscripts tell of events
that happen in fictive times and places, the illustrations in these manuscripts
may show depictions of matters from a totally different time and place, and take
their inspiration from a variety of sources. I will look at three manuscripts to
explore how sailing-ships and the characters in the stories are portrayed. Also
some attention will be paid to the combinations we find in illustrations of ships
and characters portrayed in the style reminiscent of shadow play wayang pup-
pets. The manuscripts we are concerned with in this contribution are Serat
Selarasa, British Library MSS Jav. 28,8 Serat Damar Wulan, British Library MSS
Jav. 89,9 and Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma, Berlin, Stabi, Ms. or. quart. 2112.10

||
4 For a detailed description of these verse structures see van der Meij 2017a, 243–313.
5 For many illustrations, see van der Meij 2019, 135–174.
6 See Wieringa 2018, 180–215 and Prabu Suryodilogo 2012.
7 Indonesian National Library, KBG 737, KBG 139, KBG 19, KBG 721 and KBG 543, respectively.
Pictures can be found in Kumar and McGlynn 1996, 180–181.
8 Digitally accessible at <http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=MSS_Jav_28>.
Since the three manuscripts I use here are all digitized and can be accessed on the internet I
suggest that interested readers open these digital versions to form a better impression of the
manuscripts than I can offer in this short contribution.
9 Digitally accessible at <http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=MSS_Jav_89>.
798 | Dick van der Meij

2 The illustrations
We will see that in one manuscript, the sailing-ships are meticulously drawn
depicting foreign as well as indigenous vessels as they were thought to look in
the real world, or in other words, in a ‘naturalistic' way. Conversely, in other
manuscripts, ships are portrayed in a naive way with dramatically less realistic
detail, and therefore rather ‘un-naturalistic’. The same notion of ‘realistic’ and
‘un-realistic’ applies to the way other elements in the illustrations are por-
trayed, including the wayang-style11 illustrations and the depiction of non-
wayang-style characters.12 Apparently, the artists were struggling to find a way
to meet the expected rules of manuscript illustration for fictive stories – by
keeping to the wayang-style – but at the same time to add non-expected and
new elements to these illustrations.
Usually, in illustrations in Javanese manuscripts that contain fictive narra-
tive poems, no attempt is made to depict the characters of the stories as real
people.13 Rather, they are shown in the form of, but not quite the same as, exist-
ing parchment puppets of the Javanese shadow-play (wayang kulit). These pup-
pets were given the form they still have today probably to circumvent the
Islamic ban on the depiction of people and animals.14 Wayang puppets are flat,
made of buffalo hide and elaborately perforated, so that during performances,
their shadow comes over clearly on a white screen. Each individual shadow
puppet character can be identified by its dress, jewellery and other adornments,
its body and posture, hairdo and facial features as well as its facial and body
colour. For instance, a refined character has an aquiline slim nose and thin

||
10 Digitally accessible at <http://orient-digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/receive/SBBMSBook_
islamhs_00007747>.
11 I am not in favour of the expression ‘wayang-style’ but will use it in this contribution for
want of a better term. For readability’s sake, I will not use quotation marks whenever I use the
term.
12 It would go too far for this contribution to look at the way backgrounds, houses or horses
are (or are not) depicted.
13 Note that in this contribution I am not talking about illustrated historical chronicles (babad)
which some also perceive as largely fictive. The illustrations in these poetic or prose texts tend
to depict matters much more in line with the periods they deal with, such as Babad Demak
Cod.Or. 23.742, and Babad Dipanegara D Or. 13 in Leiden University Libraries (for illustrations
see van der Meij 2017a, 63–65). Babads are moreover illustrated much more naturalistically
than truly fictive poetic texts. See also a very good example of this in the illustration of the
Babad Blambangan (Indonesian National Library, KBG 63, see Kumar and McGlynn 1996, 183).
14 See Ras 1976, 78–79.
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 799

limbs whereas coarse characters are larger, have big noses, large bulging eyes
and long curly hair. The puppets are rather stiff and although they can be ma-
nipulated endlessly, their basic forms do not change and do not allow altera-
tions of the positions of the limbs. For instance, they cannot sit cross-legged or
turn their heads.15 The same character in the wayang stories can be represented
by more than one puppet to indicate his or her stage in life but the puppets
themselves do not change and have stayed the same over a long period of time.
Regional variations exist and are often easily recognizable, but only concern
minor changes as to size, colour and precision with which the puppets are
made.16 The wayang iconography was known throughout Java and most people
would make no mistakes in recognizing the characters that were most often
used in stories or to recognize a character’s characteristics when it only rarely
featured in a story and was thus less popular. In short, a coarse or refined char-
acter in wayang-style illustrations would look like a similar character from the
wayang theatre. However, illustrations may show wayang-style figures in bodily
poses that actual puppets would not allow next to positions puppets would
adopt during actual shadow-play performances. Not all characters are depicted
in a wayang way and and they display individual characteristics and a range of
emotions that wayang-style illustrations cannot display. The combination of the
wayang and non-wayang-styles creates many possibilities but these have so far
not been explored. It seems that specific characters in stories are depicted in the
wayang-style such as kings, queens and their children, while others are not and
this makes for a curious and often humorous mixture. The often elaborate and
meticulously executed wayang-style figures are often combined with unrefined
and ill-executed backgrounds and props so the question arises whether these
elements of the illustrations were indeed executed by the same artists.
Indeed, an important issue in the study of Javanese manuscripts is that we
have little knowledge about when or by whom they were produced. Many man-
uscripts are undated, the scribes and artists are anonymous and no Javanese
sources have so far been found that explain how manuscripts should be made
and what the aesthetic qualities were to which they were bound textually, chi-
rographically and with respect to illustrations and illuminations. Should we

||
15 A concise and still very useful description of wayang puppets and how they are made and
used is Scott-Kemball 1970. A much later and much more extensive and copiously illustrated
work was published in 2007 by Walter Angst in which he compares various wayang-styles from
Java and Bali. For examples of illustrations figures in wayang-style and staged as in the shad-
ow-play theatre made in the early twentieth century, see van der Meij 2017b.
16 See especially Angst 2007 for an elaboration on a large number of different regional wayang
puppet styles.
800 | Dick van der Meij

think of one person who both wrote the text and also made the illustrations? Or
should we perhaps assume that more than one person was at work and that, as
often is the case with the text, also in the illustration production more than one
person was involved? Did the scribe and the artist know each other and, if they
did, what was their relationship? Indeed, the assumption that the individuals
involved in making these manuscripts all came from the same cultural back-
ground may be mistaken. Perhaps in the case of the production of Javanese
manuscripts, it may well have been that people from outside Java, for instance
Holland, were involved too. It may also be that advisors were present to clarify
illustration problems. Looking at all the illustrations included in one manu-
script the conclusion often may be that indeed more than one person was at
work, each making his own, separate, illustrations, or that more than one artist
worked on the same illustration.
Illustrations are usually put in, or near, that part of a text, it refers to. How-
ever, this logic is not always clear in the case of Javanese manuscripts, which is
probably due to the manuscript production process where the text was often
written first and space was left blank to be filled later with illustrations, or the
other way round. One might even assume that both practices took place at the
same time and that in the same manuscript, some illustrations were made be-
fore the writing of the text and others after the writing was finished. Illustra-
tions often precede the text in manuscripts of poetic texts at the start of a new
canto. This is often the case when a new canto starts on a new page, but also
when it does not and space was left blank when one canto ends and a new one
starts halfway a page as on fols 18r, 49v and 120v in the manuscript of the Serat
Damar Wulan MSS Jav. 89 used here. Illustrations were probably made to match
the expectations of the manuscript’s future owner who may have ordered it to
be made, or to lure and satisfy the people who borrowed the manuscript in a
lending library. It seems that the size, visual impact and number of ships in the
illustrations and the words in the text devoted to them do not always match.

2.1 Serat Selarasa

The first manuscript Serat Selarasa (also spelled Sela Rasa) is part of the collec-
tion of the British Library and has the shelfmark MSS Jav. 28.17 The information

||
17 Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977, 61. The manuscript is described in the catalogue of Indone-
sian manuscripts in Great Britain made by Merle C. Ricklefs and Petrus Voorhoeve which was
updated in 2014 by Merle C. Ricklefs and Annabel Teh Gallop from the British Library, and
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 801

from the catalogue states that the manuscript is dated in the Javanese calendar
24 Sapar A.J. 1731 = AD 4 June 1804. According to information in the manuscript,
the original owner was a certain ‘Mrs. Sakeber’ which may be either that she
was the wife of the Gezaghebber (Lieutenant Governor) or perhaps an also uni-
dentified Madame Schaber of Surabaya in East Java. The subsequent owner, Lt.-
Col. Colin Mackenzie, became interested in Javanese history and antiquities
when he accompanied the British Indian force to Java in 1811. Many of his Java-
nese manuscripts derive from the sack of the court of Yogyakarta in 1812. His
manuscripts were sold to the English East India Company and ended up first in
the India Office Library and are now part of the collection of the British Li-
brary.18 As stated by Mackenzie himself on fol. vr, he received this manuscript
from a certain Mr. Rothebuhler in Surabaya in February 1812. It measures
40.3 × 20 cm and has 294 pages, of which the text occupies pages 6–284.19 It is
assumed that the story was popular in West Java only,20 and if that is the case,
one wonders if the present manuscript was indeed from Surabaya in East Java
and if it was, how ‘Sakeber’ came to own it.
Vreede’s catalogue of the Javanese and Madurese manuscripts in the collec-
tion of Leiden University published in 1892 includes an extensive Dutch sum-
mary of the plot of the story.21 The story is about the four sons of King Sekberen
of Campa: Selangkara, Selacara, Selagada and Selarasa. After the king’s death,
Selangkara succeeds him to the throne but he rules tyrannically and his three
brothers leave the country in a boat and encounter many difficulties at sea,
where they are almost shipwrecked. In the subsequent long story, the youngest,
Selarasa, is shown to be the smartest and the most successful in the many wars
he fights in many countries against non-Muslims who, once defeated, all convert
to Islam. All three brothers have many romantic adventures and marry beautiful
ladies. At the end of the story, they are reunited with their eldest brother. The
story is set in the early time of the Islamization of Java and surrounding places

||
several pages with illustrations from this manuscript were included (Ricklefs, Voorhoeve and
Gallop 2014).
18 Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977, xxvi. The manuscript is also described and two illustrations
are included in Gallop and Arps 1991, 88–89. The manuscript has already been looked at in
great detail by Annabel Teh Gallop who provides more background to the manuscript and the
way it was illustrated, see Gallop 2014 at <https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/
2014/12/javanese-manuscript-art-serat-selarasa.html>.
19 Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977, 61.
20 Pigeaud 1980, 226, and Behrend 1998, 404.
21 Vreede 1892, 198–200.
802 | Dick van der Meij

and clearly in a time that precedes the use of the seventeenth-century ships
portrayed in this manuscript by several centuries.
The picture in Fig. 1 shows the three boys Selacara, Selagada and Selarasa
in a sailing-boat at sea after they had abandoned their tyrannical king brother
Selangkara waiting for a storm to subside. The picture combines distinct styles
of depiction. The first is a rather realistic depiction of the ship and its rigging
and the way the sails, (Dutch) flags and pennants are blown in the same direc-
tion by the wind. The waves and the dark sky indicate that the weather was
rough. The figures in the ship are clearly inspired by leather shadow-play pup-
pets from the Wayang Gedhog variety. Distinct from the puppets of the much
more popular Wayang Purwa, which are used in the shadow play theatre of
stories derived from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the Wayang Gedhog vari-
ety was specially designed and used for the shadow play performances of Panji
stories. The puppets can be distinguished because the hairdo and hair orna-
ments of both wayang varieties differ and the puppets of male characters of the
Wayang Gedhog usually wear a Javanese dagger (keris) in their waistband. In
the manuscript the two different styles of wayang are used as is the case in the
Serat Panji Jayakusuma discussed below. The Wayang Purwa puppet style in
this manuscript is the one from Yogyakarta as can be seen from the clothes and
the hairdo of the princesses portrayed in fol. 114v. The way they have been put
aboard the ship looks somewhat awkward.22 To begin with, they are too large for
the ship and sit without any indication of movement and despite their precari-
ous predicament, they display no fear or other emotion whatsoever, as indeed,
wayang puppets cannot do. They look as they would have looked in a shadow
play performance. The only thing we see is their heads, shoulders, and parts of
their upper arms. Their heads are looking downward and their hairstyles and
jewellery indicate they are princes. Their flatness contrasts with the implied
depth of the rest of the picture. The placement at the upper part of the page of
the illustration shows that space was left open for it. Because the illustration
does not infringe on the text this makes me believe that the text and illustration
were not made at the same time, as probably was the case in other places in this
manuscript where some penetration of the illustration into the text occurs, such
as on fols 17r, 19v (in Fig. 2), 36r, 123r (as in Fig. 3) and others.23
That the scribe of the text and the illustrator worked closely together in this
manuscript may probably be concluded from the fact that the spaces left open
for the illustrations do not always have the same size. Fol. 52v, for instance, has

||
22 A second picture showing wayang figures in a boat is in fol. 139r.
23 Fol. 19v is reproduced in Ricklefs, Voorhoeve and Gallop 2014, iv.
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 803

a much larger illustration than many of the others, and this can only have hap-
pened if both producers worked in tandem. Of course, one wonders how the
discussions between the scribe and the artist(s) went and who was in charge of
what the final product would look like. The same can be concluded from the fact
that sometimes the space left blank was at the top and in other cases at the bot-
tom of the page. Another possibility is that the production process was even
more complicated and some pages may have had the illustration made before
the text was added or that more than one illustrator was at work. It seems that
the person who made the illustrations in the wayang-style is a different artist
than the one who made the other illustrations or the non-wayang part of the
illustrations. It may be that each artist had his own specific expertise in depict-
ing certain elements. As we see sometimes in other manuscripts, rough draw-
ings were made first (and sometimes some of them were never finished), then
the text was added after which the manuscript’s illustrations were finished and
colours were added. In some manuscripts, like the one of the Serat Panji Jaya-
kusuma, discussed below, all illustrations are at the bottom of the page and
none penetrate into the text. Two pictures that strongly resemble the one illus-
trated in Fig. 1 is in a manuscript of the Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma, which is in-
cluded in Illuminations24 while a second one is in a manuscript also of the Serat
Panji Jaya Kusuma in the British Library MSS Jav. 68, made in 1805, fol. 11v.25 In
this picture, the wayang figures are also of the Wayang Gedhog variety and are
placed in the ship in a similar way. The question thus arises as to whether the
makers of the illustrations in these two manuscripts knew each other or knew of
each other’s work. We do not have enough material for comparison yet, but it
may be that for certain illustrations the artists met the expectations of the public
by copying from each other. Because wayang used to be ubiquitous in Java, the
Javanese iconography was the standard to portray story characters. The public
expectation was probably that characters in fictive stories should be portrayed
as wayang figures and this may explain why in many Javanese illustrated man-
uscripts no attempt was made to portray characters in a more natural manner.
This Serat Selarasa contains no less than 18 pictures of foreign ships and Ja-
vanese boats,26 apart from many other scenes. Some will be highlighted here.
Fig. 1 shows the little ship with Selacara, Selagada and Selarasa on board which
is put right where the scene is being narrated. Other illustrations show ships

||
24 Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma from the collection of the Indonesian National Library, KBG 139
which was produced around 1840 on Java’s north coast, Kumar and McGlynn 1996, 183.
25 Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977, 68; Kieven 2021, 196.
26 Fols 6r, 73r, 90v, 91v, 92v, 93v, 105v, 116v, 120r, 123r, 127r, 130r, 135v, 136v, 137v, 138v, 139r, 139v.
804 | Dick van der Meij

anchored in harbour or at sea, right where the scenes where they play a role, are
told. This manuscript of the Serat Selarasa portrays the ships in a realistic man-
ner but they do not seem to be ships of the nineteenth century but rather from
the seventeenth century. The rigging of the sails, the way the masts are por-
trayed in relation to each other and to the size of the ships is naturalistic, the
Dutch flags and pennants and the sails look realistic, and the way they are
blown by the wind looks natural. It almost seems that the artist had seen them
in harbour or even at sea and that he has made drawings of them more often to
familiarize himself with how to portray them. But since the ships precede the
artist by more than one and a half century that is impossible. It may be that he
has seen illustrations of ships in paintings or book illustrations or on old maps
of Batavia where ships are also often seen waiting in harbour. For instance, Fig.
3 shows three ships anchored in the harbour and three little boats are in front of
them. The people climbing the masts to fix the sails of the ship at the left are not
made in wayang-style, perhaps to show that they are not Javanese. Note that the
tops of the masts penetrate into the text. The way the flags are flying and the
general outlook of the picture are very reminiscent of Dutch paintings from the
seventeenth century. Can the artist have known these oil paintings? If that were
the case one wonders where he might have seen these paintings. Were they on
the walls of the Dutch in Java and had the illustrator visited these places? The
illustrations presented here clearly show different kinds of ships that were used
by the Dutch to get to the Indies to establish trade relations and ‘inspire’ the
local populations to grant the Dutch monopolies on the trade of spices and oth-
er commodities. In the seventeenth century, one kind of vessel was especially
popular and was created with a narrow main deck to circumvent high taxation
by Denmark on the Baltic Sea trade, which depended on the size of the main
deck. This vessel is the fluyt or fluit in Dutch. The vessels were equipped with
only relatively few cannons to protect themselves from pirates, as they were not
designed to engage in maritime warfare. Specially designed fluits were made to
enable them to cross the seas in the tropics, as those made for European trade
tended to break up in the warm humid tropical climate. Of course, more re-
search is needed to establish the validity of the idea that we are indeed talking
about fluits because the Europeans used many other different sailing ships to
cross the Southeast Asian seas.
Not all characters in the manuscripts are depicted in wayang-style, as can
be seen in Fig. 4. This picture is interesting as the figure in the small indigenous
vessel is depicted in a more realistic way. The illustration is also noteworthy as
the placement of the ships in relation to each other shows a form of perspective,
which is rarely seen in this or other, illustrated manuscripts.
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 805

2.2 Serat Damar Wulan

The manuscript of the Serat Damar Wulan, British Library MSS Jav. 89 measures
25.5 × 20 cm and is dated in the Javanese calendar Jumahat-Manis, 9 Rabingulawal
but does not mention the year.27 Lt.-Col. Raban presented it to the India Office
Library in 1815,28 so it must have been made before that year. The fictive story
takes places in the time of the East Javanese kingdom of Majapahit (1292 – early
fifteenth century) and details the exploits and adventures of the legendary hero
Damar Wulan, who, in the story, was to rule Majapahit as King Brawijaya.29
Contrary to the Serat Selarasa, the Serat Damar Wulan is said to originate
from East Java rather than West Java and was a very popular text. Many manu-
scripts may be found in manuscript collections, many more than that of the
Serat Selarasa. Of course, being a popular text, many variations exist, which can
be seen from the information Pigeaud gives us of this text, and his division of it
into versions that he dubbed versions A, B and C, and versions written or copied
in other places like Yogyakarta in Central Java.30
The relation between the text and the illustrations is interesting in this rich-
ly illustrated manuscript. Sailing ships are portrayed on fols 3r and 4r and 155v
and 156r so much less than in the Serat Selarasa. The illustrations on fols 3r and
4r each show one ship that carries two of the story’s characters, Wandan and
Anggris, who arrive in order to seek the hand in marriage of the maiden queen
(Prabu Kenya) of Majapahit (which is refused). This short piece of information
gave rise to two detailed illustrations of the ships. In the first illustration on fol.
3r, the ship is welcomed by a small indigenous vessel that is dwarfed by the
large Dutch ship – as can be seen from the Dutch flags – it is headed to. The
large ship has anchored and its sails fastened, while a strong wind is blowing as
can be seen from the flying flags and pennants and the sail of the small boat
that welcomes the ship.
In the second illustration on fol. 4r, apart from the second Dutch ship, a
small rowboat is heading for the coast. The large ships in these two illustrations
are not from Java and the illustrations were clearly inspired by European ships.

||
27 Some pictures from this manuscript have been reproduced in the updated catalogue of
Ricklefs, Voorhoeve and Gallop published in 2014. The manuscript is also described and three
illustrations are included in Gallop and Arps 1991, 87. In 1953, Coster-Wijsman gave extensive
descriptions of the illustrations of the manuscript, but she only mentions the ships portrayed in
the illustrations on fols 3r and 4r and unfortunately not the ones on fols 155v and 156r.
28 Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977, 71.
29 Coster-Wijsman 1953, 155.
30 Pigeaud 1980, 231–333.
806 | Dick van der Meij

That we are dealing with a prospective joyful event may be gathered from the
illustration on fol. 4r (Fig. 4), where the ship is enthusiastically decorated with
flags and pennants. It is clear that the artist had seen, or was even familiar with,
Dutch seventeenth century paintings where this kind of scene is often por-
trayed. On fol. 155v both ships are seen anchored in harbour, while one ship is
being loaded by small vessels on fol. 156r, and the scene accompanies the text
where these illustrations are placed.
The characters in the manuscript were not made in wayang-style, are much
more natural and often tongue-in-cheek although the heads and faces of more
exalted characters somewhat resemble wayang puppets.31 The characters are
portrayed in ‘realistic’ postures and they have a range of different facial expres-
sions. In particular in this manuscript, the characters are portrayed with much
humour, and many of them contrast with wayang-like figures who are incapable
of showing this kind of variety in mood. An example of this difference may be
seen in Fig. 6 where we see the mother of vizier Logender seated on a chair with
her servants behind her sitting on the floor. She is attentive while the angle of
her shoulder indicates the intensity of her interest in what she is being told.32

2.3 Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma

The third manuscript is part of the collection of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
with shelfmark Berlin Ms. or. quart. 2112. It measures 34 × 21 cm and has 250
pages.33 According to a note at the end of the manuscripts, the writing of it was
finished on 26 January 1887 by a certain Koesoemoatmadja.34 The text tells the
story of how Panji conquered the Island of Bali.35

||
31 See, for instance, fols 59r, 82r, and 93r.
32 Coster-Wijsman 1953, 163.
33 The manuscript is described in the catalogue of Indonesian manuscripts in the collection of
the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, compiled by Titik Pudjiastuti and Thoralf Hanstein, published
in 2016. Other illustrated manuscripts of this text exist are, for instance, L255 in Museum
Sonobudoyo in Yogyakarta (Behrend 1998, 364), and British Library MSS Jav. 68 (Ricklefs and
Voorhoeve 1977, 68). As they have not yet been digitised I have been unable to use them for
this contribution.
34 Pudjiastuti and Hanstein 2016, 315.
35 In his catalogue of Javanese manuscripts in Leiden and elsewhere in the Netherlands,
Pigeaud makes no mention of the title of the Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma. However, the name of
the text is included in R. M. Ng Poerbatjaraka’s comparison of a large number of Panji versions
published in 1940 in Dutch and in 1968 in Indonesian translation and subsequently the name
was used in catalogues of Javanese manuscripts. The Serat Panji Jayakusuma has been the
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 807

The Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma (also spelled Jayakusuma) is part of the enor-
mous Panji cycle which relates the exploits and adventures of Prince Panji Inu
Kertapati of the Kingdom of Koripan who is destined to marry Princess Galuh
Candra Kirana of Daha, but, before the wedding can take place, the prince and
the princess are separated and have many adventures before they can finally be
united. Many versions exist both in Java and Bali and a wealth of manuscripts is
preserved in collections all over the world. The version in Bali is called Malat, of
which a large number, but virtually no complete, manuscripts exist.
Fig. 7 from the Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma shows a ship illustrated in a modest
way, flat and devoid of details. It does not give rise to much pondering about
what the ship may actually look like in reality or what kind of ship it is. It was
made much as a child would have made it. Indeed, children were apparently
also engaged in manuscript illustration, as evidenced by a manuscript of the
Serat Asmarasupi in the collection of the Library of the University of Indonesia.36
This being so, the complicated rigging of the sails is suggested and the maker
probably had seen this kind of ship or pictures of it, perhaps in another Java-
nese manuscript, but his way of making the illustration is not quite as realistic
as the others. The scene that is depicted here is when Panji has arrived at the
coast of Bali and has dropped anchor. The illustration and the text are both on
the same page 82. The flags on this ship are red and white, which are supposed-
ly the colours of the Kingdom of Majapahit and nowadays the colours of the
national flag of the Republic of Indonesia. The dark clouds and the waves indi-
cate that the ship was sailing in rough weather and the fish in the sea are rolling
about because of the huge waves. A similar naive way of depicting a vessel in a
manuscript of the Serat Asmarasupi, can be found in the collection of the Indo-
nesian National Library, which is almost exactly the same as on page 45 of a
manuscript entitled Serat Semarasupi in the collection of the Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin.37 For that illustration, I also have the impression that we are dealing with
a simple depiction that has no pretence to represent anything realistic. The
story tells that the ship on which the prince travels sails in great haste, but this
does not show in the picture at all.

||
subject of an article by Lydia Kieven 2021. She looks at illustrations of lovers, sailors and fight-
ers and also ships as represented in three manuscripts. She also offers an extensive summary of
the plot of the story.
36 Ms. CS.4, see Behrend and Pudjiastuti 1997, 333–334 with pictures on pages 108, 328, 334,
341, 365 and 428.
37 Serat Asmarasupi (‘Romance of Asmarasupi’) in the Indonesian National Library, KBG 543
dated 1893 AD from Central Java, 50–51 (Behrend 1998, 224). Serat Semarasupi, Berlin Ms.
or. oct. 4033 (Pudjiastuti and Hanstein 2016, 245–247).
808 | Dick van der Meij

The characters in this manuscript are depicted in a style that is reminiscent

of wayang but different from the wayang-style in the other manuscripts. The
way they are dressed and the jewellery they wear are not seen in real wayang
puppets. In addition, compared to wayang puppets, their colours are very
strange; the bodies of some characters are blue, purple, light green and light
pink, colours not found with true wayang puppets. The inspiration for the illus-
trations was moreover taken from both the Wayang Gedhog and the Wayang
Purwa and a wayang-style that the artist invented was added that belongs to
neither. It seems that Panji and members of his party are portrayed in Wayang
Gedhog style but his protagonists in the style of the Wayang Purwa, but more
research is needed to see if this is true. Animals also play a role in the illustra-
tions in this manuscript and they have sometimes been portrayed together with
a wayang-style characters, as in Fig. 9. The way the prince has been put on the
elephant strongly reminds us of the wayang theatre where puppets are manipu-
lated at the same time as the animals they ride.

3 Conclusion
I have shed some light on the illustrations of only three manuscripts from the
many illustrations still waiting to be explored. Studying these illustrations and
becoming familiar with them leads to observations relevant to our understand-
ing of how manuscripts were made and on the aesthetic notions of the makers
of the manuscripts. A more comprehensive understanding of how manuscripts
were made may have far-reaching consequences for the way future text editions
will be made. Looking at non-textual parts of manuscripts is in essence an inte-
gral part of texts studies. The balance between text and illustration and, indeed,
the merge between textual preciseness and illustrative freedom is a thing schol-
ars need to come to terms with. In the manuscripts above, ships are portrayed in
different ways, and what kind of vessels they show is not easy to establish. This
is especially so with illustrations that contain few details of the ships, such as in
the instance from the Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma in Fig. 7 and the Serat Asmarasupi.
In these illustrations, the flags are unclear and the rigging and the sails are
depicted in a rather clumsy way. The illustrations are naive and may have been
made by an artist who was not very familiar with making illustrations that re-
flect reality. In the manuscript of the Serat Selarasa, ships are included that look
much more realistic and they were made with apparent great care. The ships in
the Serat Damar Wulan are somewhere in between, as they portray much more
detail but still fail to look as realistic as those in the Serat Selarasa. The draw-
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 809

ings in the wayang-style that artists working on all three manuscripts made of
the characters in the stories also differ in quality. Each wayang-like figure is
represented in such a way that he or she is recognizable as a distinct character
in the story and thus his or her social status is immediately clear. In real
wayang, this is done by means of fixed facial colours, facial expressions, the
forms of eyes, noses, hairdo and headdress and the garments they wear, and
this is fixed for each individual character.
These iconographic rules are applied in the illustrations of all the three
manuscripts in such a way that they are clearly recognizable with regard to their
social status and character, but they are still distinct from puppets of real
wayang characters from other stories. Interestingly, for certain characters, the
Wayang Purwa and Wayang Gedhog iconographic styles were mixed probably
to indicate that these wayang-like figures belong to neither. Mixtures of illustra-
tions in wayang-style and more realistic depictions of other characters also oc-
cur in the three manuscripts. In addition, the depiction of the characters in the
illustrations combines that of the wayang-style with added naturalistic ele-
ments. As I noted elsewhere, it is hard to make wayang-style figures for stories
that are not used in the repertoire of the Javanese wayang shadow theatre. On
the one hand, they have to abide by the general rules for the depiction of figures
from specific social backgrounds – kings, princes, retainers – and for the depic-
tions of their characters. On the other hand, they may not lead people to think
they are looking at pictures of wayang figures from other stories.38 In the
wayang-like illustrations, animals and all kinds of props are used that are not
used in the shadow play theatre and the artists were free to decide on how to
portray them. This often has a comical effect and that may have been exactly
what the artists wanted.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Genie Yoo of Princeton University, Kees Bezemer from
Leiden University, Lydia Kieven, and Stuart Robson from Monash University,
Melbourne for their remarks and for their corrections to my English. The images
of the manuscripts from the British Library are reproduced courtesy of the Brit-
ish Library Board for which I express my sincere gratitude, specially to Annabel
Teh Gallop for her help. I also thank the Oriental Department, Staatsbibliothek
zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz and especially Thoralf Hanstein for allow-
ing me to reproduce pictures of the manuscript in its collection. I also wish to

||
38 See van der Meij 2019, 141–144.
810 | Dick van der Meij

thank the books editors and the anonymous referees for their meticulous read-
ing of my work and for their suggestions.

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cultures.uni-hamburg.de/mom_e.html>.
van der Meij, Dick (2019), ‘Gods, Birds, and Trees. Variation in illustrated Javanese pawukon
manuscripts’, Wacana, 20/1: 135–174.
Vreede, A.C. (1892), Catalogus van de Javaansche en Madoereesche Handschriften der
Leidsche Universiteits-bibliotheek, Leiden: Brill.
Wieringa, Edwin P. (2018), ‘The illustrated Asṭabrata in Pakualaman manuscript art’, in Ding
Choo Ming and Willem van der Molen (eds), Traces of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in
Javanese and Malay Literature, Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute.
Wieringa, Edwin P. and Thoralf Hanstein (2015), Schrift Sprache / Aksara dan Bahasa.
Ausstellungskatalog. Indonesische Handschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin –
Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz /
Jakarta: Museum Nasional Indonesia.
812 | Dick van der Meij

Fig. 1: Serat Selarasa, London, British Library, MSS Jav. 28, fol. 6r. © British Library Board.
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 813

Fig. 2: Serat Selarasa, London, British Library, MSS Jav. 28, fol. 19v. © British Library Board.
814 | Dick van der Meij

Fig. 3: Serat Selarasa, London, British Library, MSS Jav. 28, fol. 123r. © British Library Board.
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 815

Fig. 4: Serat Selarasa, London, British Library, MSS Jav. 28, fol. 90v. © British Library Board.
816 | Dick van der Meij

Fig. 5: Serat Damar Wulan, London, British Library, MSS Jav. 89, fol. 4r. © British Library Board.
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 817

Fig. 6: Serat Damar Wulan, London, British Library, MSS Jav. 89, fol. 205r. © British Library Board.
818 | Dick van der Meij

Fig. 7: Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma, Berlin, Stabi, Ms. or. quart. 2112, p. 82. © Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
 Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts | 819

Fig. 8: Serat Panji Jayakusuma, Berlin, Stabi, Ms. or. quart. 2112, p. 95. © Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
820 | Dick van der Meij

Fig. 9: Serat Panji Jaya Kusuma, Berlin, Stabi, Ms. or. quart. 2112, p. 205. © Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
Hanna Wimmer
Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden:
Marginal Multigraphic Discourse in a
Medieval Latin Multiple-Text Manuscript
Abstract: Triggered by an encounter with a drawing of a foot among the point-
ing hands that scholars usually take for granted in medieval manuscripts, this
contribution analyses the layers of pictorial and written paracontent in a schol-
arly manuscript from the second half of the thirteenth century, Schlatt, Eisen-
bibliothek, MSS 20. In the rubricators’ and illuminators’ contributions, a playful
discourse unfolds that reflects on contemporary concepts of reading and shapes
the way that later users read the contents and left their mark on the manuscript.

1 Introduction
Manicules, drawings of hands with extended index fingers, are a familiar sight
in the margins of medieval and early modern European books. Drawn by scribes
or, more often, by readers, they usually serve to highlight particular passages of
text and are therefore both traces of use and significant elements of a book’s
visual organization that guide the reader’s interaction with the book and its
contents. It is rare, perhaps unique, to find among the manicules in a book a
little foot – a pedicule, so to say – daintily perched on the end of the last word of
a line (Fig. 1). The line belongs to a paragraph that marks the conclusion of the
pseudo-Aristotelian De secretis secretorum in a manuscript dated to the second
half of the thirteenth century, Schlatt, Eisenbibliothek, MSS 20.1 When readers
turn four more leaves, they encounter a second foot, attached to a vertically-
positioned line of a rubric as if to a leg. The function of the feet is revealed on
reading the rubric: ‘Incipit liber 5us liber [sic] de secretis secretorum aristotelis •
et vadis ad tale signum in 4o folio superius’ – ‘Here begins the fifth book of

||
1 A digital reproduction of the entire manuscript is available at <https://www.e-codices.ch/de/
list/one/ebs/0020> (accessed on 18 Jan. 2021). On the manuscript, see Gamper and Marti 1998
(reproduced in the description accompanying the digital reproduction); Gamper 1998; Volpera
2018; and Flüeler 2020. As the description of the manuscript in Gamper 1998, by and large,
follows the more detailed description in Gamper and Marti 1998, Gamper 1998 will henceforth
be cited only in cases when it diverges.

Open Access. © 2021 Hanna Wimmer, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-040
822 | Hanna Wimmer

Aristotle’s De secretis secretorum, and you go to such a sign on the fourth leaf
above’. The choice of feet as cross-reference signs resonates beyond the playful
pictorial pun on the rubricator’s words that send the reader on a journey across
the pages to find the correct place for the text. As a book-maker’s mark, the
pedicules are part of contemporary practices of book production while also
commenting on medieval scholarly practices of book use and scholastic con-
cepts of reading. They are elements within a network of communication be-
tween various individuals who left their mark on the leaves of this book: a team
of producers who collaborated, very closely at times, and a number of users
who responded to the written and drawn contents and paracontents of their
manuscript.

2 The manuscript and its Aristotelian part

The sole medieval manuscript in the Eisenbibliothek’s collection offers an ex-
ample of both the challenges and rewards that what Peter Gumbert has termed a
‘non-homogenous codex’ holds in store for scholars.2 The manuscript, compris-
ing one hundred leaves and measuring 23.5 × 15.5 cm, has three distinctive
parts. Physically separated by quire breaks, they are heterogeneous in terms of
their contents, their scribes, and details in their visual organization. The first
part contains a series of treatises mostly spuriously attributed to Aristotle: De
secretis secretorum, De planetis (labelled as part of De secretis secretorum), De
pomo, De coloribus and De motu animalium (two short, genuinely Aristotelian
treatises), Physiognomia, De bona fortuna, and De lineis indivisibilis (the attribu-
tion of the last two to Aristotle having stood the test of time). At least two scribes
are distinguishable, the change of hands coinciding with a quire boundary and
the beginning of a new treatise, Physiognomia (fol. 25r). These are not the texts
at the heart of the scholastic university curricula.3 They were, however, widely
read in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in particular De secretis secreto-
rum, which claims to have been written by Aristotle for his former pupil
Alexander the Great. It covers a wide range of subjects, from wise rulership and
prudent behaviour in general, to astrology, diet, and hygiene,4 some of which

||
2 Gumbert 2004, 18.
3 Compare e.g. Weisheipl 1964; Grabmann 1934.
4 The De secretis secretorum presents itself as advice to a king, and manuscripts containing it
are known to have been presented to rulers, e.g. London, British Library, Add. MS 47680, given
to the young King Edward III by his advisor Walter de Milemete; see Sandler 1986, n. 85 and the
 Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden | 823

are further explored in the following treatises, especially De planetis, De pomo,

and Physiognomia.
The second part contains two treatises by Albertus Magnus and a fragment
of one by Avicenna, written by one scribe. The third part, written in its entirety
by a fourth scribe, is a collection of commentaries on philosophical texts and
another short Aristotelian treatise, De inundatione Nili.5 The contents are invari-
ably in the latest translation and accompanied by paracontents such as pro-
logues that had been composed as recently as the 1250s.6 Beyond a general
interest in up-to-date scholarly publications on a rather broad range of topics,
mostly from the fields of natural philosophy and ethics, however, little can be
discerned that connects the contents of the three parts particularly closely. They
may well have been conceived as individual or separate codicological units,7
and, beyond the bi-columnar mise en page and similar dimensions of the writ-
ten area, their scribes used different patterns for the visual organization of the
text.8 The parts must have been joined together not very long after they were

||
digital reproduction at <http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_47680>
(accessed on 12 Jan. 2021). As demonstrated by Williams 2003, however, the treatise was known
and read in much wider circles. The title of Gamper’s article, ‘A compendium fit for a king’ (‘Ein
fürstliches Kompedium’; Gamper 1998) may therefore be misleading. While the use of
historiated initials and gold-leaf make this an expensive manuscript, many similarly lavish
Aristotle manuscripts have come to light since the time of Gamper’s publication, showing that
expensively illuminated manuscripts of ‘the Philosopher’s’ works had become covetable status
symbols to many well-heeled learned individuals and institutions; see Wimmer 2018.
5 Albertus Magnus, De mineralibus (fols 33r–61v); De natura loci (fols 62r–79v); Avicenna, De
anima (prologue only, fol. 80r); the commentaries in the third part of the manuscript are
Michael Scot’s on Johannes de Sacrobosco, De Sphaera (fols 81r–93v); an anonymous commen-
tary on Boethius, De arithmetica (fols 94r–99r); and Averroes’ Compendia on Aristotle’s Parva
naturalia , labelled here as Ptolemy’s commentary on Aristotle’s De longitudine et brevitate
vitae (fols 99r–100r); Gamper and Marti 1998.
6 Gamper and Marti 1998.
7 Peter Gumbert defines this useful term as ‘a discrete number of quires, worked in a single
operation […], containing a complete text or set of texts (unless it is an unfinished, defective or
dependent unit)’; Gumbert 2004, 40.
8 On the differing line numbers and lining techniques, see Gamper and Marti 1998. It may be
added to Gamper and Marti’s observations that unlike the other scribes, the scribe of the first
section left no space for the initials that mark the beginnings of chapters within the left col-
umns, and minimal indentations, two lines high, in the right column. Accordingly, the initials
were inserted outside the column, in the margin and in the intercolumnium. The latter is so
narrow that the slight indentations were crucial to allow the rubricator enough space. Placing
initials outside the script column, except in verse texts, appears to be more common in North-
ern Italian manuscripts than in those from large centres of production in Northern Europe. See
e.g. London, British Library, Add. MS 18720/2 (a bible from Bologna, late thirteenth century);
824 | Hanna Wimmer

written, however, as the final touches – the rubrication and the sumptuously
illuminated initials adorned with gold leaf – were applied to them in a single
workshop, probably in the second half of the thirteenth century.9 Two illumina-
tors and at least two rubricators were at work. The question of where their work-
shop was located is made more difficult by the fact that the two illuminators
represent very different artistic traditions.10 Most recently, it has been suggested
that the manuscript was illuminated in a workshop in Genoa that may have
been connected with the local Dominican monastery.11
The producers’ differences in style highlight the ways in which they worked
together to finish and visually tie together the three parts of the manuscript, to
articulate the structure of their contents visually, from the treatise as a content
unit down to a book chapter, and accordingly to make them easily accessible to
their readers.12 Many treatises in the Aristotelian part, as well as their various
books, open with large historiated initials with images that refer to the title or
contents of the text, which makes them particularly effective finding aids.13 The
other content units begin with ornamental initials painted in tempera colours
or, in the case of the commentaries in the third part, in blue and red ink. While,
as Federica Volpera has argued, the historiated initials were probably based on
existing models, the resulting distinction of the works by scholasticism’s most
important philosopher over those of his later commentators and contemporary
scholars is found in many other manuscripts of the time.14

||
London, British Library, Harley MS 5266 (Euclid’s Elements, Northern Italy, early fourteenth
century). Digital reproductions of both manuscripts are available at <http://www.bl.uk/
manuscripts/Default.aspx> (accessed on 12 Jan. 2021). This appears to strengthen the hypothe-
sis that the manuscript (or another of its various parts and production layers) is of Italian
origin. In the same part of the manuscript (fol. 24v), a scribe’s signature uses the Italian rather
than the Latin spelling of ‘dextera’ in his signature: ‘Ego frater Guifredus scripsi hoc opus.
Scriptorem libri conservet gratia Christi. Auxilio cuius destera scripsit opus’; Gamper and Marti
1998.
9 Volpera 2018, esp. 44–45; Gamper and Marti 1998.
10 Gamper and Marti 1998; Volpera 2018, 44.
11 See Volpera 2018, 38, with references to previous research on manuscript production in
Genoa, and Flüeler 2020.
12 On the visual organization of scholarly manuscripts since the later twelfth century and its
functions, see e.g. Parkes 1976; Illich 1993; Rouse and Rouse 1982; and Wimmer 2018, esp. 33–50.
13 On the iconography of the historiated initials and their reference to the text, see Volpera
2018, 39–42.
14 On the similarities of the depictions in the initials of De secretis secretorum with those of
other extant manuscripts containing the treatise, see Volpera 2018, 39–42. Many manuscripts
that include historiated initials for Aristotelian works do not do so for all his treatises, and texts
by more recent or even living authors are significantly less frequently afforded this distinction.
 Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden | 825

It is difficult to reconstruct the exact order in which the two illuminators

and rubricators worked. Evidently, however, the work was not simply shared as
it was between the scribes, each working on a separate section or quire. The first
illuminator, who painted the historiated initials, has a repertoire of motifs famil-
iar from Northern European manuscript painting, with its characteristic leaf-
tailed dragons in the border extensions. The second was trained in an Italian
style.15 Volpera has pointed out that not only did the two illuminators occasion-
ally draw on each other’s repertoire of motifs, suggesting that they were work-
ing in the same workshop at the same time, but that in some cases, both
contributed to the same initials.16 In these instances, the second illuminator
added ornamental extensions or elaborate border bars to historiated initials
previously painted by the first illuminator. Given the manuscript’s probable
Italian place of production, the addition of the Italian-style elements to the ini-
tials may have been a nod to the unknown commissioner’s tastes. There is,
however, another possibility. The additional marginal extensions of the histori-
ated initials may not have been randomly added to some initials and not others:
rather, they appear to systematically introduce a visual difference among the
initials painted by the ‘French’-style illuminator. They distinguish the begin-
nings of treatises from those of books, the latter being left without or with only
the minimal border extensions provided by the first illuminator. While this may
conceivably have been a collaboration planned from the start, it seems more
likely that it represents a process of tweaking and revising the visual organiza-
tion of the manuscript.
The rubrics also play an important role in the organizational scheme of the
manuscript. Like the illuminators’ work, the two rubricators’ contributions are
not separated by text or quire boundaries but are found across the Aristotelian
part (and beyond), and sometimes on the same page. The first rubricator exe-
cuted almost the entire rubrication of the manuscript, perhaps including the
numerous red and blue pen-flourished initials and simple paragraph signs that
indicate chapter beginnings and other caesurae in many of the texts. His rubrics
are written in a neat gothic book hand, in carefully spaced, regular lines. The
second rubricator payed much less attention to the aesthetic quality of his

||
See Wimmer 2018a, App. II, 349–366, for an overview of the distribution of historiated and
illuminated initials in seventeen manuscripts containing Aristotelian works on natural philos-
ophy from the latter half of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century.
15 Gamper and Marti 1998.
16 Volpera 2018, 45.
826 | Hanna Wimmer

writing, which has a less formal appearance and is smudged in some places.17
While the first rubricator carefully erased pen-flourishes of a neighbouring
initial to make space for his incipit note (fol. 2r), the second rubricator
frequently wrote across the pen flourishing of chapter initials and, once, his
writing overlaps the black outline of a historiated initial (fol. 14v; Fig. 1).18 The
rubrics written by the second rubricator must therefore have been added at a
very late point in the production process, either at the very end or while the
other producers were still working on other quires.
It appears that the second rubricator’s work was more specialized than his
collaborator’s. In the entire manuscript, his hand is only found in the rubrics of
Aristotelian or pseudo-Aristotelian treatises in the first part of the manuscript
and Aristotle’s De inundatione Nili at the very end of the third.19 In particular, it
is the subsections, books and chapters, where most of his contributions are
found. These seem to have caused the first rubricator some difficulties. Prob-
lems started on the first pages of De secretis secretorum, where there was confu-
sion about the prologues to the treatise. The scribe left blanks for large initials
at the very beginning, i.e., the beginning of the translator’s, Philipp of Tripoli’s,
prologue (fol. 1r), and again at the beginning of the prologue purportedly by
Aristotle (fol. 1v). On some pages, the instructions that the scribes of the Aristo-
telian section left for the rubricators are still visible along the lower edges, but
no traces of such instructions remain here. The rubricator correctly identified
Philipp’s prologue in the rubric next to the historiated initial (albeit labelling it
as a prologue by bishop Guido of Valencia, who is mentioned in the preface as
the commissioner of the translation). He then marked the second section, intro-
duced by a red pen-flourished initial, as ‘alter prologus’ (‘another prologue’). He
had to write in the margins as the scribe had evidently not envisaged a rubric
here, and therefore left no space for it in the column. A lengthy rubric at the
beginning of the preface supposedly by Aristotle was deleted and replaced by

||
17 See, for instance, his entry ‘capitulum 13um’ on fol. 3v, where the first letter appears
smudged and an incorrect chapter number was struck through before adding the correct one.
See also the rubric on fol. 17v (Fig. 2 below).
18 Instances of the second rubricator’s writing overlapping pen-flourished initials are numer-
ous; see e.g. fols 4v, 8r, 8v. The rubric introducing what is labelled tentatively as Book VI of the
De secretis secretorum on fol. 14v visibly overlaps the historiated initial.
19 Gamper and Marti 1998 interpret this as a sign that the first part of the manuscript was
rubricated and illuminated last, inferring from the evidence that the second rubricator started
his work only when the second and most of the third part had already been rubricated. Volpera
2018, 49, n. 7, rightly cautions that given the evidently complex ways in which the illuminators
and rubricators collaborated on the Eisenbibliothek manuscript, this argument may not hold.
 Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden | 827

the single word ‘prologus’ (fol. 1v). The following rubric, which correctly identi-
fies the beginning of Book I of De secretis secretorum (fol. 2r), is the last one that
the first rubricator added in the treatise. He only took over again for the marking
of the prologue and the beginning of De pomo. Picking up where the first rubri-
cator left off, the second added chapter numbers in Arabic numerals. Wherever
he could, he inserted these in the remaining space of the line that preceded the
new chapter, which always starts with a pen-flourished initial in a new para-
graph. If this was not possible, he added them in the margins. In the blank
spaces next to the initials at the beginning of the individual books, he noted
down the end of the previous and the beginning of the next. Here, too, he en-
countered irregularities, as expressed in the rubric on fol. 14v (Fig. 1): ‘Explicit
5us liber de secretis aristotelis. Incipit 6us liber de secretis aristotilis secundum
quosdam quod non credo’ – ‘Here ends the fifth book of Aristotle’s De secretis
[secretorum]. Here begins the sixth book of Aristotle’s De secretis [secretorum]
according to some, which I do not believe’. No traces of instructions remain in
the bas de page. It appears, however, that the scribe (or the one of the manu-
script that he consulted) did not believe it, either: the paragraph at the end of
Book IV declares the treatise ‘completus’. The rubric furthermore, if only implic-
itly, signals that there is content missing here: Book V does not end here as it is
missing.20 When the second rubricator wrote the rubric, he probably already
knew that the book appeared later on in the manuscript, and that he would
redirect the reader accordingly.
At the end of the second treatise, De pomo, two substantial sections of text
that had been omitted from De pomo and De secretis secretorum, respectively,
were inserted (fol. 17v; Fig. 2). Both rubricators were involved in the task of la-
belling and assigning them their proper positions. The first amendment on the
page is a prologue to De pomo. The first rubricator, who had written the rubrics
for this treatise, substantially elaborated on the scribe’s short note in the bas de
page, ‘Prologus super librum de pomo’, extending his rubric outside the allocat-
ed space into the intercolumnium:21

Incipit quidam prologus super librum aristotelis de pomo et pones istum prologum ad
tertium folium retro ubi incipit alter prologus super librum aristotelis de pomo qui sic
incipit • cum clausa esset via ad tale signum.

||
20 Gamper and Marti 1998 erroneously read the note as the incipit to Book V.
21 The left edge of the page with beginning of the note has been cropped away, leaving
‘[…]gus super librum de pomo’.
828 | Hanna Wimmer

Here begins a certain prologue to Aristotle’s Liber de pomo; and you place this prologue
on the third leaf above where another prologue on Aristotle’s Liber de pomo begins, which
begins thus: ‘Cum clausa esse via’, at such a sign.

The manicule that he chose as the cross-reference sign was initially begun next
to the space left for the rubric in the script column, where a red line delineates
an index finger and thumb. A finished version is placed at the very end of the
rubric, immediately after the word ‘signum’. The instructions to the reader are
precise and accurate, using not one, but three means of codex-navigation:
counting three leaves backwards, on fol. 15v, ones finds a second red manicule
in the left margin, next to a pen-flourished initial that marks a section of text
beginning with ‘Cum clausa esse via’. The second amendment on fol. 17v is
Book V of De secretis secretorum. It is introduced by the rubric with the pe-
dicule, quoted in full above. Written by the second rubricator. it also expands
on a brief note left by the scribe in the bas de page, ‘liber 5us’: ‘[…] and you go to
such a sign on the fourth leaf above’. Again, the reader is provided with precise
instructions about where to find the correct place for the text, which should
have started on fol. 14v. The sign of the foot, in picking up the metaphor of going
or walking (‘vadis’), playfully refers to the wording of the rubric, to its own
function as a cross-reference sign, as well as to the little hand further up on the
same page. It is very likely that another workshop member got involved here.
Unlike the red manicule, the feet are not drawn in the rubricator’s ink, but in
brown ink. Furthermore, the neatly and precisely delineated shape of the feet
contrasts with the casual writing. The red paragraph mark opposite the little
foot on fol. 14v (Fig. 1) with its slightly irregular outline is more in keeping with
the style of the second rubricator’s handwriting; perhaps this was his first ver-
sion of a reference sign.

3 Hands: Manicules and the embodied reader

Despite being such a familiar sight, the manicule has only relatively recently
received some well-deserved scholarly attention.22 The pointing hand, often
attached to a wrist, an arm, and occasionally to an entire body, is rich in rhetor-
ical and iconographic references, ranging from an indicating gesture to the
rhetor’s raised finger that stresses a point, to the allusion of the teacher’s
spoken word and not least to the reader’s own page-turning, line-tracing, and

||
22 Sherman 2008, Chapter 2: ‘Towards a History of the Manicule’.
 Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden | 829

penwielding hand.23 It is also perhaps unique, as Bill Sherman has proposed, in

fitting all three of Peirce’s categories for signs: ‘it is at once icon, index, and
symbol’.24 In a stylized form, it was relatively easy and quick to draw, while also
inviting variation and individualisation.25
As the depiction of a body part involved in the manipulation of the book,
the manicule alludes to the fact that in the Middle Ages, reading was thought of
as an activity that was both physical and intellectual involving, in the terminol-
ogy of medieval scholarship, both the outer and the inner senses.26 The monas-
tic contemplative reading practice, the lectio divina, demanded the repetitive
reading-out-loud of the sacred texts to commit their words to memory, a process
referred to as ruminatio.27 To what extent the physical engagement with the
book and its contents was transcended in the process of reading was thought to
depend on degrees of erudition, discipline, and spiritual yearning, as well as on
gender.28 It is perhaps not surprising that in some medieval European manu-
scripts, marginal manicules are joined by eyes, adding a reference to the gaze:
heads, sometimes human, sometimes animal or fantastical, turn wide-eyed
towards the text.29 The hands and eyes appear to be pictorial equivalents of the
numerous marginal written notes that instruct readers to ‘nota (bene)’, ‘take
note!’, a term which refers both to making a physical mark and to mentally re-
taining something, and ‘ecce’, ‘look!’.30 The drawings are, however, visually

||
23 Sherman 2008, 24–52. As Sherman puts it, manicules ‘have an uncanny ability to conjure
up the bodies of dead writers and readers’; Sherman 2008, 29. For a short introduction to the
role of the hand as an instrument of communication from a cultural-historical perspective, see
e.g. Pompe 2003, with further bibliographical references.
24 Sherman 2008, 51.
25 Sherman 2008, 36, points out that some early modern readers’ manicules are as distinctive
as their signatures. In some medieval manuscripts, meanwhile, the apparent aim was variation
in the repertoire of manicules. This may well have been the result of individual preference, but
also perhaps helped readers to more easily distinguish between the various passages they
highlighted.
26 Sherman 2008, 47–49. On medieval reading practices, see e.g. Illich 1993 and Saenger 1982.
27 See Illich 1993, 54–55; Carruthers 2005, 165–170, 219–220.
28 On medieval notions about men’s and women’s reading, see e.g. Solterer 1994.
29 A rich variety of ‘pointers’ and ‘gazers’ is found, for instance, in a fourteenth-century man-
uscript of English origin containing La lumere as lais, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library,
MS M. 761; see Sandler 2012. Another English manuscript, containing mostly Aristotelian trea-
tises on logic and dated to the early fourteenth century, London, British Library, Royal MS 12.D.II,
has numerous marginal drawings, among them many pointing hands and exaggerated gazes.
30 In London, British Library, Royal MS 12.D.II, the googly-eyed monsters and wide-eyed
human figures in the margins are often accompanied by a marginal note beginning with ‘ecce’.
830 | Hanna Wimmer

more striking than written words.31 Their pictorial quality immediately draws
the reader’s eye to the place where the noteworthy passages are. Like the ‘nota
bene’ and ‘ecce’ notes, however, they differ in their function from those margin-
al annotations – usually written, but sometimes also pictorial32 – that sum up or
comment on the content of a passage. Their function is purely to indicate, not to
communicate content themselves. This function makes them a distinct category
within the marginal paracontent of a manuscript, and this is, in turn, important
for their effective functioning: a reader seeing a manicule in the margin will
hardly expect to find a discussion on hands.
The red manicule in the Eisenbibliothek manuscript is not a reader’s but a
maker’s mark, not only because it is drawn in the rubricator’s red ink but also
because its function is not to emphasise, or make easily retrievable, a section of
the content (Fig. 2). Instead, it serves to highlight an editorial change, a correc-
tion, and helps the reader understand where the addition should be inserted.
Using reference signs to precisely anchor corrections was a well-established
practice in thirteenth-century Europe. Manicules are not, however, among the
repertoire of symbols that are normally used in this context. Rather, correctors
used combinations of simple geometric shapes, letters, and punctuation signs
that could easily be varied.33 Perhaps the rubricator of the Eisenbibliothek man-
uscript felt that a major correction merited a more sizeable and visually striking
reference sign and chose a shape familiar to him; perhaps his eye fell on the
correction in the first line of the column, where a corrector had amended the
word ‘manus’, ‘hand’. Be this as it may, in its current context, the rubricator’s
manicule changes (or rather expands) its conventional meaning somewhat.
While its counterpart three leaves above indicates the precise point where the
additional prologue should have been, the hand that is part of the rubric can
also be understood as a reference to the rubric’s appeal to the reader’s active
contribution to setting the jumbled order of the texts to right. The reader’s ad-
justing the order of the text as he reads is thus likened to a manual reshaping of

||
31 Marginal ‘nota’ often form more or less elaborate and ornamental ligatures that are instant-
ly recognisable word-images. Arranged in a way that connects the letters to the much elongat-
ed stem of the ‘t’, these nota ligatures also lend themselves to being used as a kind of visual
bracket to indicate the length of the highlighted passage (e.g. on fol. 7v of the Eisenbibliothek
manuscript).
32 On ‘scribal drawings’, see Sandler 2012, with further bibliographic references. For pictorial
glosses in manuscripts containing legal texts, see also Fronska 2019; for instances of pictorial
glosses in Aristotle manuscripts, see Wimmer 2018a, 134–136 and Figs. 66–68, and 150–151 and
Fig. 75.
33 See e .g. an insertion in the margin of fol. 2r in the Eisenbibliothek manuscript.
 Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden | 831

the manuscript by reordering its building blocks. In an English book of hours

from around 1300, this metaphor is given a striking visual form.34 In the manu-
script, entire verses that were initially omitted were added above or below the
written area. Little painted ‘correction workers’ in the margins drag the verses in
place.35 On one page a painted male figure is holding on to a long penwork ten-
dril as if it were a rope with one hand, the long index finger of the other hand
pointing at the place where the verse should be inserted (Fig. 3). A second man,
seemingly emerging from an initial, is extending his hands, ready to receive the
tendril from the first. Here, the first labourer’s gestures combine the two actions
that the manicules in the Eisenbibliothek manuscript perform and ask the read-
er to perform, respectively: indicating the correct position where a section of text
should be placed, so as to allow the reader to re-order the elements in his read-
ing process.

4 Feet: Pedicules and the mobile reader

Unlike the reader of the book of hours, the reader of the Eisenbibliothek codex
cannot implement the corrections at a glance but has to turn several leaves in
order to do so. The rubric of the second major insertion, accordingly, sends the
reader on a journey, and the sign chosen to mark the beginning and end of this
journey reinforces the prominence of this metaphor.
While feet, unlike hands, are exceedingly rarely used as reader’s (or
scribe’s) marks, the metaphor of the reader’s interaction with the book and its
contents’ being a journey was well-known in the Middle Ages. It is only relative-
ly recently, however, that scholarship has explored the extent to which the co-
dex as a material object lent itself to reinforcing the experience of reading as a
perambulation of what is not just a metaphorical literary space but quite con-
cretely a spatially organized material object. As Bruno Reudenbach has shown,
the codex with its sequence of two-page openings, in contrast to the scroll, has a
strong spatial dimension.36 The notion of the codex as an articulated space
through which the reader moves while progressing through its contents is one

||
34 On the manuscript, see <https://www.thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/html/
W102/description.html> (accessed on 12 Jan. 2021), including a digital reproduction of the man-
uscript.
35 On the medieval ‘correction workers’ in this manuscript, see e.g. Camille 2010, 24, with a
reproduction of the second instance of this motif in the manuscript.
36 Reudenbach 2009, 60–61.
832 | Hanna Wimmer

that shaped readers’ experiences, and the visual organization of codices,

throughout the Middle Ages.37
In the Getty Apocalypse, made in England in the 1260s, the figure of John,
the witness to and narrator of divine revelation, appears on every page (Fig. 4).38
At times within the frame of the miniature as part of the events, but often out-
side the frame in the margin as an eager and engaged onlooker, he acts as an
intermediary and model for the reader-viewer.39 In many of the images, he is
holding a walking stick that identifies him as a traveller. His experiences that
culminate in his vision of the New Jerusalem, and by analogy the reader’s expe-
rience, are thus characterized as a spiritual pilgrimage.40 This journey on which
John guides the reader is very much presented as a journey that unfolds, page
by page, through the codex.
The pedicules in the margins of the Eisenbibliothek manuscript allude to
the codex as a space, but unlike in the Getty Apocalypse, the activity of walking
is not likened to the process of reading. Instead, it refers to the finding of a spe-
cific section of text, in a specific place in the codex, to which the reader is guid-
ed with precise instructions and signposts. This kind of walk in search of a
particular place appears to have more in common with medieval (and ultimately
antique) conceptions of memory and its retrieval, in particular in the trained
memory of a scholar (or rhetor). The efficient retrieval of something previously
memorized was ‘fantasized as a bodily rush to the appropriate part of one’s
mental architecture’ where it had been deliberately placed and carefully la-
belled.41 At a time when the space of the book was expected to be sufficiently
clearly organized to allow easy access to its various contents, this metaphor of
walking-to-retrieve could be transferred to the physical manipulation of the
book as much as to the navigation of its contents.

||
37 See e.g. Tumanov 2015 on later medieval devotional reading practices. On the spatial quali-
ties of the double-page opening, see Hamburger 2009; Schneider 2000, 2009; Wimmer 2018b.
38 On the Getty Apocalypse, Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS Ludwig III 1 (83.MC.72),
see e.g. Morgan 1988, 98–100, no. 124; Lewis 1992. A digital reproduction of the manuscript
is available at <https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/1360/unknown-commentary-by-
berengaudus-getty-apocalypse-english-about-1255-1260/> (accessed on 18 Jan. 2020).
39 Lewis 1992, 56–61.
40 See Lewis 1992, 59.
41 Illich 1993, 42. On the medieval art of memory and the important role that spatial structure
and organization play in it, see also Carruthers 2005, esp. 43–44, 221, 242–246.
 Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden | 833

5 A dancing girl and a poison-maiden: Makers’

marks and readers’ reactions
The witty invention of the foot as an editorial sign may have had yet another
reference within the manuscript. A few leaves further along, another pair of feet
is treading the margins. It belongs to the tinted drawing of a nude female dancer
on the first page of Physiognomia (fol. 25r; Fig. 5).42 She cuts a striking figure, all
the more so for being the only pictorial element, besides the line-drawings of
the manicules and pedicules, that is not an integral part of a historiated initial
or an initial’s border extension. Much admired for its naturalism and the dy-
namic depiction of the dancer’s movements, the drawing has lately been con-
vincingly attributed to the first illuminator, who painted the more conventional
and schematic figures in the historiated initials.43 The dancer may therefore
already have been in place when the pedicules were drawn.
Attempts at directly relating the dancer to the contents of the treatise that
she accompanies have remained very tentative; rather, she is likely not a com-
mentary on or illustration of the text but relates to the figure of a nude man in
the historiated initial.44 In doing so, she, can be considered meta-commentary:
she playfully exemplifies the relationship between marginal paracontent and
content, not by meaningfully engaging with that content but by drawing atten-
tion to how this relationship is given visible form on the page. At the same time,
however, her sheer size, her movement and the erotic meaning that dancing, let
alone nude female dancers, carry in medieval iconography, easily overshadow
the formulaic representation of the man, tiny by comparison, in the initial. In
this ostentatious subversion that ultimately does not disrupt but rather empha-
sizes the order of the page, the dancer plays a role that has been observed for
pictorial marginalia in many manuscripts of the time.45

||
42 For a more detailed discussion of the drawing, see Volpera 2018, 46; Gamper and Marti
1998.
43 Volpera 2018, 46.
44 Gamper and Marti 2018; Volpera 2018, 46–47, agrees with Gamper and Marti’s view that the
drawing of the female dancer directly refers to the nude man in the initial but suggests that the
woman, with her thick tresses, may allude to widely-held views that women’s strong hair-
growth was a symptom of their predominantly wet and cold temperament.
45 For instance, Illich emphasizes the disruptive effect of the ‘circus of fantasy creatures, often
a jungle which threatens to invade and overpower the alphabetic component of the page’;
Illich 1993, 110. Michael Camille, in his seminal book on marginal imagery, on the other hand,
834 | Hanna Wimmer

While there is little to find in the contents of Physiognomia that could con-
stitute a plausible point of reference for the illuminator’s striking choice, seduc-
tive women were linked to Aristotle by legend and spuriously attributed works.
The story of his falling prey to the advances of Alexander the Great’s lover,
Phyllis, as an exemplum of men’s folly in the face of beautiful women was well-
known and occasionally depicted at the time.46 Book I of De secretis secretorum
is the source of another tale about the dangers of women. It contains a chapter,
numbered 22 in the Eisenbibliothek manuscript, in which Aristotle warns
Alexander not under any circumstances to trust women. He refers to an event in
which only his own wisdom and circumspection saved Alexander from an as-
sassination plot by the queen of India involving a ‘poison-maiden’, a young
woman who had been fed venom until her very gaze had become deadly.47
Whether originally intended or not, the drawing became a source of inspira-
tion not only for the pedicules but also for a pronounced interest of later users
in the topic of women in the Aristotelian part of the manuscript. The dancer
scandalized at least one reader. The most offending part of her anatomy was
erased, and below her feet, a passage was added in the fourteenth century that
describes woman as, inter alia, ‘man’s confusion’ and an ‘insatiable beast’.48 It
is a variation of a well-known and often-expanded excerpt from another philos-
opher’s, Secundus the Silent’s, advice to an emperor. The quote from the Vita
Secundi philosophi could be used to express both a degree of learning and to
reiterate the misogynism that De secretis secretorum expresses elsewhere in the
manuscript.49 In the Eisenbibliothek manuscript, further marginal annotations

||
has emphasized the ultimately stabilizing, affirmative effect of such transgressions; Camille
2010.
46 A roughly contemporary depiction of the scene in a manuscript of Brunetto Latini’s Livre
dou tresor is found in Carpentras, Bibl. Inguimbertine, MS 269, fol. 108r. See Roux 2009, 282,
Fig. 27 and Pl. IV; Wimmer 2020, 279–281. For further depictions of Aristotle and Phyllis from
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see e. g. Herrmann 1991, and for examples of pictorial
marginalia, see Randall 1966, Figs 554–557.
47 According to the critical edition, the passage is in Book I, 21; Steele 1920, 60. On the story of
the ‘poison-maiden’, which does appear to have its origins in India, see Hertz 1905.
48 Gamper and Marti 1998 date the writing to the fourteenth century.
49 ‘Quid est mulier. Hominis confusio, insatiabilis bestia, continua solicitudo, indeficiens
pugna, damnum cottidianum, domus tempestatis, solacii impedimentum’. Gamper and Marti
1998 read ‘insanabilis bestia’, but ‘insatiabilis’, favoured also by Volpera 2018, 48, who first
identified the annotation as a quotation, seems the more likely transcription. It is also more
commonly found in other manuscripts; see Brown 1920, 480, who first pointed out that ‘[t]he
“Mulier” passage is frequently found detached from its context as a bit of monastic wisdom’ in
manuscripts. This is not to say, however, that the presence of the phrase is an indication of a
 Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden | 835

in this treatise indicate another reader’s particular interest in women’s abilities,

not least the dangerous ones. Scattered among numerous nota ligatures and
two manicules, only a few notes, some ten in total, mention content matter.
Some topics seem to have been of particular interest, being mentioned twice:
the effects of wine, positive and adverse (fol. 7v); vomiting (fols 6v, 7v); and
young women. The first of these two notes on ‘puelle’ highlights a passage that
reports that learning used to be so widespread in Greek society that even a girl
could occasionally be highly educated (fol. 4r).50 The second note marks the
story of the ‘poison-maiden’ (‘exemplum puelle venenose’, fol. 4v). Thus, the
marginal dancer becomes part of a marginal discourse spanning parts of the
Aristotelian section of the manuscript.

6 Conclusion
In conclusion, the Eisenbibliothek manuscript is non-homogenous not only at a
macro-level, consisting of three codicological units that were, to some degree,
unified by being rubricated and illuminated in the same workshop. Rather, a
closer look at the contributions of the craftsmen at the workshop reveals that
even this unifying production layer consists of micro-layers that show a remark-
able degree of interaction, corrections, and additions. Some of these contribu-
tions and interventions build a verbal and pictorial marginal discourse on the
production and the use of books, a discourse that is gradually extended and
reinterpreted by the users of the manuscript as they build new connections and
cross-references between the book’s contents and paracontents.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Bruno Reudenbach for his very useful feedback on an
earlier draft of this paper.

||
monastic context here, all the more so as the instances of antonomasia enumerated here do not
include those in Brown’s transcriptions that explicitly refer to dangers to men’s chastity, such
as ‘castitatis impedimentum’ or ‘incontinentis viri naufragium’.
50 Book I,21 in this manuscript but Book I,22 in the critical edition; Steele 1920, 58–59.
836 | Hanna Wimmer

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 Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden | 841

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842 | Hanna Wimmer

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William G. Boltz
Textual Criticism and Early Chinese
Manuscripts
Abstract: Because of the differing kinds of writing systems used, differences in
the history of printing and different traditions of identifying individual texts
with individual authors, the assumptions and methods of textual criticism when
approaching early Chinese texts will be different from those aspects of textual
criticism as they are conventionally understood in regard to classical western
and early Near Eastern texts. In particular the nature of the Chinese writing
system, fundamentally logographic (or morphographic), makes the distinction
between graphic variation and lexical variation in a given instance considerably
less obvious than typically is the case with texts written in alphabets, abugidas
or abjads. Beyond this, recognizing authorial identification of a given early text
as a proprietary matter is much less a central feature of the history of a given
text in China than it is in the western tradition. For these reasons among others,
textual criticism as a scholarly approach to early Chinese texts will necessarily
take a form markedly different from its practice in the western scholarly tradi-
tion.

The twentieth-century Oxford scholars L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, after a

two-hundred page survey of the history of classical literature in the west from
its origins in antiquity to its mature philological study at the end of the eigh-
teenth century, introduce in the sixth and final chapter of their well-known
book Scribes and Scholars, A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Litera-
ture the subject of textual criticism, by saying

The foregoing chapters have attempted to give some idea of the ways in which the Greek
and Latin classics were handed down through the Middle Ages to the modern world, and
to outline some of the more important historical and cultural phenomena which affected
the transmission of these texts. The business of textual criticism is in a sense to reverse this
process, to follow back the threads of transmission and try to restore the texts as closely as
possible to the form which they originally had. 1

||
1 Reynolds and Wilson 1991, 207 (italics added).

Open Access. © 2021 William G. Boltz, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-041
846 | William G. Boltz

Though they do not give an explicit or precise definition of textual criticism,

their description all the same identifies the central focus of textual criticism as a
process for, ideally, restoring the original form of transmitted texts from the
evidence of their extant descendants. As a practical matter, the goal is to come
as close to the original as possible, while recognizing that sometimes the exact
wording or form of the original text might not be recoverable.
The subject of textual criticism understood specifically as a means to re-
cover the authentic, original form of early texts emerged from the tradition of
European humanist philology of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries,
what Anthony Grafton calls the ‘tradition of scholarship’ in the ‘age of science’.2
The expressed goal was to identify and eliminate textual errors and corruption
so as to restore a literary text to a form as close to its original as possible.
E. J. Kenney, writing in the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
says ‘[t]extual criticism is the technique of restoring texts as nearly as possible
to their original form’.3 The eminent Cambridge Latinist of the early twentieth-
century, A. E. Housman, in a now classic paper put it more forcefully, saying
that ‘[t]extual criticism is a science, and, since it comprises recension and
emendation it is also an art. It is the science of discovering error in a text and
the art of removing it’.4
In all of these descriptions, textual criticism is said explicitly to consist in a
concern with errors in texts and the means for correcting them, the goal being to
come as close to the original form of the text as possible. While this may be in
some sense the primary goal, it is not the only possible goal. Textual critics
recognize, among other aspects of the history of a text, the importance of ana-
lyzing a text diachronically according to its transmission or reception history,
identifying and understanding the impact of change in texts over time. Whether
that approach is taken in order to undo the changes, in the hope of restoring the
original form, or to examine how the changes came about and what they mean
for the interpretation of the text at particular moments in the course of its trans-
mission history, or with still some other goal in mind depends on the prefer-
ences of the textual critic and the nature of the study in question.5

||
2 Grafton 1991.
3 Kenney 1974b (online edition).
4 Housman 1922; D. C. Greetham has suggested that ‘[…] today most practicing textual critics
would probably insist that art and science are equally mixed in both parts of Housman’s equa-
tion’. See Greetham 1994, 346.
5 Walsh 2013.
 Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 847

The presumption is that any literary text T starts out life in a form we can
call ω, its original form, the form that it had when it was first written, and that
this original form suffers changes in the course of its transmission over time.
Changes can be of any kind, e.g., additions, losses, alterations, substitutions; of
any size or extent, from single letters to whole passages. They can be the conse-
quence of a wide range of misunderstandings, visual, verbal, aural or interpre-
tive; and they can be inadvertent or intentional. The result of any change is a
textual variant, that is, a form of the text that differs or varies from its predeces-
sor at this one point. Irrespective of the kind of change or its effect on ω, west-
ern textual critics have generally recognized all changes that impinge on a text
in the course of its transmission as errors; they are errors in that they do not
correctly or accurately reflect the exact wording of the original text, and there-
fore they are ‘wrong’. The cumulative effect of these errors is seen generally as a
kind of corruption of the original. It is these errors, this corruption, that the
scholar through the science and art of textual criticism is expected to identify
and remedy. While grounded as solidly in empirical data and objective facts as
possible, still the entire enterprise is heavily judgmental and has the aura of a
subjective attempt to make ‘right’ what is perceived as ‘wrong’. In the west, the
first recognition of the fact that texts inevitably become altered in the course of
being copied and transmitted probably can be credited to scholars of the Alex-
andrian Library (third–second centuries BCE) and their work to bring order to
thousands of Greek manuscripts, in particular to Homeric manuscripts.6

||
6 Classic studies of the earliest known descriptions of what has come to be called ‘textual
criticism’ include Sandys 1903–1908, 105–166, esp. 132–136 on Aristarchus and the Homeric
texts, and Pfeiffer 1968, 210–233, esp. 215–216 on the Homeric texts. F. A. Wolf in his Prole-
gomena to Homer (1795) states explicitly his view that the text critical study of Homer ‘began
with the Alexandrian critics’. (See the English translation, Grafton et al. 1985, 111). In the ‘In-
troduction’ to his English translation of Sebastiano Timpanaro’s La genesi del metodo del
Lachmann, Glenn Most draws attention to the important difference between histories of classi-
cal studies such as Sandys 1903–1908 and Pfeiffer 1968, which are generally diachronic presen-
tations on the one hand and manuals of textual criticism, which tend to be systematic,
synchronic and ‘cool and reasoned in tone’ on the other. Timpanaro 2005, 15. It is sometime
said that Cicero and other later authors (all of whose accounts seem traceable back to Cicero)
claim that Peisistratus, the sixth-century BCE so-called ‘tyrant of Athens’, ordered the ‘editing’
of the manuscripts of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and that what we have now of those texts is the
result of a kind of very early textual criticism. This claim, when taken at face value, is no longer
given much likelihood of being correct. See Davison 1955.
848 | William G. Boltz

The traditional process for identifying and correcting textual errors falls
typically into two stages.7 The first consists in examining and collating all extant
manuscripts, and where pertinent, printed versions, of a given work in order to
determine the work’s earliest recoverable form. A single copy of a written text is
called a witness, and the collation and sorting of the extant witnesses into hier-
archical groups, a process generally called recension (often called by the pure
Latin term recensio), is an effort to determine how the extant witnesses are re-
lated to one another diachronically, that is, which ones have been copied from
or influenced by which other ones. The result of the collation is, ideally, a tree
diagram that shows the filiation of the extant manuscripts of the work in ques-
tion and allows one to infer on this basis the form of the underlying exemplar
text. Such a tree diagram is called a stemma codicum, and this aspect of text
study is called stemmatology.8 In the second stage, the textual critic scrutinizes
the exemplar text that has been established on the basis of the recension in
order to decide what words or passages should in his or her judgment be
emended so as to reflect the presumed original as precisely as possible. This is
usually called emendation (emendatio), sometimes called conjectural emenda-
tion or divination (divinatio) because these kinds of judgments are invariably
subjective, based on the critic’s ‘sense’ of the text’s language, structure and
content, rather than on any decisive objective data.9 Restorations based

||
7 The classic description of textual criticism as established and practiced in the study of west-
ern classical literature is Paul Maas, Textkritik, which appeared first in 1927. A second edition
was published in 1949 and a third in 1957. An English translation of the second edition by
Barbara Flower (d. 1955), with additional notes reflecting the third edition, was published
posthumously in 1958 as Textual Criticism. Maas gives a very succinct, yet admirably precise
account of the procedures and rationale of all aspects of classical textual criticism, with exam-
ples taken almost exclusively from Greek.
8 The notion of a stemma codicum arose first in early eighteenth-century New Testament
exegetic studies, in particular in the work of Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752) who ‘imag-
ined that […] the whole history of the New Testament [manuscript (WGB)] tradition could be
summarized in a tabula genealogica, […], what will later come to be called a stemma codicum’.
(Timpanaro 2005, 65.) Karl Lachmann (1793– 851) is often considered the scholar who estab-
lished recension as a formally precise, objective and rigorous approach to the study of manu-
scripts, so much so that the term ‘Lachmann’s method’ has become nearly synonymous with
classical recension in general. See Timpanaro 2005.
9 More than anything else, a ‘sense’ of the text comes from wide reading in contemporaneous
literature. The renowned Renaissance scholar Isaac Casaubon said in regard to his text critical
commentary on Theophrastus’s Characters: ‘The authors of any period have a special quality
that does not fit the writers of another period [...] it is best to explain writers by others of the
same period’. See Grafton and Weinberg 2010, 17–18 and passim. This aspect of textual criti-
cism is a major part of what A. E. Housman referred to as ‘art’. While it is indeed subjective
 Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 849

objectively on empirical evidence and extant data will have been proposed as a
part of the first stage, that of recension.

At least four things distinguish the tradition of textual criticism in China from
the traditional western practice of textual criticism, all of which have implica-
tions for how we understand the procedures and goals of textual criticism more
sinico and ultimately for how we understand the relation between the produc-
ers, transmitters and consumers of early Chinese texts.

(i) First, and in some respects perhaps most important, the recognition of autho-
rial identity and presumption of a single original text, the ω of traditional west-
ern textual criticism, directly associated with a known author is a far more
prevalent and viable presupposition in the classical west than it is in China.
Authorial attributions and the presumption of textual integrity for early Chinese
texts are increasingly seen to be matters of tradition more than of objective em-
pirical fact.10 The notion of a single ‘original text’ identifiable with a single au-
thor may not always be the aptest way to see the putative source of the received
version of a given early Chinese text.11 It seems very likely that many pre-imperial

||
rather than mechanically objective, it is all the same not simply imaginative guess-work. James
Barr in his discussion of biblical textual criticism notes that ‘[i]f there is no manuscript reading
to support [the critic’s] conclusions, what he produces will be a conjectural emendation, which
he will support by arguing that it makes much better sense. Even a conjectural emendation […]
will point out some kind of relation between the reading conjectured and the text actually
found’. Barr 1987, 3. In the Preface to his recent book on textual criticism, Richard Tarrant says
‘[t]extual criticism deals with relative probability and persuasiveness, not with demonstration,
and as a result its conclusions must always be to a degree provisional’. (Tarrant 2016, xii) This
is the divinatio aspect of textual criticism. It is precisely this that Housman saw as the art of
textual criticism, the subjective nature of the ‘persuasiveness’ of the argument and how that is
a gauge of the ‘probability’ of the conjecture.
10 See, for example, my ‘The composite nature of early Chinese texts’ (Boltz 2005, 50–78).
11 The question of the ‘composite’ nature of authorship in pre-modern China has recently
been treated at length in a collection of papers dealing with various aspects of authorship in
East Asian literature. See Schwermann and Steineck 2014. Virtually all of the contributors to
this work who write about China recognize the phenomenon of ‘indefinite authorship’ in early
Chinese texts, down to as late as the early seventeenth century. Schwermann himself shows in
some detail that the question of multiple authorship arises even in connection with non-
transmitted texts such as bronze inscriptions (Schwermann 2014). He points out that the tradi-
tionally predominant view that inscribed bronze vessels were used exclusively for ceremonial
purposes and that inscriptions were directed chiefly to the ancestors are conjectures not explic-
itly supported by the vessels or the inscriptions themselves. Li Feng has shown that inscribed
bronze vessels could be used for such quotidian purposes as washing and food preparations (Li
850 | William G. Boltz

Chinese texts that have been transmitted to the present were not composed all
at once as single works, each by an individual author. Many, such as the Laozi
and the Zhuangzi, to name only two of the best known examples, seem, what-
ever the nature of their original core material, to have evolved over time through
a process of accretion of individual passages, sometimes even whole chapters,
from disparate, largely unidentifiable, sources.12 By the same token, the internal
structure of a text might undergo rearrangement or suffer loss in the hands of
readers and users of the text who for whatever reasons saw fit to revise or alter
the text in which they were interested.13 This kind of revision, known directly
from recently discovered manuscripts of early texts, sometimes resulted in a
‘version’ of a text that differed markedly in content and structure from what
would at first appear to be its received form. How such different early

||
Feng 2011, 271–301, esp. 293–300 and Li Feng 2018, 24–33). Some years earlier, Edward
L. Shaughnessy illustrated the composite nature of an extended set of related late Western
Zhou bronze inscriptions and the ‘multiple author’ process involved in preparing and casting
them, based on evidence from three of the most important of the twenty-seven inscribed bronze
vessels discovered in 2003 in Yangjiacun 楊家村 in Shaanxi province (Shaughnessy 2007). In
all of these cases of bronze inscriptions the question of multiple or unknown authorship does
not carry the same kind of direct implications for text critical study that it has for transmitted
texts because bronze inscriptions are not transmitted texts, but we nevertheless see that the
composite nature of the text and the absence of an identifiable single author are already char-
acteristic of the earliest literary works we know.
12 The best popular example of how this aspect of a well-known text can be assessed and
incorporated into a study and translation is A. C. Graham’s English translation of the Inner
Chapters of the Zhuangzi (Graham 1986).
13 This kind of complex manuscript situation is not unknown for western texts. The surviving
Quarto and Folio witnesses of Shakespeare’s King Lear ‘differed in their texts in so complex a
manner that a linear derivation of the Folio from the Quarto could not be posited’ (Gabler 2013,
81). A stemmatic approach to determining an ‘archetype-original’ was unsuccessful because
that method presupposes a single original and does not allow for the possibility of what is
sometimes called, somewhat oxymoronically, ‘multiple originals’, that is, differing original
versions arising from the author’s own hand, and yet the evidence suggests that this is exactly
what must have been the case (see Gabler 2013). And, apart from the restriction to ‘multiple
originals’ from a single authorial hand, the King Lear situation is closely parallel to the pre-Han
situation for many early Chinese texts for which we have ‘multiple originals’, though not nec-
essarily from a single author’s hand, or seen from the reverse perspective, the equally counter-
intuitive ‘no originals’. The chief difference between the multiple-originals situation for King
Lear and the multiple-original manuscripts situation for numerous early Chinese texts, such as
the Laozi, is that no one doubts that Shakespeare wrote the text in question, and Shakespeare
is a known historical figure, whereas for the Laozi and other texts with similar composite back-
grounds there is no known author nor is there any reason to think that the multiple originals
all came from a single hand.
 Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 851

manuscript versions of the ‘same’ Chinese text are related to one another and to
transmitted, received versions of the text in question, or how they may have
arisen one from the other, often can only be explained by recognizing that the
differing versions have taken shape through a compositional process that may
have drawn on diverse sources, edited in varying ways at different times and
assembled in different configurations from version to version.14 The differences
may be extensive enough to bring into question whether what are usually re-
garded as two versions of the ‘same’ work can really be called the ‘same text’ or
not. If one version is constituted of significantly different components, or shows
a markedly different structural arrangement from another – differences that
have arisen presumably as the result of alterations by different (if anonymous)
compilers – are these really the same text?15
Very little, if any, of an early Chinese text’s compositional vagaries are re-
coverable. The transmitted, received versions of pre-imperial Chinese texts that
we have are typically the product of the editorial efforts of both late classical
and medieval scholars, typically, but not inevitably, starting with the Han state
bibliographer-archivist Liu Xiang 劉向 (77–76 BCE).16 Identifying what is the core
pre-Han material in these texts and what has accrued secondarily is a highly
challenging, sometimes impossible, task. It is only from the Han period on,
where we know something of the context and nature of text editing, that a text’s
transmission can be seen to follow a trajectory roughly comparable to what is
familiar from the western classical model. Given the eclectic nature of their
compilation, the transmission of many pre-imperial Chinese texts does not lend
itself readily to the kind of stemmatic representation or codification that can be
laid out for western classical texts. The transmission of many early Chinese texts
is thus said to be indeterminate, in contrast to the western classical tradition,
where we can call the typical pattern of textual transmission determinate. In
determinate cases textual critics know unambiguously whether the manuscripts

||
14 Edward L. Shaughnessy has given a good example of this point for a relatively stable text in
his Rewriting Early Chinese Texts (Shaughnessy 2006), where he discusses in detail the ‘Zi yi’
緇衣 (‘Black Jacket’) text, as transmitted in the Li ji 禮記 and as known from two discovered
pre-Han manuscripts, one in the Guodian corpus and one in the Shanghai Museum corpus.
Shaughnessy avers that the two manuscripts are ‘essentially the same text as the Li ji chapter’
(Shaughnessy 2006, 64). He then proceeds to show how ‘rewriting’ over time has resulted in a
transmitted text that differs in many places significantly in meaning and in overall thrust from
the newly extant manuscripts.
15 I have tried to illustrate this point in some detail for the Laozi. See my ‘Reading early Chi-
nese manuscripts’, (Boltz 2007, 477–479 and passim) and ‘Why so many Laozi’s?’ (Boltz 2013
16 See Fölster 2016, esp. 121–127.
852 | William G. Boltz

that they are analyzing and collating do indeed represent the same single text
associated with a known author or not and that whatever emendations they
propose, however speculative they may be, are intended to be meaningfully
representative of a single original.17 For classical Chinese texts this is not typi-
cally the case.
All of this means – among other things – that the oppositional and often
judgmental sense of a correct reading associated with the original text of a
known author vs. an error introduced by a later scribe or editor, known or un-
known, is more sharply present in the classical western case than in China. 18
Where a scholar of Greek or Latin texts can generally depend on a familiarity
with and sensitivity to a known individual author’s stylistic proclivities, gram-
matical consistency or inconsistencies, etc. as an important part of the means
for detecting textual anomalies or ‘error’, the scholar of classical Chinese texts
for his part has no such recourse and traditionally is largely unconcerned with,

||
17 The goal of establishing a stemma codicum for a classical (or other) western text is, to be
sure, an ideal; the reality is that often the complexities of the manuscript evidence do not allow
for a clear stemmatic picture. As it is traditionally conceived, the chief drawback to the stem-
matological method is that it has no direct way to accommodate lateral influences of one man-
uscript on another, because they lie outside the diachronic lines of filiation. Mathematicians
call this kind of ‘vertical’ filiation ‘partial order’. ‘A partial order establishes a relation of before
and after between certain elements, but not between any two of them’ (Rovelli 2018, 46–47).
Recent stemmatological work, especially with Greek manuscripts, has brought considerable
methodological advances to the problem of understanding and codifying the implications and
consequences of lateral influences in manuscript families. In the world of Hellenic textual
criticism it no longer seems as intractable a problem as it once did. See, for example,
Brockmann 1992, Rashed 2001 and Tempesta 2014. I am grateful to Christian Brockmann for
bringing this issue in connection with the Greek material to my attention and for providing me
with these references.
18 The contrast between the western and the Chinese traditions obtains even for such cases as
Virgil’s Aeneid, the text of which is said to have been preserved on Virgil’s death and edited by
Varius Rufus on order of the emperor Augustus (see Tarrant 2016, xi–xii.). Though it cannot be
known how much of the received text of the Aeneid is Virgil’s original and how much comes
from the editorial pen of Varius, still the text is associated with a known author and a less
famous but still known editor, in tandem, which gives it its ‘known author’ quality, in contrast
to the majority of pre-imperial Chinese texts, for which individual authors are not known and
even this kind of author-editor collaborative teamwork is largely not in evidence. Dirk Meyer
has given a succinct but effective discussion of the phenomenon of unknown authors and the
inappropriateness of the term ‘editor’ as an alternative recourse to a recognized author, wheth-
er a name is known or not (Meyer 2012, 20–22).
 Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 853

perhaps even unaware of, such a possibility for most of the pre-imperial, classi-
cal textual corpus.19
The consequence of this for the practice of textual criticism in the Chinese
literary realm is that we must recognize that where, for example, A. E. Housman
can properly talk of identifying and correcting an error in a transmitted version
of Manilius’s Astronomica, we can speak in the Chinese case merely of identify-
ing and explaining the semantic import of a textual variant in, e.g. a manuscript
passage that matches a part of the transmitted Laozi. We may well have no basis
other than tradition for identifying one or another of the Laozi variants as ‘orig-
inal’ or for calling one or another of them an ‘error’. Housman can assume a
single, original Astronomica text (in spite of some uncertainty about the au-
thor’s actual name or date), and any identifiable deviations from that original
he can legitimately call errors. We cannot make a comparable assumption about
the Laozi, or about many other pre-imperial Chinese texts, not only because we
cannot identify any historical author of the text or a single original form of the
text relative to which any variation is unambiguously an error, but in many
cases also because there likely never was such an individual author or single
original text that can objectively be seen as the forerunner of the received text in
the first place. To be sure, we may sometimes be able to determine which of two
variants is likely to be the ‘changed’ form and which the ‘source’ or the ‘earlier’.
But ‘source’ or ‘earlier’ does not necessarily mean ‘original’. Or we may be able
to identify with some confidence an ‘error’ in a transmitted version of the text
relative to an earlier edited, transmitted version of the same text or even relative
to a given manuscript version, but still this is not the same thing as restoring the
original.
Pre-Han and early Han manuscripts may reflect not just editorial differences
among versions of the same text, but may have been created as textual adjuncts
to diverse programs of doctrinal teaching, preaching, persuading or advising,
sometimes to rulers of states, other times to individuals of the aristocratic class.
They may have been no more than written ancillae to oral proselytizing, or per-
haps they are reflective of the personal contemplative practices of an individual or
private group. We have for the most part no way to know how these manuscripts

||
19 In his Reader on Greek textual criticism, Robert Renehan says at one point (Section 71),
‘[t]he reader is well advised to attend to the most minor details of style; his efforts will result in
a surer and clearer command of a writer’s chief stylistic distinctions’ (Renahan 1969, 101). For
the reader of a Classical Chinese text the comfortable assumption of a single writer with identi-
fiable ‘stylistic distinctions’ that apply to the whole work is considerably less safe than it is for
his Hellenist counterpart.
854 | William G. Boltz

were actually used. Depending on the extent to which such manuscripts differ
from their source(s), they may constitute not merely different versions of a sin-
gle original, but may have become genuinely, even if only partially, different
texts in structure, content and purpose. Such compilations may well have seen
a very limited use, both in time and place, and have been no more than a kind of
ephemeral, localized textual residue of a particular doctrinal program about
which, except for these written artifacts, we know nothing. It is the possibility of
such wide textual latitude that gives rise to the indeterminate nature of the early
lines of transmission for at least some of the pre-imperial Chinese manuscripts
that we know.20

(ii) The second thing that distinguishes the tradition of textual criticism in China
from its western counterpart is the respective impact of the invention of printing
in China and in the west. Scholars and students of Chinese textual criticism
must ask the same question that presses urgently on western classical textual
criticism, i.e., to what extent did the advent of printing and of printed editions
of texts affect the nature of the works themselves, the status of variant versions
and the faithful transmission of the text.21 In Europe until late in the fifteenth
century, classical Greek and Latin texts (and all other texts as well) were trans-
mitted only in manuscript form, whereas in China, by that time, classical texts
had been transmitted in printed form for at least six hundred years. To be sure,
the printing of fifteenth-century Europe was not the printing of ninth-century
China. Chinese printing was xylographic, that is, wood-block printing, while
European printing was by contrast typographic, i.e., movable type printing. The
wood blocks of xylographic printing are cut from manuscript prototype models
and thus retain in many respects the features of manuscripts and in some re-
spects their inherent vulnerabilities. Wood-block printing may be thought of as
a kind of ‘mechanical means for manuscript replication and reproduction’. All
the same, it fixes the form of a text more firmly than manuscripts proper can.
Manuscript transmission generally is likelier to result in greater variation

||
20 This has most recently been illustrated in Martin Kern’s discussion of a poem appearing in
the Tsinghua manuscript Qi Ye 耆夜, which seems to be related to the Shijing ode ‘Xi shuai’
蟋蟀 ‘Cricket’ (Mao 119), (Kern 2019, 1–36, esp. 11–17). See also the discussion in Boltz 2013.
21 The question in respect to the advent of printing in Europe has been extensively dealt with,
though still not exhaustively answered, by numerous scholars over several generations. Per-
haps the fullest treatment is Elizabeth L. Eisenstein’s major 1979 work, The Printing Press as an
Agent of Change (Eisenstein 1979). Eisenstein refers to the invention of printing in Europe as a
‘revolution’, and to be sure, her work answers many parts of the question, but in doing so
inevitably raises further points that call for attention.
 Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 855

among the extant witnesses for a given text than print transmission. Manuscript
copies can be highly faithful to their source, and print transmission is not im-
mune to error and corruption, but generally speaking, printing has the salutary
effect of fixing the form of a text more durably over a wider area and for a longer
period of time than hand-copying does.22 European scholars, as a consequence,
confront a messier and less stable textual situation, richer in manuscripts and
poorer in printed texts than do their Sinitic confrères and have come sometimes
to characterize transmission and the inevitable variation to which it gives rise as
a ‘wholly degenerative process through which texts become ‘corrupted’ and
‘contaminated’’.23 In the Chinese tradition from the medieval period on
(c. 1000 CE), textual transmission, because it involves largely printed witnesses
instead of manuscripts, is likely to have given rise to less textual variation than
manuscript transmission did in the west, and is therefore viewed neutrally and
in some respects even benignly. What variants arose were generally regarded as
little more than the expected consequence of incidental human imperfections or
in the worst cases, failings. Chinese philologists recognized, of course, that
errors occur, but they never raised the specter of malign forces at work on the
innocent text as it makes its way, Ichabod Crane like, along its perilous route
through the midnight forests of time in the way that often seems characteristic
of the western attitude.24

(iii) Third is the different writing systems used in western and Chinese texts. The
procedures of canonical textual criticism include the recognition of two kinds of

||
22 The form that is fixed by print is not necessarily the ideal or pristine original of the text in
question. The easy availability of texts heavily influenced by uncritical and unsystematic
conjectures of the humanists of the first half of the second millennium in comparison with
those reflecting the more careful, conservative scholarship of the scriptoria often dictated the
exemplars on which early European printed texts were based. As a result, what became ‘fixed
and durable’ was often in fact not a particularly good version of the text. ‘[…] it was nearly
always the mongrel texts produced by the activities of the humanist copyists […] that served as
printers’ copy [...] the text of which represented a chance mixture of traditional readings with
conjectural emendations’ (Kenney 1974a, 3–4).
23 Cherniak 1994, 1–13 and passim.
24 See Cherniak 1994. The advent of printing introduces the field of bibliography as a crucial
part of textual criticism. The benefits, whatever they may be, of having printed texts a half a
millennium earlier in China than in Europe are balanced in a sense by the demands of biblio-
graphic analysis and history as an integral part of textual criticism for that same five-hundred
year period. The basic work on bibliography in the English textual tradition is McKerrow 1927.
For the relation between bibliographical study and the textual criticism of printed works in the
western (largely English) tradition, see Bowers 1964.
856 | William G. Boltz

textual variants, (a) lexical, where the variation reflects a difference in wording
and thus in meaning (formally, even when the variation is between synonyms),
and (b) (ortho)graphic, where the difference is only in how the same word is
written.25 Identifying a particular instance of textual variation as either lexical or
graphic in a western language text is usually straightforward and unambiguous
owing to writing systems in which a single graphic element, typically a ‘letter’,
represents the language at a level below that of the word. Words written in al-
phabets, abjads, abugidas or syllabaries more often than not consist of more
than one graph. Single word textual variation typically consists of a difference
in only one graph. Thus, the element that varies in a case of textual variation in
a text written in one of these scripts is usually only a part of the written word,
not the whole written form of the word(s) in question. And this makes the iden-
tification of the variant as either lexical or graphic comparatively easy. When we
see < CENTRE >, we have no trouble recognizing it as an allowable orthographic
variant of < CENTER > (or vice versa), and by the same token we recognize at once
that the variant pair < WHISPER > : : < WHIMPER > in D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
is lexical.26 When we see < COSA > in a Latin text we need only a moment, or a
glance at the Appendix Probi, to know that it is a ‘vernacular’ spelling of classi-
cal < CAUSA >, and not a different word.27
In Chinese texts by contrast, whether manuscript or printed, it is not quite
this clear-cut. A single unit of the Chinese writing system, typically a ‘charac-
ter’, represents the language fundamentally at the morphemic or lexical level.
For Classical Chinese, roughly speaking, this usually means at the level of the
word. And so, because Chinese characters inevitably represent words, any

||
25 For texts written in alphabets, abjads or abugidas, graphic variation is often said to be a
variation in the shape of the graph in question and orthographic variation is a difference in
spelling the same word. For Chinese language texts written in the Chinese script this is a dis-
tinction without a difference.
26 See Thorpe 1972, 54–55. Long ago, assembling notes about Marco Polo and Yuan dynasty
history, I once encountered a printed reference to a paper that, apparently with vague visions
of Thomas Mann in my sub-conscious, I referred to as ‘Kublai Khan’s Magic Mountain’, only
much later to be told that the correct paper title was ‘Kublai Khan’s Magic Fountain’.
27 Sensu stricto it is of course a different word; it is the third-century vernacular Latin word
that had devolved from the Classical Latin word CAUSA. The Appendix Probi is a kind of ‘pre-
scriptive guide to correct Latin’ compiled in the third or early fourth century CE. It lists 227
entries in the form ‘X, not Y’, where Y is presumably the form that was common or current at
the time, regarded as ‘wrong’, and X is the preferred or ‘correct’ form. Thus, we find in the
Appendix Probi < CAUSA NON COSA >. Among other things, this example shows that the vocalic
development of Classical Latin AU to later O (cf. Sp. cosa, Fr. chose) had already occurred by the
time of the Appendix Probi. See Solodow 2010, 114–120.
 Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 857

instance of character variation is potentially lexical variation. To be sure, it may

not always be lexical variation, but unlike textual variation in alphabets, abjads
and abugidas, in Chinese that possibility must always be considered at the out-
set. For example, is the variation X: 說 : : Y: 悅 lexical, in which case it is X: shuō
‘explain’ : : Y: yuè ‘be pleased’, or merely graphic, X: yuè ‘be pleased’ with
Kangxi classifier 149 : : Y: yuè ‘be pleased’ with cl. 061?28 The graphic difference
between the characters < 說 > and < 悅 >, i.e., between 言 and 忄 as the left-side
component of the character, when both stand for the same word yuè ‘be
pleased’, can be thought of as roughly comparable to the spelling difference
between English < RIME > and < RHYME > or < PHANTASY > and < FANTASY >. In both
the Chinese and the English cases one form is a slightly more conservative way
of writing the word in question than the other. Seen in isolation, the character
< 說 > is completely ambiguous and cannot be read, except by arbitrarily choos-
ing between the two possibilities shuō ‘explain’ and yuè ‘be pleased’. This is
clearly different from the English examples; nothing about the reading of
< RIME > and < RHYME > or of < FANTASY > ~ < PHANTASY > is ambiguous.
Except in a very limited way, such as graffiti, road signs, student exercise
books or the like, Chinese characters do not occur in isolation, and so the prob-
lem of how to read a character in isolation generally does not arise, and when it
does it will likely be marginal. But the lexical ambiguity inherent in the charac-
ter < 說 > is not limited to deciding how to read it in isolation. Even occurring in

||
28 The formulaic expression ‘X: 說 : : Y: 悅’ is to be understood as ‘the character < 說 > in text
X corresponding to the character < 悅 > in text Y’, where X and Y will in any actual case be
identified as specific texts or parts of texts. The formula can be extended to Z or to any number
of matching texts that have corresponding characters. Beyond this, the convention adopted
here will be to refer to the so-called ‘radicals’ of Chinese characters as ‘classifiers’ (abbr. cl.),
numbered according to the traditional Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 scheme (001-214). As classifiers,
these are sometimes now called taxograms. In focusing on the structural features and variation
of components of traditional characters, particularly as these have evolved historically in the
development of the writing system, as opposed to a concern with lexicographical classification,
classifiers may also be called ‘determinatives’, ‘significs’ or ‘semantic components’. Whatever
term is used, they are precisely not ‘radical’ in any meaningful sense; they are not, in other
words, the ‘root’ part of the character, but typically secondary or tertiary graphic additions to
the core part of the character. For this reason we will avoid calling them by the term ‘radical’.
In the example here the word yuè ‘be pleased’ can be written with either < 說 > or < 悅 >, i.e.,
using either cl. 149 (言) or 061 (忄, the combining form of 心), but the word shuō ‘explain’ is
never written with cl. 061. This is not an anomalous or capricious variation, but a reflection of
the fact that in at least one variety of the late Warring States period writing system(s), before
the standardization in the Han period, classifiers 149, 言, suggestive of ‘speech’ and 061, 心,
suggestive of ‘mental’, ‘cognitive’ or ‘emotional’ senses, were often interchangeable in charac-
ters used to write words with a noetic or emotive sense. See Park 2016, 180–182.
858 | William G. Boltz

a clear context, the character < 說 > may be ambiguous in the same way. Look,
for example, at the well-known line from book six of the Lunyu, the ‘Analects’ of
Confucius’, 子見南子，子路不說 ‘The Master (= Confucius) paid a visit to Nanzi;
Zi Lu (= one of Confucius’s primary disciples) was not pleased’. This under-
standing is straightforward and based entirely on tradition. Nanzi (rendered as
‘Nancy’ in Lin Yutang’s translation) was the wife of Commonlord Ling of the
state of Wei and was reputed to have had an immoderate and uninhibited appe-
tite for amorous recreational adventures. Confucius’s visit allowed for the pos-
sibility that he partook of this delicate diversion with her, and this is what
presumably provokes Zi Lu’s displeasure (bú yuè 不說).29 But it is possible to
understand < 不說 > as bù shuō, thus making the sentence say ‘Zi Lu did not
explain it’, i.e., made no effort to account for it. Only the weight of tradition and
commentarial opinion excludes this second possibility.

(iv) Finally, the fourth difference is that between a well-known and linguistical-
ly transparent inflectional morphology of most classical Indo-European and
Semitic languages and the still hazy and uncertain outlines of whatever mor-
phology the Classical Chinese language once had. Western alphabetic systems
register a language’s morphology explicitly, allowing for morphological, and
thus grammatical, mistakes to be readily noticed. The Appendix Probi tells us,
for example, < NOBISCUM NON NOSCUM > ‘with us’ and < VOBISCUM NON VOSCUM >
‘with you (pl.)’, clearly indicating the difference between a grammatically cor-
rect use of CUM ‘with’ with the ablative case (NOBIS, VOBIS) and a wrong use with
the accusative (NOS, VOS). By contrast, the Chinese writing system seems to op-
erate free of any hint of whatever early inflectional morphology may have oper-
ated in the language, each character standing as we have said, effectively for a
single word. It follows that the writing system cannot by its nature reflect the
< NOBISCUM NON NOSCUM > kind of difference, often referred to as ‘error’, that we
see in western texts. Textual variants in Chinese are in principle almost always
ambiguous in that by virtue of the writing system they inevitably entail the pos-
sibility of valid alternative lexical forms; variants in western language texts,

||
29 It is also possible that Nanzi was in fact a member of the same clan lineage as Confucius, in
which case the implied dalliance would violate one of the most fundamental constraints in
Chinese society, accounting for Zi Lu’s displeasure in a way that goes beyond a merely con-
servative moral rectitude.
 Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 859

written in alphabets, much less so.30 This inhibits any perception in Chinese
texts that variation per se might be equal to error, still less to ‘corruption’.
The first two of these four differences reflect the characteristics and physical
forms of the text itself, the second two reflect the nature of the language and
how it is represented in writing. In the aggregate, these four differences be-
tween the textual world of the western classics and that of the Chinese call for
an understanding of the practice of textual criticism as it pertains to early Chi-
nese texts that is markedly different from the familiar traditional practice as it is
recognized in the classical west. There is a distinction in western studies be-
tween the kind of canonical textual criticism already described in some detail
here, in which recension and the establishment of a reliable stemma codicum for
transmitted texts are central goals, and that kind of textual criticism concerned
with non-transmitted texts, as, for example, epigraphic texts or other kinds of
inscriptional material.31 In the latter case there is typically minimal transmission
or possibility of multiple witnesses and thus little question of establishing a
stemma of any kind.32 The text critical approach to this kind of material consists

||
30 Note that ‘potentially valid alternatives’ are judged then on the basis of meaning, at which
point some of them may well be eliminated as ‘not valid’ because they simply do not make
sense. The trick is not to decide that a variant ‘does not make sense’ prematurely, thereby
eliminating a possibility that might in fact have merit when looked at carefully or in an ex-
panded context.
31 A. G. Woodhead’s introductory book, The Study of Greek Inscriptions, for example, does not
use the term ‘textual criticism’ anywhere, in spite of the fact that it lays out all of the textual
considerations that underpin the reading and study of these kinds of epigraphic materials. See
Woodhead 1981. E. G. Turner, by contrast, in his introduction to the study of Greek papyri, uses
the term ‘textual criticism’ to describe the exegetic study of these materials whether they are
manuscripts of Greek literary works, and therefore can be fit into a textual filiation, or are non-
literary texts with no transmitted representatives. Turner points out that even though the non-
literary papyri are similar to epigraphic, inscriptional texts in being non-transmitted works, the
former are likely to be far less self-consciously written than the latter, which by their nature are
designed and produced for public display and consumption (Turner 1968, 127).
32 The major exception to this in the west is the large number of inscriptions that are known
only from citations or quotations found in medieval manuscripts, the original epigraphic work
not having survived. When a particular inscription, no longer extant, is quoted in more than
one manuscript, the traditional methods of textual criticism then are required to establish the
text of the inscription as accurately as possible. See Buonocore 2015, 21. In China, the situation
was somewhat different. Bronze inscriptions not infrequently occur in more than one witness.
The same inscription was typically cast once in the body of a bronze vessel and separately in its
accompanying lid, producing two witnesses to the text. And it was common for bronzes to be
cast in sets of as many as nine or more items, bell chimes for example, often with the same
inscription cast in each bell, thus giving multiple witnesses to a particular text. Since each
860 | William G. Boltz

exclusively in determining what the author, known or unknown, intended to

say in the text at hand.33 In these circumstances, what we might call the philo-
logical approach goes beyond the text critical by examining and studying the
text as a historical artifact of a particular time and place, something as im-
portant for the study of Chinese bronze inscriptions as it is for western epigraph-
ic materials.34

When this approach is extended to manuscripts, including manuscripts that

may have some relation to transmitted, received texts, it re-directs the focus
away from a concern with restoring a putative original to a study of the individ-
ual manuscripts themselves and their immediate contexts. This is the approach
generally taken toward the study of early Chinese manuscripts. Because of the
indeterminate nature of their textual history, the chief goal is to understand the
early manuscripts properly seen against the historical and cultural contexts in
which they occur rather than to fit them into a stemmatic scheme of transmitted
literature attributed to a given author. Not only is the manuscript seen as an
artifact of its own time and circumstances, but within a collection of manuscript
witnesses for a given text each manuscript represents a certain point on a dia-
chronic and areal textual trajectory. In the aggregate, the manuscripts testify to

||
casting was done independently of the others, the text of the inscription is amenable to text
critical analysis and scrutiny in the same way that any other text is. To be sure, there is no
transmission of the witnesses separately one from the other, and thus no stemmatic analysis is
involved, but in other respects an early Chinese bronze inscription may well exist in multiple
forms and thus call for text critical study. Beyond this, it is becoming increasingly clear that
early Chinese bronze inscriptions had in fact a complex manuscript background in their pro-
duction. This has been convincingly shown by Ondřej Škrabal for Western Zhou bronze in-
scriptions and is likely to have been the case for bronze inscriptions from later periods as well.
See Škrabal 2019. This means that inscriptions can be viewed as ‘witnesses of their long-
perished drafts or [manuscript (WGB)] master-copies, perhaps not always entirely faithful
ones’, and this brings the ‘art and science’ of textual criticism into the field of epigraphy
(Škrabal 2019, 275).
33 Maas 1958, 2 calls a text for which there is only a single witness a codex unicus and says that
in such a case the purpose of recension consists in ‘describing and deciphering as accurately as
possible the single witness’.
34 For the importance of recognizing early Chinese bronze inscriptions not only as documents
central to the study of early history (though sensu stricto not always primary documents), but
as textual features of bronze vessels seen as physical artifacts whose full meaning can only be
appreciated in conjunction with an understanding of the ceremonial use of the vessels, see
von Falkenhausen 1993,146 and passim. See also Li Feng 2018, 25, pointing out that the im-
portance and use of inscribed bronze vessels went beyond the solely religious and ceremonial
and included quotidian social uses also.
 Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts | 861

a textual fluidity that in many cases is at least as important as the traditional

goal of restoring an original. This approach to manuscript study is sometimes
contrasted with traditional textual criticism and called ‘new philology’.35 New
philology does not preclude looking at questions of filiation and lines of trans-
mission when the manuscripts provide evidence for this, it simply demotes that
from center stage to one of many considerations about the individual manu-
scripts in question. Given the indeterminate nature of their origin, transmission
and circulation history, early Chinese manuscripts readily lend themselves to
the ‘new philology’ approach.

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Giovanni Ciotti
Notes for an Ontological Approach within
Manuscript Studies: Object Oriented
Ontology and the Pothi Manuscript Culture
Abstract: Defining a specific manuscript culture can be seen as an exercise in
ontology. The present article embraces and applies the philosophical framework
of object-oriented ontology (triple-O) as developed by the contemporary philos-
opher Graham Harman in order to appreciate what we can call the ‘pothi manu-
script culture’. As we acknowledge the existence of such a specific manuscript
culture and the fact that it thrived for circa two millennia in South, South-East
and Central Asia, we venture into identifying key historical moments and hy-
pothesising possible counterfactual events that shaped it as a social object.

And as for those social theories that claim to avoid philosophy altogether, they invariably
offer mediocre philosophies shrouded in the alibi of neutral empirical fieldwork.
(Harman 2016, 4)

Wer nichts über die Sache versteht, schreibt über die Methode.
(Gottfried Hermann, see Perilli 2006, 126)

1 On the place of philosophy in manuscript

studies
The multifaceted field of manuscript studies combines a great variety of disci-
plines. Palaeography, codicology, philology, textual criticism, history, media
studies, art history, archaeometry, book restoration and conservation, natural
and computer sciences, and all the synergies and overlaps thereof contribute to
the study of manuscripts, their contents and contexts. Potentially, all of these
disciplines also intersect with philosophy, may it simply be for the fact that their
practitioners should hopefully be reflecting on the theoretical underpinning
and legitimacy of the methods they apply, or because philosophical concerns
are essential parts of their discourse. However, to the best of my knowledge, a
direct deployment of philosophy to the specific study of manuscript cultures is
yet to be overtly explored.

Open Access. © 2021 Giovanni Ciotti, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-042
866 | Giovanni Ciotti

What follows is not more than a timid attempt at making a first step into this
untrodden direction. In particular, we will apply one particular philosophical
approach to the study of a specific manuscript culture, namely the ‘pothi manu-
script culture’, so that we may be able to explore whether or not it is a thing
(ontology) and how we can assess it (epistemology). Note that our intention
here is not that of investigating what a ‘pothi’ is or what a ‘manuscript culture’
is, but that of studying through philosophical considerations a specific manu-
script culture, in particular the one that has historically privileged pothis, as a
legitimate social object.1
If one accepts some controversial – if not simply gross – labelling, among
the several ramifications of that rabbit hole that is philosophy, we will plummet
down the tunnel of ‘continental philosophy’, then, at the ensuing junction,
further down that of ‘speculative realism’ and, finally, we will reach the theory
commonly known as ‘object-oriented ontology’ (OOO, read ‘triple-O’). Originally
championed by a handful of contemporary philosophers, OOO calls for a re-
newed attention to objects in their own right.
Before delving further into the nitty-gritty of OOO and, in particular, the
view articulated by Graham Harman, definitely its most well-known proponent,
we must clarify from the start that our intent is not so much that of arguing in
favour of the validity of this particular post-postmodernist move. Instead, we
intend to experiment with OOO – out of the many available frameworks – and
check whether it can help us open new avenues of inquiry in the field of manu-
script studies. Harman has in fact already applied OOO to the field of social
theory, in particular describing the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-
indische Compagnie) and the American Civil War as objects.2

||
1 It should be made clear right off the bat that the term ‘pothi’ (pothī) is used here as an um-
brella term for any manuscript that is made of a stack of folios in landscape format that are
prepared for hosting writing and possibly illuminations and which are flipped upward rather
than sideward. This term is here preferred to its Sanskrit etymological antecedent pustaka, or
rather pustikā, or to alternative terms in other languages simply for the sake of convenience,
since it is widely understood by the community of scholars working on manuscripts from
Central, South and South-East Asia.
2 See Harman 2016, 35–42 and Harman 2017, 114–134, respectively.
 Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies | 867

2 Ontology and epistemology: the case of OOO

In a nutshell, speculative realism is yet another reaction to Kant’s ‘thing-in-
itself’ (Ding an sich), one which claims that objects do exist outside our percep-
tion and that we can in fact say something about them. In Harman’s take, ob-
jects cannot be directly (scientifically) known, but they can be indirectly (aes-
thetically) accessed.3
In order to understand how Harman can reach his theoretical stand, we first
need to appreciate his definition of ‘object’. As reiterated in many of his publi-
cations, an object is neither the sum of its parts nor that of its effects. In other
words, on one side, Harman believes in the idea of emergence, i.e. that an object
has properties that cannot be predicted from those of its components (which are
in turn also objects!). For example, water has properties that cannot be predict-
ed from those of hydrogen and oxygen when they are not combined. On another
side, an object is not exhausted by its effects or actions, since it is also other
than what it ‘modifies, transforms, perturbs, or creates’.4 In fact, objects may
have a potential that is only at times – or, even, never – expressed, such as the
house-builder’s ability to build a house even when asleep.5
Harman is consistent with the logical consequences of this line of reasoning
and calls object not only what is tangible, but also what is intangible, such as an
event, a thought, a social construction.6 And since all these are equally objects
in the definition posited by OOO, Harman advocates as our philosophical start-
ing point a ‘flat ontology’, in which all objects are treated on par with one an-
other, with the consequence that also objects that are beyond human thought
ought to be investigated.7 In any case, below we will apply this idea of object to

||
3 As it can be easily imagined, Harman’s approach has attracted as much support as criticism.
This is not the place to review the debate that ensued since OOO was proposed and references
to the views opposing Harman’s will be kept to the minimum.
4 This quotation is a paraphrase of a passage found in Bruno Latour’s 1999 Pandora’s Hope
(p. 122), which Harman quotes rather often. The original passage is given in Harman 2016, 10.
5 This is in fact a reference to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, see Harman 2017, 50. Approaches, such
as OOO’s, that ‘ask us to personify and caricature objects as autonomous and alive’ are clearly
controversial and, it can be and has been argued, ‘[t]o adopt such a philosophy, no questions
asked, is fantasy – commodity fetishism in academic form’ (Cole 2015, online).
6 Note that Harman has explicitly stated that the existence of social objects is the most diffi-
cult to prove (<https://youtu.be/V3KMDy5gvwo, min. 1.26,40>, accessed on 9 April 2021).
7 There are two main presuppositions characterising the approach championed by Harman –
and speculative realism in general. First, the shattering of the fetters of ‘correlationism’, a
label coined by the contemporary philosopher Quentin Meillassoux (see Harman 2017, 56–57),
868 | Giovanni Ciotti

the ‘pothi manuscript culture’, a social object which thus includes the human
component by default. Following Harman’s approach, we can already easily
argue that our object of choice should not be seen as either the sum of its single
manuscripts or reduced to the sum of its effects, such as helping the spread of
Buddhism.
As Harman introduces his ontology, the question of epistemology inevitably
arises and it is in this respect that we can perhaps better understand the point of
his counter-Kantian approach mentioned at the beginning of this section. Ra-
ther persuasively, Harman maintains that scientific knowledge, as necessary
and useful as it is, is a mere paraphrase of objects. Scientific knowledge, he
argues, can either analyse something into its components or explain its func-
tions. Instead, a gnoseological activity that can offer a different kind of
knowledge is aesthetics, which has the power of evoking objects rather than
analysing them. For example, a painting is more than the sum of its canvas, oil-
colours, etc., and it is also not just the scene it represents, as any good art critic
could tell us. In other words, scientific knowledge cannot get to objects per se,
as they regress, escape from such kind of approach: we will never be able to
appreciate the unexpressed potential of an object. However, objects can still be
alluded to, evoked.
In this respect, a central role in Harman’s theory – and a most crucial aspect
for our current exercise – is played by metaphors. Harman’s favourite is proba-
bly that of Homer’s description of the sea as one ‘wine-dark sea’.8 This is an
allusion to properties of the sea that are not in plain sight, e.g. its ability to both
intoxicate and exhilarate, and which emerge only when the sea is matched up
with wine. This indirect, vicarious, evocative way of looking at objects is in fact
the core of Harman’s aesthetic epistemology.9
The question now is how do we move from metaphors as rhetorical means,
i.e. our way of representing an encounter between objects, to metaphors as

||
which indicates the idea that objects can be accounted for only in terms of human perception.
Then, as already mentioned, posing as our philosophical starting point a flat-ontology, i.e. ‘an
ontology that initially treats all objects in the same way’ (Harman 2017, 54), a definition which
in turn Harman takes from the work of another contemporary philosopher, Manuel DeLanda.
8 This is the usual English translation of οἶνοψ πόντος (oînops póntos), which would more
literally translate something like ‘wine-faced sea’. However, it cannot be excluded that this was
an actually perceived hue and thus that the metaphor would exist only in the English transla-
tion and not in the original Greek (cf. Deutscher 2010, 27–32; I would like to thank Aleix Ruiz-
Falqués for drawing my attention to this source). Even so, Harman’s point would nevertheless
hold.
9 A strong criticism to Harman’s aesthetic turn can be found in Lemke 2017.
 Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies | 869

social events, i.e. dynamics of actual encounters between objects? OOO main-
tains that our proverbial sea does not in fact meet the wine, but its dark quality
and that this does not happen only at a fictional, literary level, but in reality,
too, whenever objects meet. In other words, an object never meets another ob-
ject, since objects infinitely regress from perception (nobody and nothing can
really know the sea, whether the literal one or the real one, including its non-
manifest potential features), but only part of it, i.e. its tangible, manifest quali-
ties (‘sensual qualities’ in Harman’s lingo).10 Hence, like objects interact vicari-
ously, so vicariously we can access objects.
Here finally comes what in my opinion is Harman’s boldest methodological
move: objects can be narrated metaphorically. This does not mean, however,
that the narrative proceeds through a sequence of more or less convincing com-
parisons, but that it moves through the account of its metaphorical moments.
In Harman’s view, such metaphorical moments are the turning points, the
transformative encounters that change an object when it meets another object – or
rather its qualities –, but that do not turn it into something new. In Harman’s
own words these moments are ‘[…] the key to unlocking a finite number of dis-
tinct phases in the life of the same object rather than the creation of a new
one’.11 Particularly inspired by Lynn Margulis’ work in the field of biology,
Harman calls these metaphorical moments ‘symbioses’ – hereafter we will stick
to this label – and defines them as ‘a special type of relation that changes the
reality of one of its relata, rather than merely resulting in discernible mutual
impact’.12 From such a definition emerges an important characteristic of
Harman’s symbiosis, i.e. its non-reciprocal nature, since the two meeting ob-
jects are not equally affected by their encounter.13 If we return to Harman’s fa-
vourite example, ‘wine-dark sea’ is not the same as ‘sea-dark wine’: to put it in
banal terms, the former is enticing, the latter salty. All symbioses discussed
below will exemplify this important non-reciprocal aspect.
A further characterising aspects of Harman’s theory is that symbioses that did
not take place are equally important, thus leading us into a sort of counterfactual

||
10 Harman 2017, 149–157. Note that this is a brutal condensation of the much more sophisti-
cated view on objects and qualities proper to OOO.
11 Harman 2016, 49–50.
12 Harman 2016, 49. As for the equation metaphor ~ symbiosis, in an interview from 2016
Harman rather explicitly stated that ‘[…] symbiosis is a metaphorical relation rather than a
literal one […]’ (<http://badatsports.com/2016/in-the-late-afternoon-of-modernism-an-interview-
with-graham-harman/>, accessed on 9 April 2021).
13 Harman 2017, 112.
870 | Giovanni Ciotti

history.14 For example, relevant to us is that the pothi form did not become part
of the Turco-Persian material culture,15 a fact that may tell us about the maturity
of the pothi manuscript culture at that moment in time, which prevented it from
changing further.
As mentioned above, Harman has already offered symbiotic narratives of
objects, in particular social objects. Hereafter, we will give it a try with the
‘pothi manuscript culture’.

3 OOO and the pothi manuscript culture

One ‘pothi manuscript culture’ is not defined as such by any of the learned tra-
ditions of South, South-East and Central Asia. But this does not make it less of
an object in the frame of our current approach. Furthermore, a comprehensive
history of the pothi manuscript culture that has extended across the geograph-
ical coordinates that we have just mentioned from at least the beginning of the
common era well into the twentieth century is yet to be told. Until now, some
scholars have opted, for example, for religious labels, such as Buddhist or Jain
manuscript cultures,16 others have instead preferred geographical labels, such
as South Asian or South Indian manuscript cultures,17 or linguistic ones, as in
the case of Tamil or Pali manuscript cultures.18
In our view, it is likewise possible to argue in favour of the existence of a
pothi manuscript culture and our ontological exercise is precisely aimed at
appreciating this object, albeit vicariously. We should in fact emphasize that
our understanding of what constitutes the pothi manuscript culture is not at all
exhausted by the appreciation of the shared form of its artefacts, i.e. the stack of
oblong writing surfaces. In the present context, the pothi manuscript culture is
in fact more than the sum of its palms and their leaves; Himalayan birch (Betula
utilis), agarwood tree (Aquilaria malaccensis) and their bark; its communities of
tree-climbers, scribes, and scholars; its styluses, brushes, inks, and soot; its

||
14 Harman 2016, 116–117.
15 We prefer here the term ‘form’ instead of ‘format’, in accordance with a suggestion by the
late J.P. Gumbert.
16 See, for instance, Berkwitz et al. 2009 and Balbir 2019, passim, respectively.
17 See, for instance, Shaw 2009, 127 and Rath 2012, respectively.
18 See, for instance, Sweetman and Ilakkuvan 2012, 19, and Ruiz-Falqués 2014, 30, respec-
tively. One should note that, when it comes to labels such as ‘Tibetan’, ‘Mongolian’ or ‘Thai’, it
is often unclear if these are meant to be geographical or linguistic.
 Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies | 871

several dozens of languages and scripts; its conventions pertaining to writing,

layout, and form; its texts, genres, and literary fashions; its courts, schools,
monasteries, and temples; etc. Moreover, it would not be exhausted just by its
manifest functions, such as enabling textual composition, transmission, and
preservation; occupying generations of people working with palms and their
products as well as hosts of more or less learned scholars and scribes; spreading
Buddhism and Tantrism across Asia; etc.
Following Harman’s methodology, before we look for possible symbioses in
the history of the pothi manuscript culture, trying to map some of its turning
points and missed opportunities, we first need to establish its beginning and
end. In fact, as Harman states, ‘[i]f symbiotic stages are meant to mark discrete
phases in the life of one and the same object, they must of course be distin-
guished from the birth and death of objects’.19

4 Beginning
The beginning of a written tradition that made use of pothis is unknown.20 Nev-
ertheless, it seems plausible to assume that such a culture began in the Indian
subcontinent, when the leaves of certain palm trees,21 which are endemic to the
southern part of that region, were first used as writing supports.
The oldest extant palm-leaf manuscripts, however, are not from South Asia
but from Central Asia and the so-called ‘Greater Gandhāra’ (more or less corre-
sponding to East Afghanistan and North Pakistan), where they could survive
thanks to the dry climate, albeit mostly in an extremely fragmentary state. The
earliest specimens found so far date to c. the second/third century CE. Two no-
table examples that have been dated on the basis of both palaeographical con-
siderations and C-14 analysis are: 1. the Spitzer manuscript dated to the third

||
19 Harman 2016, 50.
20 In this respect, see also Baums 2020, 349 n. 17. Reference to the oldest act of writing texts in
manuscripts, which we may confidently assume were pothis, can be found in the Sri Lankan
chronicle Dīpavaṃsa (350 CE), which narrates how due to various calamities the Buddhist
monks wrote down their sacred canon during the first century BCE (see Hartmann 2009, 96–97).
Although one should not forget that probably oblong wooden tablets may also have been used
for writing since time immemorial.
21 See below for more details on the kinds of palm trees employed.
872 | Giovanni Ciotti

century CE,22 and 2. the Bamyan fragments of the Schøyen collection dated to the
late second to the mid-third century CE.23 Presumably, they had all been either
directly produced in North India or manufactured on leaves imported from that
region.
To this one should add that we have earlier oblong metal inscriptions, the
shape of which suggests that the pothi form was already well known.24 One
example is the inscription on a gold leaf interred in a reliquary by King Seṇavarma
of Oḍi, dated to the first half of the first century CE.25
As for South-East Asia, we do not have enough evidence to ascertain
whether palm-leaf manuscripts had already existed in hoary times or they came
through contacts with South Asia.26
But what do we exactly mean when we speak of ‘palm-leaf’? This unspecific
label is often used in catalogues and secondary literature to indicate the materi-
al of the manuscripts in question. However, more than one palm tree is used to
obtain leaves that, once treated, can support writing: a fact that has more far-
reaching implications that one could at first think. Let us begin by pointing out
that two palm trees that are endemic to South and South-East Asia are suitable
for the production of manuscripts, namely Talipot (Corypha umbraculifera) and
Palmyra (Borassus flabellifer).27

||
22 Franco 2004, 29, 32–33 maintains that on the basis of its script and content, the manuscript
dates to the second half of the third century CE. As reported by Allon et al. 2006, C-14 places the
manuscript within the date range 80–234 CE.
23 The dating is based on the results of carbon testing (Allon et al. 2006) and their combina-
tion with linguistic considerations (Salomon 2001 discussed in Salomon 2014, 6).
24 This observation was already made by Sircar 1965, 62.
25 See Baums 2012, 227–233.
26 The first mention of palm-leaf manuscripts from South-East Asia is found in the travel
account of the Chinese official Zhou Daguan, who resided in Angkor between 1296 and 1297. He
tells us that Cambodian monks used to read from manuscripts made of stacks of palm-leaves,
on which they wrote without brush or ink (see Pelliot’s 1902 translation; I would like to thank
Volker Grabowsky for drawing my attention to this source).
27 Pace Hoernle 1901, who hypothesised that the Borassus flabellifer is of African origins. This
theory persists in the literature, in particular in DNA studies of the Palmyra to explain the
limited genetic difference that has been attested in these plants in both South India (George et
al. 2016) and Thailand (Pipatchartlearnwong et al. 2017). However, botanical literature has
shown that this hypothesis, if not completely disprovable, is certainly highly unlikely, owing to
the morphological differences that characterise the Asian Borassus species from the African
ones (see Bayton 2007 and Bellot et al. 2020). As for the limited DNA variation, this can be
explained by the fact that the Asian Borassi speciated at a comparatively later stage. I would
like to thank Ross P. Bayton for an illuminating email exchange (2 August 2020) on this topic.
 Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies | 873

Using the leaves of these plants meant that manuscript production was part
of a complex system of craftsmanship and commerce. In fact, Palmyra was not
just used to produce writing supports, but was an essential good in South and
South-East Asia, exploited for all sorts of practical usages: its wood for house
and ship building; its fruits for edibles and drinks; its leaves for thatching roofs,
manufacturing mats and bags, manuring rice fields; etc.28
On the other hand, it is plausible to assume that the leaves of Talipot en-
joyed a certain prestige, thanks to their better quality in terms of texture, flexi-
bility, and durability, thus making up for the otherwise limited application of
the Talipot palm.29 Allegedly, Talipot leaves were the only ones used for making
pothi manuscripts in North India (and Central Asia) until the beginning of the
seventeenth century.30

5 End
If the actual beginning of the pothi manuscript culture is beyond our reach due
to the lack of material evidence, its end baffles us. The magnitude and complex-
ity of its unfolding through time and space are among the reasons why a com-
prehensive and satisfactory account of the decline of the pothi manuscript
culture is, I would argue, still a desideratum.
One could imagine that the introduction of new implements for the produc-
tion of manuscripts or even the advent of altogether alternative technologies
may have triggered its end. However, it is easy to disproof the idea of an abrupt

||
28 Ferguson 1888, 13–33 (note that the first edition dates back to 1850) offers a thorough ac-
count of the many uses of Palmyra in nineteenth-century Sri Lanka. A brief account concerning
Tamil Nadu is found in Markham 1862, 428.
29 Apart from producing manuscripts, leaves of Talipot palms can be used for sheltering and
thatching. See, for instance, Blatter 1926, 77–78.
30 Hoernle 1901. The results of Hoernle’s survey need to be reassessed in the light of the many
more manuscripts available in collections after more than a century from that study. However,
if they were to still hold true, a new explanation of the absence of Palmyra leaves in manu-
scripts from North India (and Central Asia) – an absence that Hoernle thought was due to the
late introduction of the Palmyra from Africa – would certainly be a topic worth investigating.
For the sake of completeness, one should note that both the Spitzer manuscript and the
Bamyan fragments of the Schøyen collection are made of Talipot leaves (see Franco 2004, 21
and Allon et al. 2006, 285, respectively).
874 | Giovanni Ciotti

technological revolution: simply put, different artefacts just coexist.31 So it hap-

pened that pothis did not disappear when new supports became available, such
as bark (e.g. from birch or agarwood) and paper, or the codex form was first
met, or when different technologies (xylography and lithography)32 became
available.
Even when printing with movable types arrived to India at the beginning of
the sixteenth century with the Christian missionaries,33 it remained a niche
technology until the nineteenth century.34 It is also remarkable that it did not
even immediately obliterate the oblong form, which characterises some of the
early prints in Calcutta.35
The fact remains that by the early twentieth-century pothi manuscripts as
well as printed books in pothi form became rarer and rarer: a whole system of
symbolic capital in which pothis played a role had in fact collapsed. The causes
are many and their assessment still debated among scholars. We can mention,
for example, 1. the loss of prestige on the part of the handwritten artefacts;36 2. a
more impactful dissemination of the technology and craftsmanship required for
printing with movable types;37 and 3. a new sociology of literate people, most of
whom were eventually absorbed into the colonial administrative system and,
thus, embraced its new book culture.38

||
31 A similar observation can be found for example in Diemberger et al. 2016, 6, where the
similarities between the Tibetan and European cases are evoked, too.
32 Formigatti 2016, for xylography see also below.
33 Blackburn 2006, 30ff.
34 The same happened in South-East Asia, see Igunma 2013, 632–633.
35 See Rocher and Rocher 2012, 74.
36 Blackburn 2006, 35 maintains that Indians were not interested in print because they did not
see any immediate advantage or prestige in the new technology.
37 Blackburn 2006, 35–36.
38 See O’Hanlon et al. 2020. A different narrative about the end of the manuscript culture in
South Asia, but which overlaps with that of the end of the pothi manuscript culture, is offered
by Pollock 2007, 87–90, who sees in the passage from manuscripts to print a shift from ‘script-
mercantilism’ (epitomised by Formigatti 2016, 112 as ‘a typical feature of South Asian manu-
script culture, consisting of its enormous productivity and efficiency, which led to the creation
of a huge amount of manuscripts’) to ‘print-capitalism’ (described by Pollock 2007, 91 as a the
combination of ‘the obliteration of oral text performance, the privatization of reading and the
hyper-commodification of the book’). Formigatti 2016, 112–115 challenges Pollock’s theory on
several fronts and proposes a different narrative, according to which a blend of ‘paper tech-
nology, Buddhism, and a centralized and strong state structure’ (ibidem: 114) may have played
a decisive role in ending the season of manuscripts, albeit concluding that the reason for the
slow diffusion of print in all its forms still awaits to be fully appreciated.
 Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies | 875

Pockets of pothi production as well as contemporary revivals thereof can be

found everywhere in Central, South, and South-East Asia.39 Admittedly, this
topic would deserve a broader investigation, but for now I would argue that
these phenomena represent just a pale shadow of a culture that has lost its mo-
mentum and stamina.

6 Symbioses
We can now turn our attention to what are possible symbiotic moments in the
history the pothi manuscript culture. Below I will argue that two symbioses
occurred almost at the same time, albeit with distinguishable sets of conse-
quences: on one side, the encounter with Himalayan birch and, on the other,
the encounter with Buddhism. A further, yet later, symbiosis is then discussed,
namely the encounter with xylography.40

6.1 Symbiosis 1: The encounter with Himalayan birch

(or paper?)
At an unspecified moment in the early common era, birch-bark pothis must have
appeared from the encounter of communities of scribes and scholars that were
familiar with both palm-leaf pothis and birch-bark craftsmanship – presumably
including that for the production of the birch-bark scrolls of Greater Gandhāra,
which contain the earliest recorded Buddhist scriptures and are attested from
the first century BCE.41

||
39 For Tibet, in particular woodblock prints, see Almogi and Wangchuk 2016, 10; for Laos, see
Igunma 2013, 631; for Bali, see van der Meij 2017, passim.
40 Not being able to access the very beginning of the pothi manuscript culture means we
cannot access its initial symbioses either, which in Harman’s view are the most characterising
(Harman 2016, 118–119). The shift from orality to writing (on this topic in the Buddhist context,
see references in De Simini 2016, 7–8), the encounter between materiality and specific literary
genres (administrative literature, religious, didactic, etc.), the formation of a class of (profes-
sional?) scribes, the elaboration of Indic scripts, etc. are all inaccessible or only very partially
accessible events to us, at least in terms that are beyond just those of reasonable assumptions.
41 On the mutual exchange that must have occurred between Buddhist Gandhāran communi-
ties familiar with birch-bark and immigrated Indian communities familiar with palm-leaves,
see for instance Baums 2020, 358–359. On birch-bark scrolls, see e.g. Allon 2014, Baums 2014,
Falk and Strauch 2014, and Salomon 2014.
876 | Giovanni Ciotti

The oldest extant specimen of birch-bark pothi dates to the fifth century and
hails from Central Asia,42 then we have the collections of birch-bark pothis from
Gilgit and Bamyan (Greater Gandhāra), dating from the sixth to eighth century.43
We should briefly notice that, to my knowledge, we have three tiny extant
fragments of paper manuscripts from Central Asia that date on palaeographical
basis to the third/fourth century.44 Their extremely poor state of conservation
seems to prevent an identification of their form, although, I would argue, pothi
is a plausible option.45 Fortunately, however, we do have fragments of manu-
scripts made of silk, leather, and poplar wood palaeographically datable to
c. the third century.46 One could therefore wonder if palm-leaf pothis encoun-
tered paper and other materials before birch-bark. I would tentatively argue
that, on the basis of geographical considerations, it is more likely that the palm-
leaf pothi met Kashmirian birch before paper and other materials apparently
used in Central Asia only, along the route from the Indian subcontinent to the
oases of the Taklamakan Desert.
Notwithstanding what was the first alternative material, this encounter with
a different writing surface constituted a symbiotic event for the pothi manu-
script culture: its materiality deeply changed, since manuscripts could now be
made with surfaces other than palm-leaves.47 It would probably be far-fetched to
assume that this innovation directly opened the way for other materials to be
used as writing surfaces, but we could definitely see it as the moment in which
the latent adaptability of the pothi manuscript culture became manifest. We
should not therefore be surprised that several other supports have been used
through the regions of Central, South and South-East Asia to produce pothis.
Apart from those already discussed above, we can also mention the leaves of

||
42 This is a copy of the Sanskrit treatise on metrics entitled Chandoviciti, discussed in Sander
1991, 137–138.
43 See Melzer 2014, 229 and Braarvig 2014, 158, respectively.
44 All three fragment contain small portions of texts written in Kharoṣṭhī script: one is de-
scribed in Conrady 1920, 113, 191, pl. 38, no. 36, and two in Hasuike 2004, 95–96, no. 6101 and
6102. Our source is Falk and Strauch 2014, 55, from which we report the date, although it
should be noticed that Hasuike 2004, 95–96 proposes the fifth/sixth century as a date for the
two fragments he describes.
45 A slightly later paper manuscript that is definitely in the pothi form and datable on a palae-
ographical basis to the fourth/fifth century is discussed in Hartmann 1988, 88–92.
46 For references, see Sander 1991, 147–148.
47 One could argue that we already have a change in materiality with metal inscriptions, such
as those discussed above. However, several features of pothis are missing in inscriptions, such
as the ink (whether liquid ink as in North India, or soot as in South India and South-East Asia)
and the stack of folios to be turned upward.
 Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies | 877

gebang palm (Corypha utan), which is another palm tree used in Indonesia, 48
bark of agarwood in Assam,49 various kinds of paper in Central Asia and at later
stages in Northern India,50 and sheets of metal, ivory, etc. as in the case of some
particularly luxurious lacquered Kammavacas from Burma.51
Remarkably, on the basis of the extant material, what seems to have hap-
pened is that some birch-bark manuscripts dispensed with string-holes,52 con-
trary to the majority of birch-bark pothis, as well as palm-leaf pothis and the
above-mentioned pothis made with paper, silk, leather, and poplar wood.53
Instead of holes, we find place holders, such as decorations or blank spaces. It
is this the moment in which the unbound (or loosely bound) pothi makes its
appearance, an innovation which will characterise virtually all subsequent
North Indian paper as well as woodblock pothis ever produced.54
On the other hand, and here lies the non-reciprocity of our current symbio-
sis, although the craftsmanship related to birch does change too, since its multi-
purpose bark-sheets became part of a further new economy, I do not think that
this changed much the ecology of the tree, with presumably just a relatively
small number of plants directly affected, i.e. those from which bark was extract-
ed. Moreover, we do not know of birch undergoing domestication, i.e. it was not
cultivated with the precise aim of providing writing surfaces, contrary for

||
48 See Gunawan 2015.
49 See Morey 2015.
50 For a recent assessment of the early history of paper in Central Asia, see Helman-Ważny
2020. For an overview of paper pothis from Dunhuang (datable to c. the eight century), which
carry texts in both Tibetan and Chinese, the latter written either vertically or horizontally (left
to right), see Galambos 2020, 25–27, 143–152. As for paper used for manuscripts in India we are
told of a few dating to the eleventh to thirteenth century (Gode 1969, 7), although paper was
known in India before, most probably since the seventh century as witnessed by the Chinese
pilgrim Yijing during his travel to India and as we know from the analysis of the folios made of
‘clay-coated paper’ from Gilgit (for a recent account, see Scherrer-Schaub 2016, 154–155). Con-
cerning the latter, we have three fragmentary manuscripts that contain folios made of both
birch-bark and this rare material, as for example a copy of the Saṃghāṭasūtra (von Hinüber
2014, 91, 104 and Kishore 1963).
51 See e.g. Igunma 2013, 632.
52 For example, we know of the Bakhshālī manuscript, which has no sting-holes, and whose
folios are more squared than oblong and thus cannot be readily categorised as a pothi (for a
reproduction, see Kaye 1927).
53 As mentioned above, the earliest exemplars of paper manuscripts are too fragmentary, but
the paper pothi discussed by Hartmann definitely has holes (Hartmann 1988, 89). For descrip-
tions and reproductions of the silk, leather, and poplar wood pothis, see Stein 1928a, 1024 and
Stein 1928b, Plate CXXI, Lüders 1940, 586, and Nakatani 1987, respectively.
54 For a similar observation, see Hoernle 1901, 127–128.
878 | Giovanni Ciotti

example to Talipot, which may have been cultivated with this purpose, as ap-
parently witnessed in the seventh century by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang.55

6.2 Symbiosis 2: Encounter with Buddhism

The encounter with Buddhism, in particular its Mahāyāna version, had pro-
found consequences for the pothi manuscript culture. Certainly, one of the most
prominent is that pothis acquired sacral and ritualistic functions on top of their
presumably practical ones (educational, administrative, etc.). They became
objects of veneration, the production and reproduction of which was believed to
have positive effects on the rebirth of donors and their families.56 The same
practice was to be later adopted by certain strands of Brahmanism and Jainism,
as well.57
In the eyes of monks, nuns, and laypeople, manuscripts containing Bud-
dhist texts (sūtras in particular) became tantamount to the Buddha’s speech or
even his body (inasmuch as they are equated to his relics), thus attaining a holy
status.58 Such a status was accompanied by the development of ritualistic usag-
es of manuscripts, in particular their being installed in stūpas or carried around
as amulets.59
A further implication of the new status attributed to manuscripts was the
development of the practice of vidyādāna (‘gift of knowledge’): donating manu-
scripts as well as writing implements became a meritorious act.60 A sign of the
far-reaching implications of this phenomenon is for example that, within the
Indian context, even manuscripts containing Vedic texts were written down and
donated,61 despite the fact that the official voice of Brahmanism notoriously
abhorred such a practice.62

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55 See Hoernle 1901, 124.
56 For references, see De Simini 2016, 2–22.
57 See De Simini 2016 and Cort 1992, respectively.
58 These equations are still debated as far as early Mahāyāna Buddhism is concerned (see
references in De Simini 2016, 8–11), but have later become well-established, as in the case of
Tibetan Buddhism (Almogi and Wangchuk 2016, 5–7) and Mongolian Buddhism (Wallace 2009,
91).
59 For references, see De Simini 2016, 8–13.
60 De Simini 2016. The label vidyādāna is used here for the sake of convenience, although it is
not used by all relevant sources.
61 Galewicz 2011.
62 Kane 1941, 348–349.
 Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies | 879

Concerning the non-reciprocity of the current symbiosis, I would venture to

argue that the fact of having its texts transmitted on codices, scrolls, or pothis
did not make much of a difference for Buddhism. Those artefacts initially be-
came sacred not for their shape, but for the texts they contained, even though
out of habit the oblong shape ended up evoking a reaction of awe and respect in
the people engaging with pothis.

6.3 Symbiosis 3: Encounter with xylography

A further symbiosis was triggered by the encounter with xylography, alias
woodblock print, a technology originally developed in China, at least from the
fifth century.63
For obvious geographical reasons, such encounter took place first in Central
Asia. Camillo A. Formigatti has convincingly argued that the date of a specific
woodblock printed pothi, namely item 612 (Samyuktāgama) of the Sanskrithand-
schriften aus den Turfanfunden, ranges between 850–1250, i.e. the Uighur occu-
pation of the city of Qočo.64 However, we have so few extant materials from that
area that it is probably easier to focus our attention on the spread of this tech-
nology in Tibet from the early fifteenth century onwards.65
The Tibetan case can help us find a way out of the debate whether such
prints can still be considered manuscripts. Here, I would like to tackle this co-
nundrum by arguing that, even if one wants to argue that individual artefacts
cannot be counted as manuscripts, their production and perception can still be
recognised as part of the pothi manuscript culture, just one that has changed
owing to the encounter with xylography.66
Concerning the production aspect, we can mention, for example, the fact
that xylography necessitates copyists who produce the manuscript that is then
pasted on the woodblock, and thus perpetuates the habitus of handwriting,
including its stylistic variations and orthographic mistakes,67 or that the scribe

||
63 Barret 2008, 67.
64 Formigatti 2016, 86, see also ibid. 81 n. 11 about the fragments of this specific pothi.
65 For the dating of early Tibetan woodblock prints, see e.g. Diemberger 2016.
66 We thus try to answer differently the question raised by Formigatti 2016, 118: ‘[…] xylo-
graphs and lithographs certainly aren’t manuscripts, but should we still equate them to books
printed with movable types and printing presses? Maybe it would be better to think of them as
something similar to a manuscript and a printed book at the same time, and yet different from
both’.
67 Scherrer-Schaub 2016, 166.
880 | Giovanni Ciotti

of the manuscript can also be one of the craftsmen involved in the carving of
woodblock.68 Also in terms of layout, one can notice that, as in the case of cer-
tain birch-bark and paper pothis from North India, a placeholder for the string-
hole is maintained also in the prints, further enhancing the idea of continuity
with palm-leaf manuscripts.69 Concerning their perception one can mention that
primary sources seem to rarely differentiate between manuscripts and prints,70
or that both artefacts are still produced in Tibet, since they are attributed an
aura unmatched by other media, such as the modern printed book.71
As for the non-reciprocal aspect of the symbiosis in question, I would argue
that xylographic technology did not really change when it encountered pothis,
but that on the other hand the pothi manuscript culture significantly changed,
yet without loosing its identity. As in the case of the adoption of birch-bark as a
writing surface, xylography did not spread across the whole pothi manuscript
culture, but yet revealed the potential of the latter to survive and incorporate
technological innovations.

7 A missed symbiosis
We now turn to what seems to me to have been a rather conspicuous case of
missed symbiosis, namely the lack of interaction between the pothi manuscript
culture and the Turco-Persian culture.
Caveats are in place, as we will see below, we are talking here of the Islamic
culture and political power that came to the Indian subcontinent along with the
Turkic Islam of Central Asia (twelfth/thirteenth to sixteenth century) and, later
on, the Turco-Persian Islam of the Mughals (from the sixteenth century) and not
of Islam tout court. In fact, Islam and pothis, in particular palm-leaf ones, did
meet, though the encounter never gained a strong momentum. We thus have
palm-leaf pothis produced in the Tamil Muslim milieu and a certain Islamic
tradition proper to the Sasak community of Lombok (Indonesia). 72

||
68 Two such craftsmen, both active in the sixteenth century, are dPal ldan rgyal po (Ehrhard
2016, 219–220) and Ba dzra dho ja (Vajradhvaja) (Clemente 2017, 387–388).
69 Scherrer-Schaub 2016, 164–165.
70 Sharshon 2016, 238.
71 See Almogi and Wangchuk 2016, 10.
72 More 2004, 36–37 offers a succinct report of the former, whereas aspects of the latter are
discussed in van der Meij forthcoming. Note that the same is true in the case of Christian litera-
ture in South India. One possible exception could be that of the Bengal pothis containing the
 Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies | 881

On the other hand, we approach a statistical zero when we look for manu-
scripts in pothi form that contain Islamic texts belonging to Turco-Persian Is-
lam. Within our approach, this does not mean, though, that the pothi
manuscript culture is dormant or dead, but rather that by the time Islam enters
the subcontinent from North-west, it has reached a maturity and a self-
containedness that do not leave room for any symbiotic pulse.73 This non-event
is particularly noteworthy given the otherwise astounding and variegated forms
of Indo-Persian syncretism,74 and precisely because it is indirectly revealing of
the nature of the pothi manuscript culture as an object à la OOO.
In contrast, we can observe how the Islamic codex culture is able to interact
with local languages and materials. Thus, we see the production of codices
containing texts composed in Sanskrit and various (Northern) Indian vernacu-
lars, as well as guṭakās, i.e. codices in landscape form which were used by Hin-
dus, Sikhs, and Jains.75 Similarly, we have Hindu motives depicted on vertical,
codex-like layout, e.g. in the paintings of the Mewar school by the artists Nasir-
uddin (sixteenth century) or Sahibdin (seventeenth century),76 but to the best of
my knowledge no Islamic motives painted in the horizontal, pothi-like layout.

8 Cui prodest?
We have hopefully shown that Harman’s approach may help us find a melody
amidst the historiographical noise, in other words an ontology, by both high-
lighting a certain kind of key moments (symbioses) in the history of the pothi
manuscript culture and speculating on missed events – in Harman’s own terms:
‘[p]aradoxically, to show us what any object is in itself requires subtracting from
the knowledge we have about it: focusing austerely on its essential features

||
deeds of pīrs (‘sufi masters’), such as the two copies on paper pothi of the Satya Pīrera
Pān̐cāli recorded by project EAP759 of the Endangered Archive Programme of the British
Library (<https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP759>, accessed on 9 April 2021), namely EAP759/1/4 and
EAP759/1/90. However, since pīrs are considered to be holy individuals also by the local
Vaishnava communities, I would argue that the manuscripts in question are not the result of
the Islamic appropriation of the pothi form, but rather of Islam entering the pothi form once it
has been absorbed by Hinduism.
73 In Harman’s words, an object is mature when ‘[a]ll that remains is for the object to capital-
ize on what it has become by feeding on its environment’ (Harman 2017, 121).
74 For a recent survey of this multifarious encounter, see Eaton 2019.
75 See Formigatti 2020.
76 Guy and Britschgi 2011, 98–102.
882 | Giovanni Ciotti

rather than promiscuously on all of them, and playing both counterfactually

and poetically with other possible outcomes’.77
In this respect, we argue that the angle offered by OOO on manuscript stud-
ies is fresh and productive. In particular, it is an approach that has allowed us to
engage with a specific manuscript culture, whereas other approaches would
have us ask different questions, such as what is a manuscript or what is a man-
uscript culture. Thus, we cannot but conclude by expressing the wish that oth-
ers will further foster the interaction between the field of philosophy and that of
manuscript studies, over which – we insist – the wings of Minerva’s owl are not
going to spread for a long time to come.78

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Daniele Cuneo, Camillo A. Formigatti, Marco Franceschini,
Volker Grabowsky, Jooyoung Lim, Aleix Ruiz-Falqués, Paolo Visigalli, Eva
Wilden, Hanna Wimmer and an anonymous reviewer for carefully reading
through early drafts of this paper and offering extremely valuable suggestions.
Many thanks also go to Ross P. Bayton for answering my queries on the
Borassus genus, and to Richard J. Gornall and Irina Wandrey for helping me
access a number of publications. All mistakes and ravings are of course mine
only.

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Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack
Collation in Early Imperial China: From
Administrative Procedure to Philological
Tool
Abstract: The origins of ‘textual criticism’ in China are usually traced back to
Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–8 BCE), who is credited with the invention of philological
tools, especially ‘collation’ (jiaochou 校讎). However, scholars have also noted
that the terms jiao 校 and chou 讎 occur in earlier sources, especially manu-
scripts with legal or administrative texts. Surveying evidence on the mentioned
collation techniques from received literature and from manuscripts dating to the
late third and early second century BCE, this paper lays bare the administrative
roots of later philological tools. It argues that Liu Xiang adopted established
methods and terminology from the administrative and legal sphere that had
been around for at least 200 years.

1 Introduction
Cultures around the world that have produced large text corpora at some point
all have developed philological tools to deal with problems such as textual vari-
ance and corruption. In the case of the Chinese tradition, the eminent scholar of
the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE), Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–8 BCE) is credited
with the invention of such tools. Liu Xiang and his project to assess the imperial
manuscript collection during the reign of Emperor Cheng (33–7 BCE) are associ-
ated with the practice of ‘collation’ (jiaochou 校讎).
Bamboo and wood manuscripts from early imperial China excavated in in-
creasing numbers since the 1970s provide new evidence on the possible origins
of these philological tools. Scholars have duly noted that the terms chou and
jiao appear in some of these manuscripts, especially legal or administrative
texts from the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE).1 This seems to suggest that Liu Xiang
did not invent the techniques which he carried out his editorial work with but
has adopted established methods and terminology from the administrative and
legal sphere that had been around for at least 200 years.

||
1 Deng Junjie 2012a, 2012b; Fu Rongxian 2007.

Open Access. © 2021 Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack, published by De Gruyter. This work is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-043
890 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

To probe the origins of ‘textual criticism’ in China, this article will survey
textual evidence on the collation techniques jiao 校 and chou 讎 from received
literature on Liu Xiang’s methods and from manuscripts dating to the late third
and early second century BCE. The latter, on the one hand, offer descriptions of
these techniques. On the other hand, some manuscripts were subjected to colla-
tion, which left visible traces in the form of collation notes and marks. By this
investigation, we hope to further our understanding of the terminology and the
techniques related to collation and lay bare the administrative roots of later
philological tools.

2 Collation as part of Liu Xiang’s editorial work

In 26 BCE, Liu Xiang, one of the most eminent scholars of the Western Han peri-
od, was commissioned to head a team of scholars in a grand-scale project to
assess the imperial manuscript collection. Until his death, Liu Xiang worked on
sighting and collating a huge number of manuscripts – not only from the impe-
rial collection proper but also from other sources. This work, carried on by his
son Liu Xin 劉歆 (c. 50 BCE – 23 CE), resulted in the production of editions of
texts found in the imperial collection. We have to assume that most if not all of
China’s classical literature from pre-imperial and early imperial times as we
know it today was decisively shaped by this editorial endeavour. The ‘Treatise
on Classics and other Texts’ (Yiwenzhi 藝文志) in the History of the Han (Hanshu
漢書), which is based on a now-lost catalogue compiled by Liu Xin at the end of
the long-term project, gives evidence of the scope of the work once begun by Liu
Xiang. It lists over 600 titles divided into six main categories and 38 subcatego-
ries.2 However, through the editorial reports (the so-called Bielu 別錄), we get a
glimpse of the editorial praxis employed by Liu Xiang and his collaborators.
Such a report was written for each work that was collated and edited and then
submitted to the throne together with the final edition of the respective work. As
with the catalogue of Liu Xin, these reports have only survived in fragments. Out
of the more than 600 titles listed in the ‘Treatise on Classics and other Texts’, for
all of which individual reports must have been submitted at some point in the
process, there are only nine relatively complete reports extant today.3

||
2 Hanshu 30, 1701–1781.
3 Fölster 2016 offers a detailed study on the collation project. This also includes a full transla-
tion of the ‘Treatise on Classics and other Texts’ and the most comprehensive collection of
remaining fragments from the editorial reports to date including English translations.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 891

A term that figures prominently in these reports and that was central for Liu
Xiang’s editorial work is jiaochou 校讎 (also choujiao 讎校), which is usually
understood in the sense ‘to collate’ or ‘to check by means of comparison’. A
fragment from Ying Shao’s 應劭 (c. 125–204) Comprehensive Meaning of Customs
and Habits (Fengsu tongyi 風俗通義) gives the regularly cited definition for this
term:

風俗通曰：案劉向別錄：讎校：一人讀書，校其上下得繆誤，為校；一人持本，一人讀
書，若怨家相對，[為讎]。 4

The Comprehensive [Meaning] of Customs and Habits says: According to Liu Xiang’s Bielu,
choujiao [means]: If one man reads out a piece of writing, checking the context to find er-
rors, this is jiao; if one man holds a copy and another man reads out the piece of writing,
opposing one another like enemies, [this is chou].

The above is not a quote from one of the editorial reports but rather an explana-
tion of the term from a later work. It shows that only around two hundred years
after Liu Xiang, the term’s exact meaning was no longer self-evident and needed
to be explained. This brief description, rather than offering a proper definition,
opens up new questions to the modern reader. In part, this has also to do with
the fact that this fragment is transmitted in slightly different versions. However,
all versions suggest that jiao and chou are different activities. While jiao refers
to the ‘checking’ of a piece of writing by only one person, chou seems to refer to
another method of checking in which two persons collaborate and compare two
separate pieces of writing – probably containing different witnesses of the same
text. From this, it follows that jiao is a form of proofreading, and only chou re-
fers to collation in the proper sense. It is also the description of the latter which
has led to discussion among scholars on how to understand the precise charac-
ter of the chou collation. The main point of discussion boils down to the ques-
tion of what to make of the difference between a ‘copy’ (ben 本) and a ‘piece of
writing’ (shu 書). Does one of them refer to a model (Vorlage) or an authoritative
version of a text serving as a basis to check another copy of that same text? Or
does it refer to two disagreeing textual witnesses, which are then compared in
order to arrive at the definitive edition of the text?

||
4 Fengsu tongyi jiaozhu, 495. The fragment is cited in Wenxuan 6:287. The emendation at the very
end was made on the basis of two similar citations in works from the Song-period (960–1279).
Taiping yulan (618:3A, 2906.1): 劉向別傳曰：讎校者：一人持本，一人讀析，若怨家相對，故曰
讎也。 Xixi congyu (shang:40): 劉向別錄云：讎校書：一人持本，一人讀對若怨家，故曰讎書。
892 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

No consensus has been reached on these questions, and the scarce eviden-
tial basis has led to contradictory explanations. While some take ben to be the
model, for others, it is shu.5 In an attempt to overcome the challenge of limited
sources, a pottery figurine excavated from the Jin period (265–420 CE) tomb
no. 9 at Jinpenling 金盆嶺, Changsha in 1958, has been interpreted to show two
men engaged in the chou collation (see Fig. 1).6

Fig. 1: Pottery figurine from tomb no. 9 at Jinpenling.7

Tempting as this interpretation might be, it completely ignores the context of

this figurine as a burial object placed in a tomb. A study which takes into ac-
count the context within a whole assembly of burial objects concluded that the

||
5 See Jin Su 2005 for an overview of the various explanations.
6 Deng Junjie (2012b, 265–266). The tomb has been dated to the year 302 CE (Shaughnessy
2006, ‘cover art’ description). For the excavation report, see Hunan sheng bowuguan 1959.
7 The figure was taken from Hunan sheng bowuguan 2018, 276.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 893

figurine rather shows two deities administering life and death (the Director of
Fate and the Director of Records). This motif expresses the hope that the tomb
owner may become an ‘immortal’ (xian 仙), representing a common theme in
tombs from that period.8
A closer look at the terminology used to describe Liu Xiang’s collation prac-
tice reveals that apart from jiaochou or choujiao, one most frequently finds jiao
but never chou alone. Indeed, jiao refers to the collating of different textual
witnesses. See for example the following passage from the ‘Treatise on Classics
and other Texts’:

劉向以中古文易經校施、孟、梁丘經，或脫去「無咎」、「悔亡」，唯費氏經與古文同。9

Liu Xiang took the old text Changes classic from the inner [palace] to collate the classic’s
[versions] of Shi, Meng and Liangqiu. They sometimes left out [the formulas] ‘no blame’
and ‘remorse disappears’, only Mr. Fei’s [version of the] classic was identical to the old
text [version].

In addition, the recurrent formula in the editorial reports, which describes the
process of collation, also uses jiao: ‘by collating them [with each other] I elimi-
nated […] duplicate chapters’ (以[相]校除復重[…]篇).10 This usage of jiao contra-
dicts the definition cited above. It has also been argued that jiao and chou refer
to the same technique, the only difference being the involvement of one person
rather than two persons.11 However, this merely reiterates the classic definition
cited earlier.
The following section will investigate jiao and chou in the context of the Qin
administration and shed some more light on the possible origins of the collation
techniques used by Liu Xiang. It argues that at least during the Qin period, the
two terms described clearly distinct processes of institutionalized checking that
were also applied to different types of documents.12

||
8 Jiang Sheng 2011. In a similar vein, Li Huijun 2020 argues that the figurine shows two deities
and that its imagery exhibits early Buddhist influence.
9 Hanshu 30, 1704.
10 Fölster 2016, 167.
11 Deng Junjie 2012b, 264–265. See also Fu Rongxian 2007, 93.
12 In the following, we will employ the working translations ‘to collate’ for chou and ‘to check’
for jiao.
894 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

3 Collation terminology in Qin administration

3.1 Chou
3.1.1 Legal prescriptions and reports on chou

To date, the earliest occurrences of the term chou in the context of collation or
checking are found in Qin laws and administrative documents. The following
two examples come from a collection of legal excerpts that were excavated from
tomb no. 11 at Shuihudi 睡虎地 in 1975:

縣上食者籍及它費大（太）倉，與計偕。都官以計時讎食者籍。 倉13

The prefectures submit the registers of persons who have received food rations as well as
[records of] other expenses to the great granary; they go together with the accounts. The
metropolitan offices at the time of accounting (i.e., towards the end of the year) collate the
registers of persons who have received food rations. [Statutes concerning] granaries.

歲讎辟律于御史。 尉雜 14

Once a year collate the penal statutes with the Prosecutor.15 Various [statutes con-
cerning the] Commander.

Although these terse stipulations do not offer a detailed description of the chou
procedure, a few conclusions can still be made. First, chou was conducted regu-
larly, apparently once per year. The time of accounting towards the end of the
year when each office submitted its ‘accounts’ (ji 計) to the higher authorities
seems to have been one of the typical occasions. Second, it was applied to at least
two types of documents: ‘registers’ (ji 籍, e.g., of persons receiving food rations)16

||
13 Qinlü shiba zhong 秦律十八種, slip 37. See Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian zhengli xiaozu 1990, 28
(transcription part). Translation based on Hulsewé 1985, 41.
14 Qinlü shiba zhong 秦律十八種, slip 199. See Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian zhengli xiaozu 1990,
64 (transcription part). Translation based on Hulsewé 1985, 90.
15 As stated by Hulsewé (1985, 90), the term yushi ‘Prosecutor’ could refer to different officials.
It seems likely that it refers either to the yushi dafu 御史大夫 ‘Chief Prosecutor’ at the imperial
court or the jian yushi 監御史 ‘Inspecting Prosecutors’, who were established in each Qin prov-
ince. On the latter, see You Yifei 2016, 482–491. The English translations of the titles follow
Giele 2006, 51–52.
16 That other kinds of registers, such as household and land registers, were likewise subjected
to chou once per year is suggested by an early Han stipulation in Ernian lüling 二年律令, slips
331–333. See Peng Hao et al. 2007, 223; Barbieri-Low and Yates 2015, 798–799.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 895

and (a certain part of) the existing ‘statutes’ (lü 律). Third, offices/officials on
different levels of the administration participated in the chou process: in the
first example, it was conducted by the metropolitan offices – agencies of the
central government, which were located in the capital or the provinces and
prefectures17 – in the second by a Prosecutor, either on the provincial level or in
the capital.
Two administrative documents excavated from well no. 1 at Liye 里耶, the
former seat of the Qin prefecture Qianling 遷陵, provide evidence for the actual
application of the chou procedure to written law and add a few further details to
the picture:

丗一年六月壬午朔庚戌，庫武敢言之：廷書曰令史操律令詣廷讎，署書到、吏起時。有
追。‧今以庚戌遣佐處讎。敢言之。
七月壬子日中，佐處以來。/端發。 處手。 18

In the 31st year [of the First Emperor of Qin, i.e., 216 BCE], in the sixth month with the first
day renwu, on day gengxu, [Overseer] Wu of the armoury ventures to report the following:
‘A document from the court [of Qianling prefecture] reads: “Order a Scribe to take the
statutes and ordinances and present them to the [prefectural] court for collation. Make a
note on the time of arrival of this document as well as the time of departure of the official
[carrying the statutes and ordinances]. There will be a tracking [if they are not presented
in due time].” Now on the day gengxu we sent the Assistant Chu to collate [the statutes
and ordinances.] End of report.’
In the seventh month, at midday of the day renzi, Assistant Chu arrived [with this docu-
ment at the court of Qianling prefecture]. /Opened by Duan. Handled by Chu.19

□年四月□□朔己卯，遷陵守丞敦狐告船官□：令史㢜讎律令沅陵，其假船二㮴，勿留。20

In the [...] year, in the fourth month with the first day […], on day jimao, acting Vice Prefect
Dunhu of Qianling prefecture informs [the Overseer of] the boat office [...]: ‘Director Scribe
Kang is to collate statutes and ordinances at Yuanling. You shall lend him two boats and
not delay [his journey].’ 21

From these documents, we can gather that not only statutes but also ‘ordinances’
(ling 令), the second major form of written law, were subjected to chou. In addi-
tion, the process often seems to have required a subordinate office to transport
writings it used or had formerly received – in these cases, copies of statutes and

||
17 Barbieri-Low and Yates 2015, 123.
18 Slip 8-173. See Chen Wei 2012, 104.
19 Cf. the translation in Yates 2018, 439.
20 Slip 6-4. See Chen Wei 2012, 19.
21 Cf. the translation in Yates 2018, 440.
896 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

ordinances – to a superior office for collation. For the armoury, this was the
court of Qianling prefecture. For the prefecture itself, the probable destination
was the court of the province in which it was situated or the seat of the prov-
ince’s ‘Inspecting Prosecutor’ (jian yushi 監御史).22
In addition to the common interpretation of chou as a means of checking,
some scholars have argued that, at least for statutes and ordinances, it may
have been one of the means by which these texts were normally disseminated
throughout the Qin Empire.23 However, at least from the first of the two Liye
documents cited above, it can be gathered that existing copies of statutes and
ordinances were actually taken from a local office to the prefectural court to
conduct chou. Moreover, the word normally used for ‘copying’ all sorts of texts,
including statutes, was xie 寫.24 Still, it seems likely that chou included both the
checking of the existing manuscripts and – in case changes had been ordered
by the central government – updating the existing and/or copying of new laws
(see below).
In addition to registers and written law, maps were apparently also subject-
ed to chou, which is shown by the following fragmentary document from Liye:25

[…]其旁郡縣與椄（接）界者毋下二縣，以□爲審，即令卒史主者操圖詣御史，御史案讎
更并，定爲輿地圖。有不讎、非實者，自守以下主者[…] 26

[…] in case the prefectures of neighbouring provinces that have common borders with [the
province in question] are not less than two, ascertain […], thereupon order the Accessory
Scribes27 in charge to take the maps [of their respective province] and present them to the

||
22 According to You Yifei (2016, 484 with n. 96), either the seat of the Governor of Dongting 洞庭
province or the seat of its Inspecting Prosecutor may have been situated at Yuanling.
23 Zhou Haifeng (2016, 45–48) proposed that new laws were most commonly sent down from
the central government to the provinces and on to the prefectures. To carry on dissemination
further down the hierarchy, offices from the ‘district’ (xiang 鄉) level as well as the ‘metropoli-
tan offices’ (duguan 都官) sent persons to copy the laws at the respective prefectures and later
made them known in the districts and ‘villages/quarters’ (li 里). On the basis of Liye slip 6–4
(see above), he further argued that some laws were not sent all the way to the prefectures, but
had to be copied at the provincial court.
24 On different terms for writing in Qin and Han administration, see Staack 2019.
25 For the suggestion that this is a fragment of an ordinance, see Ye Shan 2013, 103–104.
26 Slip 8-224+8-412+8-1415. See Chen Wei 2012, 118.
27 For this translation of the title and the officials referred to as zushi 卒史, see Barbieri-Low
and Yates 2015, 1105 n. 20. See also Lau and Lüdke 2012, 190 n. 923. In the present case, the
zushi probably belong to the ‘province’ (jun 郡) level rather than the capital, because it seems
likely that each province had an Accessory Scribe who was responsible for the maps of all its
subordinate prefectures.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 897

Prosecutor, who investigates and collates them, combines them anew and [thereby] fixes28
a [new] map of the whole [Qin] territory. In case [maps are] not collated or do not corre-
spond with the facts, from the Governors downward all in charge […] 29

As in one of the stipulations from Shuihudi, where certain statutes have to be

presented, it is again a Prosecutor (yushi) who is responsible for the chou proce-
dure.30 Although the whole passage is lacking more substantial context, it
seems that in this case, the chou process works ‘bottom-up’ rather than ‘top-
down’. The background of this appears to be a certain change of the borders
between two provinces whereupon the Accessory Scribes in charge of the maps
are to present the revised maps to the Chief Prosecutor at the capital. He, in turn,
probably had to check whether the two provinces had their maps revised in a
way that corresponded to each other while also making sure the changes were
worked into the map of the whole Qin territory.

3.1.2 Traces of chou in manuscripts

Apart from the above regulations and reports that describe or illustrate certain
features of the chou procedure, Qin manuscripts from the Yuelu Academy col-
lection provide some notable traces of editorial activity that may have been
caused by one or several chou processes.31
The following three titles are each written on separate bamboo slips and seem
to refer to different parts or categories of a larger compilation of ordinances:32

||
28 Note that ding 定 or dingzhu 定著 also occur in Liu Xiang’s editorial reports in the sense of
fixing the final text. See Fölster 2016, 186–187.
29 Cf. the translation in Yates 2018, 428.
30 Again, yushi 御史 might refer to officials at the province level or to the Chief Prosecutor at
the imperial court. See also footnote 15 above. You Yifei (2016, 485–486), interprets yushi here
as the Inspecting Prosecutor of a province. However, with regard to the fact that more than one
province seems to be involved, it appears more likely that the maps were checked by an author-
ity above the province level. Hence, we interpret yushi here as referring to the Chief Prosecutor.
31 Some examples were already discussed in Zhou Haifeng 2016, 51–52.
32 All three slips were first published in vol. 4 of the Yuelu Academy manuscripts (Chen
Songchang 2015), but actually seem to belong to two bamboo manuscripts the rest of which
was published as ‘group 1’ in vol. 5 (Chen Songchang 2017) and ‘group 1’ in vol. 6 (Chen
Songchang 2020), respectively. Hence, the slips were included in the latter volumes too.
898 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

▌廷內史郡二千石官共令 ‧第戊 ‧今庚 33

Ordinances provided to34 the 2,000-bushel officials at the court, in the capital area as well
as in the provinces. E Now G.

▌廷內史郡二千石官共令 ‧第己 ‧今辛 35

Ordinances provided to the 2,000-bushel officials at the court, in the capital area as well
as in the provinces. F Now H.

▌廷內史郡二千【石】官共令 ‧第庚 ‧今壬 36

Ordinances provided to the 2,000-bushel officials at the court, in the capital area as well
as in the provinces. G Now I.

Following the title that describes the compilation of ordinances as a whole,

the respective part is referred to by one of the ten ‘Heavenly Stems’ (tiangan 天
干) – a fixed sequence of characters that has been represented in the translation
by the first ten letters of the Roman alphabet. At the bottom of each of the three
slips, there are additional notes in a clearly different hand (set in italics in the
transcription and the translation). These notes suggest that the titles of the three
parts ‘E’, ‘F’ and ‘G’ were changed to ‘G’, ‘H’ and ‘I’, respectively. The reason for
this change is unclear, but one possibility is that two new parts were added
before part E, causing parts E, F and G to ‘shift down two places’ in the se-
quence of the Heavenly Stems.37
Another hint at editorial activity that may have been part of or initiated by
the chou procedure is the occurrence of the note chong 重 ‘duplicate’38 at the end
of two ordinances:

||
33 Chen Songchang 2015, 219 (slip 375) (only upper three fragments); Chen Songchang 2020,
68 (slip 63).
34 On this meaning of gong 共 in ordinance titles, see Chen Songchang 2016, 59–61.
35 Chen Songchang 2015, 212 (slip 353); Chen Songchang 2017, 59 (slip 62).
36 Chen Songchang 2015, 224 (slip 390); Chen Songchang 2017, 72 (slip 98).
37 Chen Songchang 2016, 61. This would suggest that – at least in this compilation of ordi-
nances – the arrangement of parts or categories was not chronological but may rather have
followed content criteria. It is unclear whether such titles were determined by the central gov-
ernment or on a lower level of the administration. For a similar case of updating, concerning
the number of items in a list of funerary goods from tomb no. 3 at Mawangdui, see Chen
Songchang 1994, 68. See also Waring 2019, 188–190.
38 Note that Liu Xiang’s editorial reports also mention duplicates with the similar term
fuchong 復重. See Fölster 2016, 165–168.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 899

●封書毋勒其事於署。書以郵行及以縣次傳送行者，皆勒書郡名于署。不從令，貲一甲。
‧卒令丙四 重39

For sealed documents, do not inscribe the matter [the document is concerned with] on the
address label. For documents that are forwarded by the courier service or transmitted and
delivered according to the order of the prefectures, in every case inscribe the name of the
province on the address label. Not to follow this ordinance is fined one shield.
Accessory ordinances, C4 Duplicate.

●諸軍人、漕卒及黔首、司寇、隸臣妾有縣官事，不幸死，死【所令縣將】吏刻其郡名
槥及署送書可以毋誤失道回留。 ‧卒令丙卅四 重40

For soldiers and boatmen as well as black-headed ones, robber guards and bondservants
who, while working for the government, die unfortunately, [the office at their place of]
death [has the commanding] official [of the prefecture]41 inscribe the name of the [deceased’s
home] province on the provisional coffin and add a note [with this information] to the ac-
companying document so that [the transport] can be [conducted] without mistake, losing
the way or delay. Accessory ordinances, C34 Duplicate.

Comparable to the case of the changed titles of certain parts of a compilation

above, the notes ‘duplicate’ that follow the present ordinances seem to have
been written by a different hand than the text of the ordinances proper. This
suggests that the original collection of written law, of which these ordinances
were a part, must have contained at least one other copy of each of the two or-
dinances. And indeed, there are slips with identical text among those acquired
together with the slips just presented.42
It has been suggested – at least for the first example – that the ‘duplicate’
note was applied by a ‘person checking the ordinances by means of comparison’
(jiaochou zhe 校讎者) and that the two identical copies of the same ordinance
were most likely part of the same manuscript. As the two ordinances were writ-
ten by different hands, an explanation of this phenomenon could be that two
scribes collaborated during the production of the manuscript, unaware that

||
39 Chen Songchang 2020, 170 (slip 223). Punctuation modified.
40 Chen Songchang 2020, 170 (slips 224–225).
41 This passage could also be translated, ‘if [the mentioned persons] die in the prefecture, in
which they were ordered [to work for the government], their commanding official […]’ (死所令
縣將吏).
42 For a fragment that matches the beginning of ‘accessory ordinance C4’, see Chen
Songchang 2017, 104 (slip 111). For an identical version of ‘accessory ordinance C34’, see Chen
Songchang 2017, 111 (slips 131–132).
900 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

some ordinances were being copied by both of them.43 Although this is a rea-
sonable suggestion and the measurements of the slips as well as the number
and position of the traces of former binding strings also do not speak against the
possibility that all the slips were once part of the same manuscript, this is at
present difficult to prove.44 Hence, we cannot be sure whether the contents of
two separate manuscripts were compared and checked for duplicates or wheth-
er someone discovered a duplication while reading through/checking a single
manuscript.
The above examples clearly demonstrate two things. First, the constant en-
actment of new laws during the Qin period and the countless copying processes
that were necessary for their distribution to the lower levels of the administra-
tion must have caused a significant degree of textual variation as well as loss
and also duplication. Second, the chou procedure must have been employed to
counter-balance this tendency.
Although there are no explicit statements – at least in the material pub-
lished so far – that some or all of the statutes and ordinances in the Yuelu Acad-
emy manuscripts were subjected to a chou procedure, there are additional hints.
First, some of the manuscripts bear witness to textual emendations. For exam-
ple, a manuscript titled Statutes on Absconding (Wang lü 亡律) contains numer-
ous textual changes, many of which appear to be the result of systematic
revision through which all occurrences of particular terms or formulations were
emended or updated.45 At least some of these likely go back to changes in ad-
ministrative terminology following the establishment of the Qin Empire in
221 BCE. Second, many of the Yuelu Academy Qin slips with ordinances show
vertical line marks that could have been applied in the process of collation (see
Fig. 2).

||
43 Zhou Haifeng 2016, 52. In fact, the same might be said of the second example shown here,
which is not discussed by Zhou. The ordinance text on both slips with the ‘duplicate’ note
appears to have been written by the same hand, whereas both identical copies were apparently
written by another hand.
44 To date, no actual reconstruction of the original manuscripts has been conducted for the
slips of either ‘group 2’ in vol. 5, or ‘group 4’ in vol. 6 of the Yuelu Academy manuscripts, to
which the slips under discussion were assigned by the editorial team.
45 For an overview of these emendations, see Ji Tingting and Zhang Chi 2018, 250–252. We
thank Tong Chun Fung 唐俊峰 for pointing out the fact that vol. 6 of the Yuelu Academy manu-
scripts contains numerous slips with spaces at the beginning or in the middle of the text of
ordinances. Rather than lacunae, these spaces may indicate parts of text that were deleted in
the course of a chou process, when parts no longer valid or needed may have been removed.
For examples, see Chen Songchang 2020, 84–85 (slips 111 and 129).
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 901

Fig. 2: Possible collation marks at the bottom of slips with Qin ordinances; Chen Songchang
2017, 31.

The above figure shows the bottom part of slips 85–92 (right to left) of ‘group 1’
in vol. 5 of the Yuelu Academy manuscripts. Marks similar to those on slips 86,
89, and 91 not only can be found on other slips of the same group but also on
slips belonging to ‘group 3’ in vol. 5 as well as on slips from ‘group 1’ and ‘group
4’ in vol. 6.46 It is worth recalling here that the above-mentioned slips with
changes of category titles also belong to ‘group 1’ in vol. 5 or ‘group 1’ in vol. 6,
and the slips with the ‘duplicate’ notes to ‘group 4’ in vol. 6. This makes it even
more likely that the marks are related to a chou procedure.
In fact, very similar marks can be found in ‘lists of funerary goods’ (qiance
遣策) that have been excavated from tombs dating to the first half of the second
century BCE, for example, tomb no. 8 at Fenghuangshan 鳳凰山 (see Fig. 3).47

||
46 For these additional marks, see Chen Songchang 2017, 29–30, 168 (slips 65, 76, 84, and
301); Chen Songchang 2020, 33–34, 159 (slips 36, 42, 47, 53, 58 and 217). The mark on slip 217
looks different than the others, representing a hook-shape rather than a vertical line. The
editorial team assumes that both forms are ‘collation marks’ (jiaochou fuhao 校讎符號). See
Chen Songchang 2017, 77 n. 78; Chen Songchang 2020, 183 n. 4.
47 On ‘checkmarks’ in these and other lists of funerary goods, see also Tian Tian 2019.
902 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

Fig. 3: Possible collation marks in a list of funerary goods from tomb no. 8 at Fenghuangshan;
Hubei sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2012, 23. Similar marks can also be found on the lists
excavated from Fenghuangshan tombs no. 9, 168, and 169, reproductions of which were pub-
lished in the same volume.

These line marks, which sometimes were applied in the middle of the slips (as in
Fig. 3), and sometimes at the very bottom, have been interpreted as ‘marks
made when verifying the actual funerary goods (based on the list)’ (hedui qiwu
zuo de jihao 核對器物做的記號).48 An even more intriguing example is the list
excavated from tomb no. 3 at Mawangdui 馬王堆, because it contains an explicit
mentioning of the chou procedure. Although the marks in that list have a differ-
ent form – they resemble little crosses or short vertical strokes – one slip of the
list carries the note ‘collated until here/up to this point’ (chou dao ci 讎到此)
(see Fig. 4). The note can be seen below the mark on the rightmost slip and was
only recently deciphered.49

||
48 Hubei sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2012, 13.
49 For this discovery, see Jiang Wen 2014.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 903

Fig. 4: Possible collation marks in a list of funerary goods from tomb no. 3 at Mawangdui; Qiu
Xigui 2014, 261. It shows slips 34–38 of the list. Note that Jiang Wen 2014 refers to a previous
edition, in which the slip with the collation note has the no. 408 rather than the no. 34.

As in the case of the Fenghuangshan lists, the items on them were probably
checked against the actual objects rather than a second manuscript.50
Besides the Mawangdui funerary list, there is a further non-administrative
manuscript from the early Han period that has certainly undergone one or sev-
eral processes of chou. The manuscript titled Writings on Mathematical Procedures

||
50 On ‘supplementary notations’ in the Mawangdui lists and the argument that these reflect
communication between ritualists, see Waring 2019, 177–182.
904 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

(Suanshushu 筭數書) was excavated from tomb no. 247 at Zhangjiashan 張家山,
which was sealed around 186 BCE. This manuscript’s lower margin contains
fourteen instances of ‘signatures’ by two persons named Wang 王 and Yang 楊.
For each of the two, there is one note that, in addition to the name, includes a
statement on completed checking (yi chou 已讎 ‘already collated’).51 Further-
more, there are dots in the lower margin and/or the main text, which seem to
indicate mistakes and were probably applied in the course of checking.52 Daniel
Morgan and Karine Chemla, who have submitted the manuscript to palaeo-
graphic analysis, concluded that the Writings on Mathematical Procedures ‘was
not a personal creation but a group enterprise involving at least three to five
people in a considerable back-and-forth of writing, proofreading, and correc-
tion’.53
To sum up, in Qin times, chou probably was an administrative procedure by
which two (or more?) versions of a text or map were compared. The main pur-
pose of chou apparently was to control the unified form and even distribution of
certain, often normative (in the sense of ‘prescriptive’) texts – especially written
law. It seems reasonable that such texts, as well as certain maps and registers
which were likewise crucial for the administration of the empire, were subjected
to collation. As of now, there are no hints pointing towards control of the mate-
rial features of the respective manuscripts via chou. A certain variability in
length of slips and number/position of binding strings – see, for example, the
statutes and ordinances from the Yuelu Academy collection – suggests relative
freedom with regard to the material features. We can further assume that chou
does normally not include a comparison between two copies of a text that have
the same status, but rather the comparative checking (and correcting or updat-
ing, if necessary) of one version against a more authoritative copy that was
considered to be correct or up to date. This is also suggested by the fact that
chou was usually done by a higher authority.
It should also be noted that – at the latest, by the early second century BCE –
chou was also applied outside the administrative sphere. Evidence of this prac-
tice in lists of funerary goods and in mathematical writings that may have been

||
51 Morgan and Chemla 2018, 155. That these are not signatures in the sense that they were
necessarily written by Wang and Yang themselves is argued in Morgan and Chemla 2018, 162.
52 Morgan and Chemla 2018, 162–164. The yet largely unpublished Qin bamboo manuscript
no. 4 in the Peking University collection shows similar marks at the bottom of some slips, on
which mathematical texts were recorded. See Beijing daxue chutu wenxian yanjiusuo 2012, 70,
Fig. 2; Han Wei and Zou Dahai 2015, 237–239.
53 Morgan and Chemla 2018, 168.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 905

produced in a teacher-disciple setting54 suggests that it spread to the ‘non-

official’ realm. However, there is no evidence for its application to literary texts
at this point.55

3.2 Jiao
The term jiao frequently occurs in Qin legal and administrative texts – in fact
much more often than the above-mentioned chou – and has been variously
translated as ‘to check’, ‘to audit/check by means of comparison’, as well as ‘to
crosscheck’.56 The Qin period manuscripts that were excavated from tomb no. 11
at Shuihudi in 1975 contained legal prescriptions that provide a glimpse of the
context in which jiao was conducted.57 The following stipulation is an illustra-
tive example:

計校相繆（謬）殹（也），自二百廿錢以下，誶官嗇夫；過二百廿錢以到二千二百錢，
貲一盾；過二千二百錢以上，貲一甲。 58

When the accounts and checks [of stock] differ from each other, for 220 cash and less the
Overseer of the office is reprimanded; if [the difference/mistake] exceeds 220 cash, up to
2,200 cash, he is fined one shield; if it exceeds 2,200 cash, he is fined one suit of armour.59

The above passage already indicates the administrative procedure to which jiao
is closely tied, namely accounting. The so-called shangji 上計 or ‘submission of
accounts’ system, in which once per year all sorts of accounts on state assets
had to be submitted from the lowest offices to the prefecture and provincial

||
54 Morgan and Chemla 2018.
55 As a sidenote, the occurrence of chou in the context of funerary lists – the few manuscripts
that were certainly produced especially for placement in a tomb – also puts into perspective the
argument that traces of chou can be a proof of pre-internment use of a manuscript. For this
argument, see Zhou Haifeng 2016, 51–52.
56 See Hulsewé 1985, 49 n. 2; Barbieri-Low and Yates 2015, 743, 752 n. 56, 824; and Lau and
Staack 2016, 7 n. 32, respectively. The named publications also seem to agree on the fact that
jiao 校 was sometimes written as xiao 效, e.g., in the title Xiao lü 效律 ‘Statutes on Checking’.
57 Most of these can be found in the ‘Statutes on Checking’. See the two manuscripts Qinlü
shiba zhong 秦律十八種, slips 162–178 as well as Xiao lü 效律 in Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian
zhengli xiaozu 1990, 57–59, 69–76 (transcription part). Cf. the translation in Hulsewé 1985, 78–
82, 93–101.
58 Xiao lü 效律, slips 56–57. See Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian zhengli xiaozu 1990, 76 (transcrip-
tion part).
59 Translation based on Hulsewé 1985, 100 as well as Lau and Staack 2016, 180 n. 873.
906 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

courts, and eventually up to the imperial court, may be seen as one of the main
pillars of Qin (and Han) administration.60 This way of keeping track of the state
income and expenses was crucial for many aspects of everyday administration,
for example, the allocation of human (including convict labourers) and material
resources (such as weapons, tools, and cash). To prevent corruption, misuse of
resources, and other unfavourable influences – at least to a certain degree –
accounts (ji 計) had to be checked. Both the process of double-checking the
results of the previous calculations in the accounts, as well as the particular
documents that formed the basis for this checking procedure, were referred to
as jiao.61 Ideally, the results of the calculations in the account and those ob-
tained from checking would not ‘differ from each other’ (xiang miu 相繆/謬),
which, of course, was not always the case.
Recent research on the Liye administrative documents has cast further light
on the complex system of accounting and checking in local administration. It
was found that there are at least two categories of accounts that draw on differ-
ent source documents. On the one hand, there are accounts of the exchange of
human resources (e.g., convict labourers), which are compiled on the basis of
daily and monthly ‘account books’ (bu 簿/薄), for example, ‘account books of
convict labourers assigned to work (at a certain office)’ (zuotubu 作徒簿); on the
other hand, there are accounts of the exchange of material resources such as
grain or tools, which are compiled on the basis of one part of the ‘tripartite
tallies’ (sanbianquan 參辨券) produced for each transaction.62 Duplicates or
parts of these documents – so-called jiaobu 校簿 and jiaoquan 校券 – were regu-
larly submitted to the prefectural court and served as the basis for the checking
(jiao) that was actually conducted by different ‘bureaus’ (cao 曹) acting as me-
diators between the prefectural court and its subordinate offices. 63 This

||
60 On the shangji-system, see Loewe 2004, 44–46. On accounting during the Qin period, see,
for example, Huang Haobo 2016.
61 Sueyasu 2016.
62 Huang Haobo 2016. Zhang Chi (2017, 131–132) has argued that whenever grain, cash, etc.
were issued or received by a government office, that office had to prepare a tripartite tally. One
part of the tally remained with that office (e.g. the shaonei 少内 ‘treasury’ or the cang 倉 ‘grana-
ry’), one part with the other party involved in the transaction, and the third part – actually the
middle part, or zhongbianquan 中辨券 – was submitted to the prefectural court. On tallies and
accounting in the Qin period, see also Cao Tianjiang 2020.
63 Lai Ming Chiu and Tong Chun Fung 2016, 141–151. Although Zhang Chi (2017, 131) assumes
that the prefectural court used the middle parts of tripartite tallies for accounting (ji), it seems
more likely that they were used to check (jiao) the accounts submitted by the subordinate
offices (and which were based on their parts of the tallies), see Cao Tianjiang 2020. If this is the
case, then jiaoquan can be equated with zhongbianquan.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 907

checking was done near the end of the year before the checked accounts were
submitted – in a more comprehensive form – to the provincial courts (jun) and
later the capital.
The basic principle behind jiao appears to be that the calculation of ‘remain-
ing assets’ (yu 餘), which is the bottom line of every account (ji), is checked by
conducting a second independent calculation. This independent calculation by
the responsible bureaus is based on the mentioned duplicates or parts of docu-
ments (in the case of tallies), which the offices regularly forwarded to the pre-
fectural court. Hence, in Qin administration, jiao mainly implies a process of
calculation conducted by a superior office that was then compared to the result
of the original calculation in the accounts of the subordinate offices. Both calcu-
lations were made on the basis of the ‘same’ (in the sense of duplicates/identical
copies) source documents, but at separate offices and hence by different indi-
viduals.
To sum up, as an administrative procedure jiao is closely connected to
numbers and calculations insofar as it constitutes a ‘parallel accounting’, the
purpose of which is a crosschecking or double-checking of the ‘accounts proper’
(ji). As such, jiao is mostly directed to account books (bu) and tallies (quan),
which constitute the source documents on the basis of which both calculations
are made. As the checking is done at a superior office, the result of jiao probably
outweighs/overrules the numbers submitted in the accounts. Hence, one part of
the jiao procedure is the comparison of a checked textual witness against an
unchecked witness – just as is the case for the chou procedure. However, a dif-
ference lies in the fact that jiao also includes the previous production of this
checked textual witness.

4 Conclusions
The findings made on chou and jiao in the Qin administration may be summa-
rized as follows:
– Chou is mostly directed towards texts (or drawings/maps), whereas jiao is
mostly directed towards numbers;
– Chou is conducted for statutes (lü 律), ordinances (ling 令), registers (ji 籍),
and maps (tu 圖), while jiao is conducted for accounts (ji 計) on the basis of
account books (bu 簿) and tallies (quan 券);
– Both chou and jiao are conducted by offices superior to those who copied or
drafted the documents to be checked, and both seem to have been conduct-
ed regularly, at least once towards the end of the year;
908 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

– Chou refers to the comparison of an unchecked textual witness with a

checked witness (as well as the correction/updating of the unchecked wit-
ness if necessary)64, while jiao probably includes the creation of a checked
textual witness with which an unchecked witness is compared (and on the
basis of which the latter can be corrected).

Unfortunately, the available evidence does not allow conclusions as to how

exactly chou and jiao were conducted, especially whether one individual worked
alone or whether a team of two or more individuals collaborated – meaning that
they fulfilled a particular task together rather than at the same time but sepa-
rately. As has been shown at the beginning of this article, this was the main
criterion in the ‘classic’ definition of chou in contrast to jiao.
Coming back to the question of how the distinction between jiao and chou
in the administrative context may reverberate in Liu Xiang’s collation tech-
niques, it is worthwhile to approach the question of the Vorlage or model. The
available sources do not really tell us how and why Liu Xiang decided upon
certain textual witnesses to serve as ‘authoritative versions’ or ‘models’. How-
ever, it seems that Liu had a tendency to collate other textual witnesses against
witnesses from the imperial collection (zhongshu 中書) or witnesses written in
‘ancient script’ (guwen 古文). Apparently, he often considered the latter to be
most reliable. It is plausible to assume that Liu Xiang would select a Vorlage as
the basis for his ensuing work through a process of sighting all available textual
witnesses.65
With regard to the findings on jiao and chou as administrative procedures,
we would forward the following hypothesis. If jiao originally implied the crea-
tion or establishment of a reliable textual witness, against which another wit-
ness (or even witnesses?) could be checked in a second step, then this word in
the context of Liu Xiang’s work could refer to a preliminary process in which
each textual witness is scrutinized separately – possibly to identify or establish
the most suitable Vorlage. In an additional step, this working copy could be

||
64 Maps might be an exception here, because – especially in the bottom-up process described
above – it might not be clear from the beginning which is the ‘correct’ version in cases of con-
flict. Rather, chou must have started here with an impartial comparison. And only if the course
of the borders between administrative units or the like differed in two maps that showed the
same area or at least ‘overlapped’, the person conducting chou must have decided on one
version. In addition, we have seen that in the case of the Han lists of funerary goods most likely
it was not two texts which were compared, but a textual witness compared with the actual
objects to which the text refers.
65 Fölster 2016, 161–164.
 Collation in Early Imperial China | 909

compared with the other textual witnesses, a process that might suitably be
described as chou.66
However, one of course has to bear in mind that – although this hypothesis
would not contradict the classic definition of jiao and chou referred to at the
beginning – the use of jiao as a synonym of chou in some of the editorial reports
would speak against it. Whether this apparent contradiction is caused by textu-
al corruption in our sources, by a change in the meaning of jiao and chou be-
tween the Qin and the late Western Han period, or by yet another reason
remains a question to explore.67
At least it can be determined that the collation techniques employed by Liu
Xiang were not newly invented by him but go back to administrative procedures
common by the end of the third century BCE at the latest. This is further corrobo-
rated by the matching of other technical terms used to describe the administrative
procedures and Liu Xiang’s philological work, such as ‘to fix [the final text]’ (ding
定 or dingzhu 定著 in the editorial reports) and ‘duplicate’ (chong 重 or fuchong 復重
in the editorial reports).68 Therefore, the present case might be an example where
an innovative procedure originally developed in the administrative sphere was
gradually adopted in other fields, opening up opportunities for textual scholarship.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Ulrich Lau and Tong Chun Fung 唐俊峰 for helpful
comments and suggestions.
The research by Thies Staack was funded by the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence
Strategy – EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and
Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796. The research was
conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
(CSMC) at the University of Hamburg.

||
66 A similar view has already been expressed by the Qing scholar Zang Lin 臧琳 (1650–1713).
See Deng Junjie 2012b, 264. Zang Lin argued that the chou procedure – with one person reading
out a version of the text, and another checking/correcting a copy visually according to the read-
out version – was probably preceded by a visual checking (jiao). The reason for this hypothesis is
that there are many words that are pronounced the same but written with different characters.
67 Unfortunately, due to reasonable restrictions of length with regard to the contributions in
this volume, we had to refrain from diving further into sources from the time between the Qin
and the late Western Han period within the scope of this article.
68 It is also noteworthy that in the Qin administration the results of checking (jiao) were
recorded in lu 錄. See Lai Ming Chiu and Tong Chun Fung 2016, 143–145. Liu Xiang’s editorial
reports are referred to as Bielu 別錄.
910 | Max Jakob Fölster, Thies Staack

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Zouyanshu. Zhangjiashan er si qi hao Hanmu chutu falü wenxian shidu 二年律令與奏讞書
——張家山二四七號漢墓出土法律文獻釋讀, Shanghai: Shanghai guji.
Qiu Xigui 裘錫圭 (ed.) (2014), Changsha Mawangdui Hanmu jianbo jicheng (er) 長沙馬王堆漢
墓簡帛集成（貳）, Beijing: Zhonghua.
Shaughnessy, Edward L. (2006), Rewriting Early Chinese Texts, Albany: State University of New
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Markus Friedrich
Loss and Circumstances: How Early Modern
Europe Discovered the ‘Material Text’
Abstract: This paper discusses early modern European precedents to contempo-
rary debates about the material dimensions of written artefacts. It demonstrates
that materiality was a major concern for producers and users of both print and
manuscript written artefacts already in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
Several reasons alerted early modern Europeans to the material features of
manuscripts and prints. Against a broader survey of these developments, one
particular line of thought is explored more in detail. Starting from two texts by
Thomas Bartholin (1670) and Franz Ernst Brückmann (1727), the essay high-
lights especially how experiences of loss by fire contributed to early modern
awareness of the materiality of writing.

1 Two texts, two tales

In the summer of 1670, Hagestedgaard, a country estate on the Danish island of
Zealand and about 75 kilometres from Copenhagen, burnt down. It belonged to
Thomas Bartholin, a well-known Danish professor of Medicine at Copenhagen
University. The fire consumed much of Bartholin’s possessions, including a
good part of his library. As Bartholin detailed soon after, the ‘loss of his
labours’, namely of his allegedly numerous unpublished manuscripts pained
him most about this fire.1 In the immediate aftermath of the conflagration, he
sat down and composed a short ‘dissertation’ of 114 octavo pages, entitled de
incendio bibliothecae dissertatio. Starting from this devastating personal experi-
ence, Bartholin engaged in a range of broader considerations, rethinking the
relationship between knowledge, writing, and materiality.
Two generations later, in 1727, an otherwise little known German scholar by
the name of Franz Ernst Brückmann, member of the Imperial Academy
Leopoldina, wrote a brief text that reflected upon some experiences the author
had recently made with the resilience of material texts.2 A few years earlier, in
1724, he had visited the town of Dobsinà in Hungary, where the local asbestos

||
1 Bartholin, De Bibliothecae Incendio.
2 Brückmann, Historia naturalis; cf. Büttner 2004, esp. 168–177.

Open Access. © 2021 Markus Friedrich, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-044
914 | Markus Friedrich

mines had sparked his interest. Triggered by his tour of the mining town,
Brückmann published a brief natural history of the mineral asbestos, presenting
his readers with a survey of what it was and what it could be used for. The
‘stone’, he explained, was not just inexplicably incombustible. As he had
observed himself, this rare mineral could also be turned into paper, transform-
ing the epitome of a fragile medium into one of peculiar resilience. The seeming-
ly contradictory idea of ‘incombustible paper’, although it did not become an
everyday reality, had left the realm of mere fiction.
Brückmann’s experiments with asbestos paper provide a valuable counter-
point to Bartholin’s lamentation about the vulnerability of manuscripts. Both
texts reflect upon a common topic, the materiality, or, more precisely, the phys-
ical vulnerability of traditional writing surfaces. They signal that European
scholars and practitioners in the early modern period inhabited a world in
which paper may have long been without a serious alternative, but also one that
considered its material properties to be deeply problematic. Bartholin’s
contemplations about manuscript destruction and Brückmann’s report on as-
bestos paper illustrate this concern with the materiality of written artefacts,
which already originated in the era of parchment, but grew in importance sig-
nificantly alongside paper’s rise in early modern Europe.3

2 Early modern Europe’s many routes to the

‘material text’
The essays by Bartholin and Brückmann were part of a larger trend. Numerous
of their contemporaries discussed material aspects of Europe’s written artefacts
from very different angles. By the seventeenth century at the latest, producers
and users of written artefacts alike routinely explored the materiality of writing.
The discovery of ‘material texts’ took early modern Europeans on many cir-
cuitous routes4: in addition to growing concerns about manuscript destruction
at least four further contexts – namely, antiquarian philology (1), bibliophile

||
3 Gagné 2017 focusses strongly on the rise of paper as the most important stimulus for intensi-
fied considerations of material vulnerability. Without denying that paper – given its fragile
nature – proved to be very important, much of the early modern debate reviewed here, in fact,
did not distinguish prominently between parchment and paper in terms of vulnerability.
4 ‘Material texts’ are defined as ‘all aspects of how texts take material form and circulate in the
world’ by the influential ‘Workshop in the History of Material Texts’ at the University of Penn-
sylvania, see <https://pennmaterialtexts.org/about/> (accessed on 9 Nov. 2020).
 Loss and Circumstances | 915

curiosity (2), discussions of alternative media systems (3), and practical tools for
storing information (4) – contributed to conceptualizing materiality.

2.1 Philology
Renaissance humanism created a growing awareness for the material features of
manuscripts. Based on medieval precedents, scholars during the so-called
Renaissance re-appropriated the philological zeal of classical antiquity. From
work on ancient Latin texts, the humanists quickly moved on to medieval ones.
As they had done with classical Latinate literature, they worked hard to contex-
tualize these later texts, scrutinizing them to find hints about their origin, pur-
pose, and provenance. Historicizing texts also soon morphed into a larger
project, one of historicizing the cultures that once surrounded and produced
them. As humanism evolved into antiquarianism, scholars increasingly situated
the textual sources they considered within a broader array of material evidence.
This also led to a deeper understanding of written artefacts as elements of past
material cultures.5 By the seventeenth century, scholars all over Europe habitu-
ally combined the hermeneutic approaches of language and text analysis with a
careful investigation into the material features that defined all text-bearing
documents. As one eighteenth-century authority noted in a typical statement,
handwriting’s historical ‘variation results partly from the material into which
one writes, partly from the shape of individual characters, partly from the style
of writing’.6 The resulting concept of historical ‘sources’, as it developed from
the late Middle Ages onwards and as it is familiar until today, in principle binds
together textual and material features of written artefacts.7

2.2 Bibliophily
When buyers began to consider collecting manuscripts to be a distinct social
activity, material criteria of the text in question often became the guiding prin-

||
5 Summaries in Turner 2014, Grafton 2007.
6 Baring, Clavis diplomatica, 5–6: ‘Atque haec variatio apparet partim ex materia cui inscriptum
est, partim ex ipsis Characteribus, partim ex forma scriptionis; quae fundamenta fere totam rem
absolvunt in arte discernendi MSta. Ut ita ex materia et Charactere Codicis MSS. Diplomatum ac
Chartarum veterum, maxime de illarum antiquitate, nisi aliunde constet, iudicium ferendum est’.
Cf. Haas 2019.
7 E.g. Grell 1993, Wallnig 2019, Joassart 2017, Sawilla 2009, Gierl 2012.
916 | Markus Friedrich

ciples of these collectors’ acquisition policies. ‘Old’ books and manuscripts

developed into sought-after objects, even though it was not always immediately
clear how the boundaries between ‘old’ and ‘new’ were drawn and philologists
debated the philological value of ‘old’ manuscripts.8 Oldness became a distinctive
subset of ‘rareness’, and most collectors were especially interested in rare writ-
ten artefacts. In addition to age, other rare material features may have played a
role in guiding politics of acquisition: although there is no consensus, if early
modern collectors paid particular attention to illuminated manuscripts – often,
in fact, early modern catalogues do not even mention such illustrations –, there
are also a few signs that at least some collectors did occasionally appreciate
colourful illuminations.9 Furthermore, written artefacts attracted particular
attention if they boasted ‘valuable’ material features such as colourful inks or
unusual writing surfaces, such as, for instance, asbestos paper.10 A good exam-
ple for the latter is Zacharias Konrad Uffenbach, the well-known Frankfurt col-
lector of rare books. In late 1727, he eagerly acquired a few ‘little sheets’ of
asbestos paper directly from Brückmann.11 Although no unified codicological
terminology existed in pre-modern Europe, the abundance of descriptors allud-
ing to features such as material, age or luxury, however vague they may have
been, nonetheless clearly shows that scholars and bibliophiles paid increasing
attention to such physical aspects.

2.3 Comparing media systems

The materiality of written artefacts also came into sharper focus as observers
delved into what could be called ‘comparative media studies’. Attention for the
mediality and materiality of written artefacts grew as Europeans increasingly
realized that there were powerful alternatives to the familiar systems of hand-
writing on paper (or parchment). They encountered a bewildering variety of
alternative writing systems all over America, Africa, and Asia. To come to terms
with it, Europeans compared not only different languages and scripts, but also

||
8 McKitterick 2018, esp. 45–50; Vanek 2007, 218, 240 and 247 on the ambivalence of philolo-
gists.
9 Müller 2020.
10 Gastgeber 2015, 46.
11 Brückmann to Uffenbach, 20 October 1727, Universitätsbibliothek Johan Christian Senckenberg,
Frankfurt, Epistolici Commercii Uffenbachiani, vol. 14 (1728), no. 29, fol. 54r–v. I owe this refer-
ence to my doctoral student Jacob Schilling, Gotha, who found and transcribed this piece of
evidence.
 Loss and Circumstances | 917

the material dimension of different writing systems with one another.12 In addi-
tion to different writing systems, they furthermore encountered the total
absence of writing systems as a cultural possibility.13 Religious controversies
among European Christians further alerted observers to questions of mediality,
for instance, by triggering new debates about oral versus written forms of
transmitting knowledge.14 The concept of ‘tradition’ as criticized by Protestant
polemicists initially carried strong overtones of ‘orality’. As a result, it also gave
discussions about oral forms of knowledge transfer a hint of anti-Catholic po-
lemic. By the late eighteenth century, preferences had shifted, however. In an
age that rediscovered ‘Ossian’ and Bardic literature, the (invented) oral culture
of the Germanic or Celtic Druids and Bards became fashionable. The immaterial-
ity of the spoken word, difficulties of philology and researching it notwithstand-
ing, morphed into a marker of distinction. Taken together, these developments
inspired a growing awareness for the unique scriptural, but also for the material
and the physical properties of Europe’s written artefacts.
Critical examinations of print gave additional strength to this reassessment
of Europe’s own indigenous practices of writing and their historical develop-
ments. The spread of the printing press triggered heated debates about the rela-
tive advantages of different medialities. These debates included considerations
of materiality right from the beginning.15 The printing press and its specific
mediality itself became a subject of history, and this process of historicization,
again, included a discussion of the technology’s material aspects. The pan-
European debate about Bernard von Mallinckrodt’s seminal work The Birth and
Progress of the Art of Printing serves as a good example. The controversy about
this 1639-publication included an in-depth discussion about important tech-
nical improvements.16 In this case, comparative reflections about media sys-
tems, again, drew ever more attention to the material dimensions of written
artefacts.

||
12 See, e.g., Hosne 2014.
13 Zedelmaier 2001.
14 McDowell 2017. Cf. also Lupton 2012.
15 Gagné 2017.
16 Von Mallinckrodt, De ortu ac progressu artis typographicae; Mentel, De vera typographiae
origine; Zeltner, Correctorum in typographiis. See also Stoker 2005 and Glomski 2001.
918 | Markus Friedrich

2.4 Scholarly practices

The materiality of handwriting could also become an explicit concern for early
modern scholars due to their everyday working routines. From the sixteenth
century onwards, the practices of producing texts and the routines of
knowledge management became more thoroughly conceptualized. Scholars
started to explain and discuss their working habits. These self-reflexive debates
about the practices of producing texts and knowledge soon engulfed the mate-
rial dimension of working with paper. Early modern scholars not only used in-
numerable ‘little tools of knowledge’ such as paper slips, needle and thread, or
notebooks, they also talked about them at great length. Instructions on how to
materially produce scholarship proliferated, ranging from books that offered the
best practices for organizing notebooks to pamphlets about the construction of
filing cabinets.17 Scholars mused about the use of scissors as well as about the
application of glue and they debated the minute details of cross-referencing and
indexing.18 In short: early modern intellectuals conceptualized the inherently
material ways of text and knowledge production often as vibrantly as they en-
gaged in philosophical debates about epistemology. Beyond being deeply mate-
rial in practice, scholars also understood and publicly contemplated this
materiality of knowledge production to a degree previously unheard of.

3 Taking note of fragility

Against this broader background, this essay sketches in more detail the
traumatic experiences of written artefacts’ destruction and the impact such loss
had on early modern debates about textual materiality. As Bartholin and
Brückmann illustrate, the loss of writings, or at least the dangers of loss, were
issues of great concern. Since Italian humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth
century had conceptualized the major difference that set their own time apart
from antiquity to be the loss of writing, predominantly the loss of ancient texts,
discussions about destruction of written artefacts proliferated. Talking about
the absence of documentation, often in a nostalgic mode, emerged as a defining
feature of humanist discourse.19 The destruction of written artefacts as a theme
features even more prominently in early modern archival literature. Authors

||
17 E.g. Yeo 2014, Cevolini 2017, Cevolini 2006, Becker and Clark 2001.
18 Friedrich 2018b, Marten and Piepenbring-Thomas 2015, Vogel 2015. See also Smyth 2018.
19 For a modern assessment of lost written artefacts, see Haye 2016.
 Loss and Circumstances | 919

from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century often described the
past as a dark age of archival history. Carelessness and neglect and the loss and
destruction that followed shaped the world of archives, at least as early modern
observers described it.20 Libraries fared hardly better, according to early modern
writers. Justus Lipsius published a general history of libraries in 1602 that
detailed not only the achievements, but highlighted also some of the disasters
that characterized the history of libraries.21 Thomas Bartholin, too, in his short
account of his library fire, briefly surveyed previous conflagrations. Bartholin’s
account covered many of the well-known lieux de mémoire such as the burning
of the library of Alexandria.22 Next to the famous, he also included more mun-
dane, familial events such as the fire that diminished his grandfather Thomas
Finck’s book collection.23 In doing so, Bartholin’s discussion of his personal
material losses combined well-established master narratives about the vicissi-
tudes of Europe’s long-term cultural development with these more localized
descriptions. With ease, it integrated his personal experiences of material vul-
nerability into broader patterns.
Against this backdrop of omnipresent loss of written artefacts, many early
modern writers positioned the printing press as an agent of protection against
the destruction of irreplaceable texts. As one typical passage put it:

Many scholars have lamented that the longer the world exists, the less is known about its
earliest times. Before printing arrived for the benefit of the public, it was increasingly dif-
ficult to find information about very old times and what happened there. This [sc. printing]
allowed handing down from generation to generation so many things that would other-
wise have passed into oblivion.24

The author in question considered print, and print alone, to be the last resort
against ‘losses from war, fire, pillaging, and constant moving around’. An ar-
gument of numbers supported all assumptions about the power of the printing

||
20 Friedrich 2018a, Filippov and Sabaté 2017.
21 Baldi 2013, Walker 1991. Much of the literature was later collected in De bibliothecis atque
archivis virorum clarissimorum libelli et commentationes.
22 Rieger 2003.
23 Bartholin, De Bibliothecae Incendio, tr. O’Malley 1961, 12.
24 ‘lange und von allen gelehrten so vielfältig beklagte Erfahrnuß, daß je länger die Welt
gestanden, desto weniger authentische Kundschafften von uhr-alten Zeiten, und dem, was
darin vorgefallen, aufzubringen gewesen, bevor die Druckerey dem gemeinen Weesen zum
grösten Nutzen erfunden worden; wodurch nachgehends der grosse Schatz vieler Dingen, so
sonsten in der Vergessenheit ewig stecken geblieben wären, der Nachkommenschafft von
Hand zu Hand übertragen worden’, Burkart 2001, 3.
920 | Markus Friedrich

press to protect texts against physical destruction: once a manuscript was print-
ed, so people thought, the text existed in so many copies that its survival be-
came much more likely than before. The destruction of an individual copy
would not immediately threaten the survival of a text or idea.
Early modern Europeans considered this argument not to be universally
true, however. By no means, they well knew, had printing secured the general
survival of printed text. On the contrary, many print products were exceedingly
rare.25 Speaking of ‘rare’ printed books started as early as the late sixteenth cen-
tury, only a few generations after the new technology had first arrived. By the
eighteenth century comprehensive guides to ‘rare books’ like the one published
by Bremen bibliographer Johann Vogt began to appear.26 Vogt told his readers
that numerous forms of rareness existed, but he defined all of them through
material features. Some print products were ‘rare’, he explained, because they
had special bindings. Others were hand-coloured, or they had been printed on
particularly valuable materials27 – parchment, high quality rag paper, or exper-
imental materials, such as paper from straw or asbestos.28 Material refinement,
then, made some prints rare.
The most obvious dimension of ‘rareness’, however, was scarcity through
destruction. Often enough, even normal and unrefined prints survived only in
very small numbers, as Vogt and his peers noted. So-called Deductiones are a
case in point. These political or legal position papers circulated among a
restricted public, for instance, among courtiers, administrators, and counsel-
lors. Because such texts were produced in small print runs only and they rarely
reached the book market, they quickly vanished once they had been used. As
Christoph Siegmund von Holzschuher, an expert in this field, lamented in 1778,
such products were ‘rare’, often produced only in ‘small numbers’, and distrib-
uted just ‘locally’. In doing so, von Holzschuher single-handedly contradicted
the master narrative about the printing press as an agent of textual perma-
nence.29 Single-leaf prints constituted another genre of such endangered print
products: Late seventeenth and early eighteenth century bibliographers agreed
that the so-called ‘chartas volantes’ were quickly ‘becoming rare’.30 Books

||
25 McKitterick 2018.
26 Vogt, Catalogus historico-criticus.
27 Vogt, Catalogus historico-criticus, no pages (axiomata generalia). For ‘external appear-
ances’, see McKitterick 2018, 62–100.
28 Koops, Historical Account of the Substances was printed entirely on ‘the first useful paper
manufactured sole[l]y from straw’ (title page). Cf. Calhoun 2020.
29 Holzschuher, Deductions-Bibliothek von Deutschland, III–VII.
30 Lebensbeschreibung Herrn Christoph Jacob Imhofs, 229.
 Loss and Circumstances | 921

created by marginal groups, often under clandestine conditions and without the
support of firmly institutionalized infrastructures of distribution and marketing,
were equally vulnerable. Church historians of the eighteenth century, for
instance, lamented the scarcity of sources about early Anabaptist history and
constantly commented upon the extraordinary scarcity of their printed tracts
and treatises. In 1758, Jakob Wilhelm Feuerlein, a well-connected authority in
the field, diagnosed the vulnerability of the Anabaptists’ early print products in
blunt terms:

It is so difficult to find these books printed only 200 years ago nowadays, [which begs the
question] how rare and, indeed, invisible they will be a century from now? Public libraries
and the prefects [in charge] do not pay any attention to small print products, even though
they are extremely important. 31

None of these texts were protected from disappearing simply by being printed.
In fact, when they were preserved, this often hinged on active measures of
preservation. A growing number of bibliophiles focused their attention on col-
lecting these delicate items not least because they were considered important
historical sources. The abovementioned Christoph Siegmund von Holzschuher,
for one, put together (and published) a large body of Deductiones that he had
brought together, arguing that they would provide historians with unrivalled
insights into internal administrative protocols. Christoph Jacob Imhoff, a
prominent Nuremberg patrician and bibliophile, meanwhile, purposefully
collected single leaf prints (in addition to many other books).32 Other book
lovers, including the famous Samuel Pepys, focused on chapbooks, in addition
to many other rare items. These cheaply produced collections of vernacular
literature for mass consumption initially may have had large print runs, but
they often disappeared as quickly as they could be brought to market.33
As these examples show, early modern sentiments of vulnerability and loss
extended well beyond the sphere of handwritten artefacts. They explicitly
included many genres of print products as well. All paper-based writing, many
authors argued, ran an omnipresent danger of being destroyed. According to

||
31 Feuerlein to Krohn, 13 April 1758: ‘da nun jetz schon die vor 200 Jahren gedruckte bücher so
schwehr zu finden und rar sind, wie rar und fast gar unsichtbahr werden sie nach 100 Jahren
werden? Bibliothecae publicae und ihre Praefecti achten die kleinen Piecen für zu geringe,
ohnerachtet sie höchste nothwendig, und nach 100 oder 200 Jahren viel rarer sind als die
grossen werke, welche man alleine pro Bibliothecis publicis zu suchen pfleget’. Staatsbiblio-
thek Hamburg, Mss Theol. 1208, fols 89r–90v. For more context, see Friedrich 2020.
32 Lebensbeschreibung Herrn Christoph Jacob Imhofs.
33 Wilson 1957. Cf. Loveman 2015, esp. 189–194.
922 | Markus Friedrich

many early modern observers, the ease with which written artefacts could per-
ish was not exclusive to handwriting, but also included printing. As John Gagné
has observed, Europe’s ‘paper sensibility’ contained significant amounts of
anxiety about loss and buzzed with constant talk about ‘degradation and obliv-
ion’.34 Considerations of physical vulnerability, one could summarize, constitut-
ed one of the defining and much-discussed material features of Europe’s culture
of writing.

4 Fighting against material vulnerability

One way of coping with the material vulnerability of written artefacts consisted
in finding practical tools to contain the dangers of destruction and improve
artefacts’ chances of survival. Archives are one case in point: if anxiety about
information overload was one major trigger for Europe’s investment in archival
infrastructure since the late Middle Ages, then widespread fears of loss and
destruction constituted another.35 All over Europe, an emerging archival mental-
ity combined both perspectives, valuing archives as machines for storage and
retrieval as well as for the protection of written artefacts. With considerable
sophistication, archivists and archive owners devised protective measures for
paper and parchment documents that ranged from thoughts about proper venti-
lation to fireproof roofing or biological pest deterrents.36
Librarians, too, paid increasing attention to the physical preservation of in-
dividual codices. This attention, for instance, drove protective measures such as
the re-binding or strengthening of worn copies. At the Papal Library in Rome, a
few sources survived pointing to the existence of planned measures of book-
restauration from the late fifteenth century on. By 1607, a ‘restaurator’ was ex-
plicitly ordered to ‘maintain [restaurare] books by adding pages where they
were missing by gluing them’ to the remaining sheets. All of this was necessary,
because ‘Latin and Greek books, due to old age, will be consumed and ruined by
time’.37 For similar reasons, heavily used textbooks in some European schools in

||
34 Gagné 2017.
35 Information overload: Blair 2010; Loss: Keller, Roos and Yale 2018, 16.
36 Friedrich 2018a.
37 Bignami Odier and Ruysschaert 1973, 20–21. Mercati 1937, 131–133: ‘Poiche li libri così greci
come latini per l’antichità si vanno col tempo consumando, et ruinando dal[le] terme, et quasi
mancando le carte intiere. Il Restauratore doveva haver cura di accomodarli et restararli
 Loss and Circumstances | 923

the later seventeenth century were regularly rebound or carefully repaired in an

effort to keep them available for future generations of students.38 In a manu-
script manual for librarians from 1748, finally, the Hanoverian scholar Christian
Ludwig Scheidt asked his superiors for a range of assistants to help the leading
‘bibliothecarius’, not least by taking over his extensive restauration duties.39
Monitoring the material status of books, both handwritten and printed, became
a crucial part of librarianship in the early modern period. Fighting against the
dangers of destruction by protecting and repairing inherently fragile written
artefacts, thus, became a key concern in early modern Europe.

5 (Unsuccessful) searches for a solution: paper

made from asbestos?
Brückmann’s treatise about asbestos suggested yet another option, namely
reducing an artefact’s vulnerability by changing its material configuration.
Would not paper made from fireproof asbestos solve the problem of material
destruction by fire? Brückmann was not alone to suggest this: in late seven-
teenth and eighteenth century Europe, several scholars experimented with as-
bestos paper. In 1684, for instance, the English Naturalist Edward Lhuyd sent a
brief report to the secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, that de-
scribed his attempts at creating asbestos paper in Wales.40 Lhuyd detailed how
he ‘pounded’ the mineral and ‘sifted’ out non-asbestos particles, before dissolv-
ing the resulting powder into water at a local paper mill. With that mixture, he
ordered the artisans to ‘proceed in their usual method of making paper’. A very
similar set of instructions then appeared in 1712 in Johann Hübner’s Curieuses
Natur-Kunst-Gewerk und Handlungs-Lexicon, perhaps directly translating from
Lhuyd’s English instruction.41 Experiments like these actually produced a few
pages of asbestos paper and Brückmann – seeking a proof in content as well as

||
diligentissimamente aggiungendo la Carta dove mancava, incollandola con colla sottilissima
fatta con cose appropriate contro le tarme, in modo che appena si conoscessi’.
38 E.g. Ottermann 2018, 251–254.
39 Christian Ludwig Scheidt, De Officiis Historiographi & Bibliothecarii […], in Niedersäch-
sische Landesbibliothek, mss XLII 1931, no pages (§ 12).
40 Lhuyd, ‘An Account of a Sort of Paper’.
41 Hübner, Curieuses Natur-Kunst-Gewerk, col. 121. Cf. Brückmann, Memorabilia Leutscho-
viensia, 5.
924 | Markus Friedrich

in form – had four copies of his booklet printed on paper of this kind. One of
these copies still survives in the Herzog-August-Library in Wolfenbüttel.42
These experiments must be placed in their proper context. On the one hand,
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century saw all kinds of experiments
with alternative forms of papermaking.43 This was part of a broader reformist
agenda of improving traditional technologies. From a cameralist’s perspective,
rhetorically focused on ways to elevate the common good of early modern
(princely) realms, almost every part of European material culture was ripe for
such reform.44 Moreover, interest in asbestos was not a new development. The
material was widely discussed in ancient literature and even practitioners such
as Lhuyd or Brückmann started their own publications with an extensive analy-
sis of time-worn literary traditions.45 Based on these ancient ideas, naturalists
had long discussed its potential uses, focusing especially on the possibility of
spinning a durable thread from the material.46
And yet, the turn to asbestos paper was not just a predictable result of ge-
neric cultural trends. Lhuyd’s or Brückmann’s ideas about making paper from
stone were without earlier precedents, thus reflecting a very contemporary
need.47 Dreams about asbestos paper clearly responded to growing early modern
concerns about the vulnerable materiality of paper-based written artefacts. Even
though no mass production of asbestos paper ever occurred and despite the fact
that contemporaries agreed that the experiments conducted by Lhuyd or
Brückmann were ‘more curious than useful’, their search for new technologies
for papermaking nevertheless demonstrates the urgency with which early mod-
ern Europeans looked for different, more durable writing surfaces.48

||
42 Kazmeier 1953. The copy in question has the call number HAB: Nf 19. I have not been able
to inspect the copy first hand. No other prints on asbestos exist in Munich, Wolfenbüttel, Berlin
or Washington DC (Folger), as confirmed by emails from Thorsten Allscher, Volker Bauer,
Andreas Wittenberg, and Heather Wolfe in October 2020.
43 See Szalay 2019, Calhoun 2020.
44 On the cameralistic context of asbestos paper (as mentioned in Fürstenau, Gründliche Anlei-
tung, 146); see Keller 2017; cf. also Szalay 2019.
45 Bianchi and Bianchi 2015.
46 See, e.g., Ciampini, De Incombustibili lino. Cf. Carnevale 2012.
47 Büttner 2004, 174 and 229.
48 Fürstenau, Gründliche Anleitung, 146. Cf. Büttner 2004, 233–234. Rumours about mysterious
caches of ‘incombustible’ papers circulated among the curious, see Sammlung von Natur- und
Medicin- wie auch hierzu gehörigen Kunst- und Literatur-Geschichten 25 (1723), 336.
 Loss and Circumstances | 925

6 The benefits of conflagration

Although Thomas Bartholin was devastated by his personal loss, on a more
general level he also believed that the fragility of paper-based writings had its
advantages. Certain forms of subversive texts deserved intentional destruction.
Fire, so to say, was not just a danger to civilization; it could also be a valuable
tool to maintain orthodoxy and order. Bartholin and many other authors sup-
ported in principle the practice of burning dangerous books by state and church
authorities.49 Bartholin mentioned numerous examples of books that had right-
fully been destroyed, including Pietro Pomponazzi’s infamous 1516 book De
immortalitate animae, which was accused of proposing a materialistic philoso-
phy since it doubted the immortality of the human soul. Burning heretical and
dangerous texts, again, affected printed and handwritten artefacts. While it is
true that the public execution of written artefacts most prominently concerned
printed materials, at least occasionally investigative procedures against sedi-
tious and politically ‘dangerous’ manuscripts did occur as well.50 It is well
known, for instance, that early modern state authorities at times attempted to
control the market for manuscript newsletters.51 Sometimes, offensive manu-
scripts ended up burning at the stake, in the same way as and often together
with printed books.52
On other occasions, authors associated the burning of books with a kind of
quality control. The English writer Ben Jonson, whose library burned a few dec-
ades before Bartholin’s, and who discussed this experience in a poem, equated
manuscript destruction with the weeding out of substandard texts. The fire of
Vulcan, he insisted, should and could execute the judgments of ‘public fame’
about a text’s quality.53 Bartholin, too, presented the same thought, although in
a slightly different version: the burning of his unfinished manuscripts had evi-
dently proven that they were not worthy of eternal preservation. In addition to
protecting state and religion, then, the physical destruction of manuscripts
served as a tool of legitimate cultural amnesia. Political and religious censorship,
literary criticism, and information management became close neighbours.54

||
49 Werner 2007, Cressy 2005, Körte 2012, Hirschi and Spoerhase 2013, Partington and Smyth
2014, Smyth 2014.
50 Millstone 2016, 25–26.
51 De Vivo 2007, 84 and 185–187.
52 Millstone 2016, 281.
53 Smyth 2014.
54 Loewenstein 1999, 102.
926 | Markus Friedrich

Despite the famous words by Bartholin’s contemporary John Milton that ‘he
who burns a book soon kills a man’, early modern Europeans were thus far from
simply equating book burning with barbarism. Rather than lamenting the vio-
lent destruction of manuscripts as such, the indiscriminate burning of manu-
scripts and books by fate or a force of nature offended Bartholin and his peers as
premature, chaotic, and culturally disastrous. They calibrated their attitudes
towards the termination of manuscripts in relation to the manuscripts’ (nega-
tive) cultural impact.

7 Beyond materiality
As Bartholin would have known, physical destruction did not necessarily mean
absolute disappearance of books and ideas. Complete destruction of entire print
runs was difficult to achieve and at least isolated copies of persecuted works
often survived only to reappear decades later. Even more importantly, there
existed a complex dialectic between books, ideas, and memories of both. While
the flames may destroy books, they cannot easily destroy either the expressed
ideas or all memories about the books. In early modern Europe, ideas and texts
usually circulated widely before ever reaching print. They had been discussed
over dinner, copied by amanuenses, read in social gatherings or mentioned in
letters, and, thus, would not necessarily vanish so easily. Due to the rallying cry
that could result from destruction, destroyed and persecuted books even had
the chance of becoming lieux de mémoire that provided a point of departure for
future activities. Sometimes, remembering burnt books was a provocative act of
resistance. In the early eighteenth century, for instance, Johann Heinrich Heubel,
at one time professor of law at the University of Kiel, compiled a ‘Bibliothèque
de Vulcain’.55 Heubel’s ‘library of Vulcan’ was a list of more than 160 works that
different authorities had condemned to be burnt as heretical. His bibliography
of destruction was a (desperate) attempt at counteracting the disappearance of
physical books. Early modern Europeans had to acknowledge that material
destruction did not necessarily amount to the absolute disappearance of (dan-
gerous and exciting) ideas and texts.
Bartholin believed in the power of memorizing destroyed manuscripts as
well, although with less seditious ideas in mind. In a book from 1662, he recon-
structed the archive or ‘chest’ (Cista) of the Medical Faculty of Copenhagen

||
55 Mulsow 1994.
 Loss and Circumstances | 927

University, which had been partly destroyed by a fire in 1641.56 Writing about
destroyed books and manuscripts rescued them from total oblivion. Hence, he
also provided a list of manuscripts burnt in his library in his Dissertation.
Broadcasting his lost works, Bartholin claimed, ensured that these now lost
books and papers continue to ‘live in the mouths of men, they live in my re-
membrance, they live in the desires of the learned.’57 The act of physical de-
struction was tragic, but it might have the potential to grace a work that would
remain unwritten with a special aura, giving a non-existent work a lease of life.
Written artefacts were material objects, and early modern Europeans were well
aware of the implications of textual materiality. Nevertheless, the same authors
also appreciated that texts and ideas could not be reduced entirely to this mate-
riality.

8 Conclusion
Brückmann and Bartholin, the intellectual and disciplinary differences between
them notwithstanding, illustrate a broader feature of early modern European
print and manuscript cultures: an acute concern with the destruction of written
artefacts. As much as they might have been looking for improvements, early
modern Europeans had to cope with the ‘evanescence’ (John Gagné) of manu-
script and printed written artefacts. Such considerations of textual and cultural
loss provided some of the most important incentives for early modern Europe-
ans to reckon with and address the materiality of writing. As these authors illus-
trate, recent scholarly excitement about textual materiality actually continues a
rich, albeit often underappreciated, tradition of European thought and research,
tracing back to the Renaissance and beyond.

Acknowledgements
I acknowledge the help of Jacob Schilling who alerted me to Brückmann and
helped me understand his ideas. Tom Tölle discussed preliminary versions of
this paper with me and improved my argumentation in many ways. Gabriella
Szalay commented upon another early version.

||
56 Bartholin, Cista medica Hafniensis, no pages (‘ad lectorem medicam’). On the fire, cf. Bruun
2015, 38.
57 Bartholin, On the Burning of his library, tr. O’Malley, 20.
928 | Markus Friedrich

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Michael Grünbart
The Letters of Michael Psellos and their
Function in Byzantine Epistolary Culture
Abstract: The transmission of Byzantine letters still lacks a new interpretative
approach, leaving aside the idea of an archetypus. Michael Psellos’ letters (elev-
enth century) may serve as an example to demonstrate how the process of rhe-
torical recycling and re-using of letters worked. His letters are preserved in a
large number of manuscripts, but none of them contains a complete collection.
Similarly to the late-antique epistolographer Libanios, Psellos became a model
of letter writing for later generations and parts of his texts have been adapted in
new contexts. The Psellian letter collection therefore offers an excellent case-
study to analyse how his manuscripts and texts were used again and again in
the course of history.

1 Byzantine letters and their transmission

Classical Greek and Byzantine letters are preserved in various arrangements and
contexts: their forms of transmission range from single texts to coherent selec-
tions or larger collections in manuscripts.1 Modern editors mostly follow the
canonical approach of text editing techniques that try to establish an arche-
typus.2 Such presentations often create the impression of a definitive and

||
1 Letters from Classical Antiquity and the Byzantine period have to be investigated together,
since the earliest manuscripts containing classical Greek letters can be dated to the tenth cen-
tury (with the exception of classical letters preserved on papyrus). The reconstruction of an-
cient letter collections is hampered by the strategies and intentions of selection developed by
Byzantine scribes and scholars. However, a project at the University of Manchester focuses on
‘Ancient letter collections’ (see <https://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/cahae/research/projects/>).
An inventory on the (literary) letter production provides the updated version of my Epistularum
Byzantinarum Initia (2001); it includes all Greek letters (before the fourth century), that are
normally handed down together with Byzantine letters, see Grünbart 2020. Byzantine epis-
tolography has been treated systematically in Riehle 2020 (ed.); see the review by Margaret
Mullett in The Byzantine Review 02.2020.027 <https://doi.org/10.17879/byzrev-2020-3101>
(accessed on 15 March 2021). A variety of approaches on how to deal with letters is offered in
Mullett 2007.
2 See Roelli 2020, 112 (archetypus) and 212–214 (stemma codicum), manuals for editions are
Maas 1960 (see Thomamüller 2007), West 1973.

Open Access. © 2021 Michael Grünbart, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-045
934 | Michael Grünbart

complete collection or corpus epistularum initiated by a single letter writer;3

excerpts of letters, omissions of passages and variants in the wording are rele-
gated to the apparatus criticus (and buried there).
In contrast to Byzantine research studies, medieval Latin epistolography
gradually took into account such textual variants that lead to a better under-
standing of transmission, medieval letter writing skills and arrangements of
collections.4
Letters normally have been written in a certain moment in order to trans-
port and exchange information. Letters appear in various forms, from simple
messages on papyrus to precious imperial letters. But they have one thing in
common: communication. Even ‘fictional’ letters imitate that basic human
need. Letters also transformed from written exchange into literature step by
step; after being selected, copied and kept by a learned audience they started a
second life as tokens of learned appreciation and rhetorical refinement. Their
existence did not necessarily end on a shelf or in a miscellany manuscript:
sometimes they became model letters or were reused with slight modifications.
Reuse represents an essential creative element in these texts and therefore let-
ters belong to the most fluid artefacts of Byzantine written culture.5 That aspect
has to be kept in mind when looking at the manuscript tradition of any letter.
In recent years, the composition of collections, the nature of florilegia and
their importance in Byzantine learned culture have been discussed.6 New phi-
lology and digital edition techniques put special emphasis on textual variants

||
3 Almost no letter exchanges between two persons have been preserved – normally they form
loose ends; however, a telling example is the correspondence between the bishop Theodoros of
Kyzikos and the emperor Constantine VII (tenth century). Sometimes single letters found their
way into ‘collections’, see the list of letter writers in Grünbart 2020 (e.g. Athanasios Lepentrenos,
Kyritzes, Stephanos of Nikomedeia). Cf. also Grünbart 2001 (including the allelographia [ἀλλη-
λογραφία = correspondence] between Leon of Synada and Stephanos of Nikomedeia, tenth
century); Tinnefeld 2005 (corresponding letters in the corpus of Demetrios Kydones, fourteenth
century).
4 See the methodological approach by Ysebaert 2009 and 2010, and Constable 1976 (updated
version: Constable 2015). Collections of letters were the subject of several recent publications,
see Neil and Allen 2015, De Sogno, Storin and Watts 2019 (dealing with epistolographers’ col-
lection[s] and their manuscript tradition).
5 Grünbart 2015. See also Sykutris 1932, the classical study highlighting the potential of
Byzantine epistolography.
6 See in general Van Deun and Macé 2011; on florilegia of letters, see Grünbart 2011. On the
idea of collection (sylloge) see Odorico 1990. According to Riehle 2020, 481, letter collections
normally are not marked by terms such as ‘collection’ (sylloge, συλλογή), but in many cases
simply as ‘letters’ (epistolai, ἐπιστολαί) in the headings or margins.
 The Letters of Michael Psellos in Byzantine Epistolary Culture | 935

and multi-faceted transmission. Scribes are no longer being seen as mechanical-

ly copying a text, but as actively ‘reworking’ and ‘recycling’ it.7 Variance forms
an inherent characteristic of medieval literature.8 Each manuscript witness
(‘Textzeuge’) has to be treated as an equally important manifestation of medie-
val writing, as it also reflects the usage of a text (or parts of texts)9 in a specific
context.10
Variants in Byzantine letters may become indicators of remodelling and
second-hand usage. As mentioned before such differences wander into the ap-
paratus criticus and so an originally independent document disappears. Digital
edition techniques offering sufficient space for simultaneous display of texts
put more emphasis on the term ‘document’ than ‘work’,11 a premise that can be
perfectly adapted to Byzantine epistolography. Every single letter forms a
unique document and it is necessary to consider its context in the manuscript.12
In a project dealing with the Byzantine epistolary tradition in toto, the ways
of arranging collections and organizing letters in a single manuscript will be
investigated.13 It should lead to a better understanding of Byzantine epistolary
culture and the place of letter writing in the educational system. All extant ma-
terial has to be re-examined in order to clarify the function of each text: is a
letter just a copy in order to preserve the original or does it form a new version
remodelling or ‘recycling’ a suitable prototype? That leads to further questions:

||
7 See Nichols 1990, 8; Cerquiglini 1999. For a discussion of their suggestions see e.g. Gleßgen
and Lebsaft 1997, and Trovato 2017 (I have to thank Caroline Macé for these bibliographical
additions). See also the recent volume by Roelli (2020) on all aspects dealing with stemmata
and issues of transmission.
8 Nichols 1990, 8–9.
9 Examples of recycling parts of letters are found in Grünbart 2003, 38–39; see also Grünbart
2016b (and see below, n. 41).
10 For Byzantine literature see Reinsch 2010; for the importance and peculiarities of punctua-
tion in manuscripts and consequences for editing texts see the volume by Giannouli and
Schiffer 2011; Thraede 1970 suggested to print letters according to their colometric structure.
On Byzantine epistolography and the implementation of methods of new philology see Riehle
2020.
11 Robinson 2013, 107.
12 That concept is the basis for the ongoing project Census Epistularum Graecarum. A database
will be set up collecting all available testimonies of letters in manuscripts (up to 1800).
13 Only a few comprehensive investigations of the transmission of collections have been un-
dertaken, see Muratore 2006: that study describes all extant manuscripts including the ar-
rangement of letters. For Psellos’ written heritage see the monumental publication by Moore
2005.
936 | Michael Grünbart

How are letters arranged in sections of manuscripts? Did the scribes use num-
bers? Are there patterns of arrangements of letter texts in collections?14

2 Michael Psellos’ letters and their afterlife

Problems concerning the genesis of collections and their transmission become
obvious in various cases of epistolary corpora. A prominent and intriguing ex-
ample is the correspondence of Michael Psellos who is one of the most prolific
Byzantine letter writers.15 Psellos’ letters are preserved in a considerable number
of manuscripts, the history of Psellian letter editions reflecting that scattered
transmission. The new extensive edition by Stratis Papaioannou has been ex-
pected eagerly.16 He accompanied his editorial work with a sample of articles. In
an instructive contribution he discussed the transmission of Byzantine letters in
general (asking both how many manuscripts include letters of a certain letter
writer and how many writers are known by just a single manuscript), but put
special emphasis on the collections of Michael Psellos.17
In his recent edition Stratis Papaioannou presents a compendium of 584 let-
ter-texts being attributed to the scholar and politician (copied in 19 principal
manuscripts containing large letter clusters and another 25 manuscripts with
individual pieces).18 The oeuvre of Psellos turned into a classic some decades
after his death.19 This can be proven by ‘theoretical’ statements of Byzantine
grammarians and scholars and by examples of reception or mimesis in the

||
14 Wahlgren-Smith 2020 provides useful insights concerning the choice and arrangement of
medieval Latin letters.
15 Jeffreys and Lauxtermann 2017. That volume includes a couple of translations and summar-
ies of all letters. Further translations can be found in Kaldellis 2006; Kaldellis and Polemis
2015.
16 Papaioannou 1998 (includes a list of all manuscripts containing letters ascribed to Psellos);
the life and rhetoric work of Psellos are studied in Papaioannou 2013 and see also Papaioannou
2017. On Psellos’ oeuvre see Bernard 2020. After 20 years, the new edition has been published
in the series Bibliotheca Teubneriana: Papaioannou 2019; see reviews by Dmitrij Chernoglazov
in The Byzantine Review 02.2020.005 (doi: 10.17879/byzrev-2020-274) and Anthony Kaldellis in
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR 2020.10.64).
17 Papaioannou 2012, 291–295.
18 Papaioannou 2012, 301; Papaioannou 2019, XXXIV–XXXV (485 genuine, 23 doubtful letters,
4 letters written by others, 7 variations, 23 excerpts, 21 most probably or definitely spurious
letters and 21 pieces considered ‘letters’ by Psellos).
19 For Psellos’ Wirkungsgeschichte see Kriaras 1968, 1176–1179.
 The Letters of Michael Psellos in Byzantine Epistolary Culture | 937

oeuvre of certain epistolographers. The grammarian Gregory of Corinth (twelfth

century), for example, recommends a couple of authors as models of letter writ-
ing: besides the canon of epistolographers flourishing in late antiquity, he ad-
vises Michael Psellos.20 Gregory’s statement (echoed by Joseph Rhakendytes) is
confirmed by John Tzetzes21 or by Michael Choniates’ praise, who casts Psellos’
name together with Cato, Cicero, Arrian and Themistios.22
The works of the hypatos tōn philosophōn were not only venerated, they
were also actively engaged with, as they were both copied and reused. It goes
without saying that Psellos’ works also left traces outside of epistolography. The
anonymous excerpts and adaptations of Psellos’ Omnifaria doctrina in the fa-
mous manuscript Barocci gr. 131 of the Bodleian Library, forms a good example
of such active engagement with Psellos’ text.23.
But the focus of this contribution is on letters and a couple of examples may
illustrate Psellos’ influence. In the epistolographic corpus of the bishop
Euthymios Malakes, who belonged to the learned circle of Eustathios of Thessa-
lonica (twelfth century), several letters taken from collections of other letter
writers are preserved.24 Letter four in the same edition can be identified either as
an original Psellian or a Pseudo-Psellian composition. Malakes seems to appro-
priate textual material for his own use.25 The letter provides a classification in its
heading: Δεητική. οἴκτου δεόμενος (‘a letter of petition; a person who requires
compassion’). Such descriptions may indicate that a text has been kept in order

||
20 Komines 1960, 128–129. Briefly mentioned by Bernard 2020, 127.
21 Duffy 1998; Agiotis 2013 (see the reaction by Cullhed 2015).
22 Michael Choniates, ed. Kolovou 2001, 38, 6–12 (no. 28): καὶ σὺ μὲν τὰς τῆς φιλοσοφίας
ἐκμετρήσας κλίμακας, οὐδὲ τὰς πολιτευτικὰς θέμιδας περιιδεῖν ἐδικαίωσας, ἀποβλέπων, οἶμαι,
πρὸς τοὺς Κάτωνας καὶ Κικέρωνας, Ἀρριανούς τε καὶ Θεμιστίους καὶ τοὺς πρὸ μικροῦ Ψελλούς,
οἳ τὰ ἄκρα φιλοσοφίας πατήσαντες καὶ τὰς κοσμούσας τὰ ἀνθρώπινα θέμιδας ἐμελέτησαν, οὐκ
ἐν τῇ γνώσει μόνῃ τῶν ὄντων τὸ θεοείκελον ὁριζόμενοι, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῷ τῶν δευτέρων ἐπ-
εστράφθαι καὶ κοσμεῖν ὡς οἷόν τε· ‘And you measured out the steps of philosophy, but you did
not want to avoid political customs, looking to the Catos, I think, Ciceros, Arrianoi, Themistioi
and almost Pselloi, who walked on the heights of philosophy and exercised the regulations
adorning human things, who defined the godlike not only in the perception of the being world,
but also drew their attention to the (perception) of the second things [i.e. what is behind the
visible world] and adorned it as possible’ (my translation, italics are mine).
23 Pontikos 1992.
24 Bones 1937. The second letter in Bones’s edition is in fact a text by Synesios of Cyrene
(fourth century) with some minor changes; nevertheless, the editor included it in the
collection.
25 Gautier 1977, 105 n. 13.
938 | Michael Grünbart

to be used again (it turned into a model for a letter of request).26 It seems that
Malakes’ version of the letter is in fact a reworked version of the original (writ-
ten by Psellos). Forms of address, the wording and syntax have been altered,
but the common material is striking.27 Paul Gautier noted the similarity between
those two letters, but he refuted Psellos’ authorship.28
Echoes of Psellian letters can be detected in later collections of ἐπιστολαί as
well.29 A striking example has been uncovered by Robert Volk in a manuscript
from Mount Athos (dated to the sixteenth century).30 The text preserved in man-
uscript Athos, Dionysiou, 274 (Diktyon 20242), fols 10v–12r is a compilation of
four Psellian letters.31 The ‘author’ of that cento-like letter is unknown, but it
once again reflects the steady use and re-use of epistolographic ‘material’.

3 Imitating Psellos, again

Another example can be found in the rhetorical collections of Michael Choniates
(second half of twelfth century). Twenty-one prooimia of letters (letter-
prologues or first paragraphs) have been published at the end of the edition of
his epistles.32 The most efficient way to find and identify letters is by their
beginnings (archai, ἀρχαί). Even in Byzantine times the archai proved to be a
useful tool.33 The first words of a letter also give an idea of what is to follow:
signal words evoke friendship, opposition, consolation etc. The composition of
the priamel or preamble belonged to the most sophisticated challenges of an
epistolographer.34 Most of these pieces preserved in a Florentine manuscript,

||
26 On classification of letters and manuals of letter writing see the forthcoming study by
Chernoglazov 2021.
27 Grünbart 2003, 31–41, 36–37.
28 Gautier 1977, 100.
29 Grünbart 2000, 307–308, the collections of model letters by Athanasios Chatzikes (thir-
teenth century) includes a Psellian piece.
30 Volk 2002.
31 Papaioannou 2019, epp. 117 (Kurtz and Drexl 1941, no. 31), 269 (Kurtz and Drexl 1941,
no. 44) and 274 (Kurtz and Drexl 1941, no. 32) and Littlewood 1985, or. 13 (that piece is a letter
according to the inventory of Papaioannou 1998 and the interpretation of Volk 2002).
32 Michael Choniates, ed. Kolovou 2001, 288–291.
33 Letters are normally provided with numbers on the margins of manuscripts reflecting the
need of organizing activities by premodern scribes (and sometimes modern cataloguers). See
Grünbart 2016c, 45 n. 29.
34 Fatouros 1999.
 The Letters of Michael Psellos in Byzantine Epistolary Culture | 939

Biblioteca Laurenziana, Pluteus 59,12 (Diktyon 16463) (thirteenth century), are

borrowed from John Chrysostom, but one seems to have its roots in a Psellian
original (no notification of the similarity to a predecessor or provenance of the
passage has been made in the edition).35 It is a lengthy text comprising more
than the extent of a prooimion of a letter. But careful reading shows small differ-
ences between the two versions found in Pluteus 59,12 and in Vatican City, BAV,
Vat. gr. 712 (Diktyon 67343), while a third manuscript (no. 508 of the Romanian
Academy of Sciences in Bucharest [Diktyon 10581] dated to the thirteenth cen-
tury), not used by the editors Eduard Kurtz and Franz Drexl, reflects a multiplex
transmission that needs an explanation.36 Stratis Papaioannou used the Roma-
nian manuscript in his recent edition. It contains unpublished material, such as
the collection of the monk Hierotheos, and has to been taken into considera-
tion.37 The three documents are presented here in columns (different passages
or changes have been underlined):

1. Michael Psellos, Ep. 447a, 2. Michael Choniates, Epist. 3. Michael Psellos, Ep. 447b,
ed. Papaioannou 2020 Init., ed. Kolovou 2001, ed. Papaioannou 2020
(= Kurtz and Drexl 1941, 289.35–45 = Hierotheos, Ep. 106,
no. 2) ed. Grünbart in preparation
(= Darrouzès 1972, no. 125)

Ἐδεξάμην εἰς χεῖρας, Ἐδεξάμην εἰς χεῖρας, αὐθέντα Ἐδεξάμην εἰς χεῖρας,
λαμπρότατε ἢ καὶ ὑπέρλαμ- μου, τὴν γλυκεῖαν καὶ ἐμοὶ λαμπρότατέ μοι αὐθέντα, τὴν
πρε, τὴν γλυκεῖαν ἐμοὶ καὶ ποθεινοτάτην σου γραφὴν καὶ γλυκεῖαν καὶ ἐμοὶ ποθεινοτάτην
ποθεινήν σου γραφήν. αὐτὰς ἐνόμισας τὰς Μούσας σου γραφὴν καὶ αὐτὰς ἐνόμισα
᾽Εδεξάμην, καὶ αὐτὰς ἐνόμισα εἰληφέναι ἢ τὰς Χάριτας, δι’ ὧν τὰς Μούσας εἰληφέναι ἢ τὰς
τὰς Μούσας εἰληφέναι ἢ τὰς αὐτὴν κατεκόσμησας καὶ χάριτας, δι’ ὧν αὐτὴν κατεκόσ-
Χάριτας δι’αὐτῆς, δι’ὧν αὐτὴν θαυμασίαν οἵαν εἰργάσω καὶ μησας καὶ θαυμασίαν οἵαν
κατεκόσμησας καὶ θαυμασίαν ἡδονῆς γέμουσαν. εἰργάσω καὶ ἡδονῆς γέμουσαν.
οἷον ἀπειργάσω καὶ ἡδονῆς
γέμουσαν.
Τί γὰρ οὐκ εἶχεν ἐπαγωγὸν τί γὰρ oὐκ εἶχεν ἐπαγωγὸν καὶ τί γὰρ oὐκ εἶχεν ἐπαγωγὸν καὶ
καὶ θελκτήριον; μᾶλλον δέ, θελκτήριον, μᾶλλον δὲ τίνι oὐκ θελκτήριον; μᾶλλον δὲ τίνι oὐκ
τίνι τὸν ἀναγινώσκοντα ἐφείλκετο τὸν ἀναγινώσκοντα ἐφείλκετο τὸν ἀναγινώσκοντα

||
35 Michael Choniates, ed. Kolovou 2001, 289, l. 35–45.
36 Kurtz and Drexl 1941.
37 Darrouzès 1972; the Romanian manuscript contains letters of Euthymios Tornikes, Phalaris,
Firmus of Caesarea, Constantine VII, Theodore of Cyzicus and Michael Psellos. See Grünbart
2007 and 2016a.
940 | Michael Grünbart

1. Michael Psellos, Ep. 447a 2. Michael Choniates, Epist. Init. 3. Michael Psellos, Ep. 447b

ὥσπερ μάγος τις ἐφελκομένη ὥσπερ μαγνῆτις σίδηρον. λει- ὥσπερ μαγνῆτις τὸν σίδηρον;
τοὺς ἀναγινώσκοντας, τοῦτο μὼν γὰρ ἦν σχεδὸν ὡραιότατος, λειμὼν γὰρ ἦν ἄντικρυς
μὲν τῇ γλυκύτητι τῶν λέξεων, παντοίοις ἀγαθοῖς βρίθουσά τε ὡραιότητος παντοίοις ἀγαθοῖς
τοῦτο δὲ τῇ συνθήκῃ τῶν καὶ θάλλουσα, ἄλλοτε ἀλλῷ βρίθουσά τε καὶ θάλλουσα καὶ
συλλαβῶν; ἐφελκομένη τὸν ἀναγινώσ- ἄλλοτε ἄλλου ἐφελκομένη τὸν
κοντα. τοῦτο μὲν τῇ γλυκύτητι ἀναγινώσκοντα. τοῦτο μὲν τῇ
τῶν λέξεων, τοῦτo δὲ τῇ γλυκύτητι τῶν λέξεων, τοῦτo δὲ
συνθέσει τῶν συλλαβῶν, τῇ συνθέσει τῶν συλλαβῶν.

Πλέον δὲ μᾶλλον ἔτερπεν, ὅτι πλέον δὲ μᾶλλον ἔτερπεν πλέον δὲ μᾶλλoν ἔτερπεν, ὅτι
τὴν σὴν ὑγείαν εὐηγγελίζετο, ὅτιτὴν σὴν ὑγείαν εὐηγγελί- τὴν σὴν ὑγείαν εὐηγγελίζετο,
ἣν ἐγὼ προτιμοτέραν τοῦ ζετο, ἣν ἐγὼ προτιμοτέραν τoῦ ἣν ἐγὼ προτιμοτέραν τoῦ
παντὸς τίθεμαι καὶ ἧς προκρι- παντὸς τίθεμαι καὶ ἧς oὐδὲ παντὸς τίθεμαι καὶ ἧς προκρι-
τικώτερον οὐδὲ τοὺς Κροίσου τοὺς Κρoίσου θησαυροὺς τώτερον oὐδὲ τοὺς Κρoίσου
θησαυροὺς ἐκείνους (οἵτινές ἐκείνους, oἵτινές πoτε ἦσαν θησαυροὺς ἐκείνους, oἵτινές
ποτε ἦσαν) τίθεμαι. τίθεμαι. πoτε ἦσαν, τίθεμαι.

Ἀλλ’ ὑγιαίνοις, ὦ θεία καὶ ἀλλ’ ὑγιαίνοις καὶ στέλλοις. ἀλλ’ ὑγιαίνοις, ὦ θεία κεφαλὴ
θαυμασία κεφαλή, φωτὸς φωτὸς ὄντως ἀξία καὶ θαύ-
ὄντως ἀξία καὶ θαύματος. ματος. ὑγιαίνοις καὶ στέλλοις
Ὑγιαίνοις καὶ στέλλοις γράμματα καὶ λαμβάνοις παρ’
γράμματα, καὶ λαμβάνοις ἡμῶν τὰ αὐτά. τί γὰρ ἡμῖν ἄλλo
παρ’ἡμῶν τὰ αὐτά· τί γὰρ ἡμῖν τερπνὸν ἢ σὰς συλλαβὰς ἀνα-
ἄλλο τερπνὸν, ἢ σὰς συλλα- γινώσκειν καὶ δέχεσθαι καὶ διὰ
βὰς ἀναγινώσκειν καὶ τῶν αὐτῶν δεξιοῦσθαι σε;
δέχεσθαι καὶ διὰ τῶν αὐτῶν ἔρρωσο ἐν μέσῳ πoλλῶν πραγ-
δεξιοῦσθαί σε; ἔῤῥωσο ἐν μάτων ἀτάραχος καὶ ἀκίνδυνος
μέσῳ πολλῶν πραγμάτων ἅμα καὶ ἀπερίτρεπτος.
ἀτάραχος καὶ ἀκύμαντος ἅμα
περιφυλαττόμενος.

Translation of text no. 1:

I received, most magnificent and splendid (person), the delightful and longed for letter of
yours in my hands. I received it and I thought to grasp through it the Muses themselves or
the Charites, with whom you arranged it and completed it to such a wonderful (piece) full
of pleasure. Wasn’t it an attractive and enchanting (item), then?
Or even more, by what did it attract the reader as a sorcerer attracts the readers, that is on
the one side by the sweetness of its words and on the other by the composition of the
syllables? But it offered even more delight, because it announced your health, which I
regard as worthier than all things, and I do not regard the treasures of Croesus (whatever
they have been) as a larger cause for preference than it (health).
But you may remain in a healthy condition, divine and admirable head, really worthy of
light and wonder. You may stay healthy and send letters, and get the same from us. What
 The Letters of Michael Psellos in Byzantine Epistolary Culture | 941

other pleasure do we have than reading and receiving your syllables, and to greet you
with them? Farewell, (remain) calm and not washed away in the midst of many
occupations and at the same time guarded all around. (my translation)

In text no. 2 the form of address has been changed to ‘master/Sir’; the epistolog-
rapher replaced the seductive sorcerer by ‘a magnet that attracts iron’ and add-
ed the passage ‘the meadow was most beautiful, it (the letter) burst with all
kinds of goods and flourished, pulling the reader here and there!’
Text no. 3 is closer to the Psellian piece than no. 2; it reduces the forms of
address to ‘most magnificent’ and ‘divine head’. At the end the composer
replaced the words of no. 1 by similar expressions (‘free from danger and immu-
table’).

From this comparison it becomes apparent that Psellos’ letter served as an ap-
plicable model: it was copied and slightly revised by two epistolographers from
the twelfth century (Michael Choniates and Hierotheos); it was re-animated in a
rhetorical (learned) setting (Choniates) and in a monastic context (Hierotheos).38
Psellos’ letter was kept as a prototype in the collection of prooimia attributed to
Michael Choniates (the last paragraph of the ‘original’ Psellian letter is miss-
ing).39 And it seems that the monk Hierotheos (third quarter of the twelfth centu-
ry) re-used the Psellian piece with minor alterations. The simplest change in the
process of recycling letters and adjusting them can be seen in the replacement
of forms of address (λαμπρότατε ἢ καὶ ὑπέρλαμπρε – αὐθέντα μου – λαμπρότατέ
μοι αὐθέντα), that reflect nuances of relations between two individuals.40 Texts 1
and 3 end with different wordings, but the meaning is almost the same, evoking
safety.

4 Concluding Remarks
Byzantine epistolary culture was a vivid process of copying, remodelling and
adapting predecessors’ letters into a new context. Traces of that mimetic and

||
38 Commenting on Ep. 447a, Papaioannou 2019, LXXIV states: ‘we cannot be absolutely
certain about their Psellian origins’.
39 Cf. Papaioannou 2019, LXXXVII. Papaioannou classifies the piece in Vat. gr. 712 as versio
prima (= 447a), the text in Acad. Rum. 508 (= 447b) is labelled versio altera [retractatio?] in
collectione epistolarum Hierothei monachi.
40 Grünbart 2005; forms of address indicate closeness, distance, friendship, hierarchy etc.
942 | Michael Grünbart

creative habit can be found in the oeuvre of almost every Byzantine epistologra-
pher, and the finesse and quality of variation was discussed and evaluated even
in Byzantine times.41
If we treat letters as documents designed for a certain occasion at a certain
moment (that can be repeated) and do not search exclusively for the original
and first appearance of a message, that process of recycling can be visualized in
an impressive manner. The concept of a fixed text (‘fester Text’) or even an orig-
inal collection should be reconsidered. The fluidity of such letters’ transmission
has to be taken into consideration, since it reflects various levels of their (re-
peated) usage. In addition, it has to be kept in mind that collecting, copying and
storing letters led to the creation of florilegia or (in a more technical sense) a
stock of rhetorical spare parts. That is the case in Michael Choniates’ compila-
tion of letter prooimia. The engagement with the epistolographic tradition also
reveals the versatility, the erudition, the creativity of Byzantine letter writers,
but also their challenging situation to meet the expectations of their learned
recipients. Hierotheos’ reusing and reworking of the Psellian prototype reflect
that procedure. Again, Michael Psellos’ letters served as a prominent model,
creating such a remarkable process of rhetorical afterlife.
In general, interpreters of Byzantine letters have to take into consideration
that imitating rhetorical role models and elaborate tampering with predeces-
sors' texts formed a usual pattern of composition.42 A systematic re-evaluation
of the (fluid) epistolographic transmission may show how alive and malleable
letters were.

Acknowledgements
This note was presented at the International Congress of Byzantine Studies
(Belgrade 2016, round table: ‘Michael Psellos. One Thousand Years of a Poly-
math’s Birth’, organised by Frederick Lauritzen); it has been modified and
updated, but was written before the edition by Papaioannou 2019. My stay at the
SFB 950 ‘Manuscript Cultures in Asia, Africa and Europa’ at Universität Ham-
burg in autumn 2018 contributed to my conceptional approach to letter and
collection. Last not least I have to thank Caroline Macé for her excellent support.

||
41 Grünbart 2010, 129–137. The monk Iakobos (twelfth century) reused letters of Basil the
Great in a rather simple manner, see Jeffreys 2012. Another platitudinous example of mimesis
can be found in a document from Cyprus: the scribe used a letter of Eustathios of Thessalonica
in extenso and added a few lines (Grünbart 2016b).
42 Grünbart 2003. See also Op de Coul 2006 presenting texts imitating Theodore Prodromos
(twelfth century).
 The Letters of Michael Psellos in Byzantine Epistolary Culture | 943

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Felix Heinzer
Preaching with the Hands: Notes on
Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting and its
Medieval Reception
Abstract: Pre-modern Western book production is first and foremost a matter of
manuscript culture. Hence, the role of copyists – and in the early period of this
tradition they were mostly monks – is of outstanding importance: no handwrit-
ten books without the dedicated work of scribes! In fact, instead of addressing
the laborious physical effort of copying, the idealization of scribes tends to
focus mostly on religious dimensions. The starting point of this tradition is the
emphatic praise of handwriting by the late antique Roman statesman and
scholar Cassiodorus, who spiritualizes scribal activity as a form of ‘manual’
preaching. The article attempts to trace the medieval reception of this seminal
concept, particularly popular within the Carthusian tradition, up to Jean
Gerson’s De laude scriptorum of 1423 and the homonymous treatise of the
German Benedictine abbot Johannes Trithemius, published in 1492 as a printed
book (!).

1 The springboard: Cassiodorus Senator (d. c. 585)

and his valuation of manuscripts copying
I admit that among those of your tasks which require physical effort that of the scribes, if
they write correctly, appeals most to me, for by re-reading the Divine Scriptures (relegendo
Scripturas divinas) they wholesomely instruct their own mind, but by copying (scribendo)
the precepts of the Lord they also spread them far and wide.
Happy their design, praiseworthy their zeal, to preach to men with the hand alone, to un-
leash tongues with the fingers, to give salvation silently to mortals, and to fight against
the illicit temptations of the devil with pen and ink. Every word of God written by the
Scribe is a wound inflicted on Satan! 1

||
1 Ego tamen fateor votum meum, quod inter vos quaecumque possunt corporeo labore compleri,
antiquariorum mihi studia, si tamen veraciter scribant, non immerito forsitan plus placere, quod
et mentem suam relegendo Scripturas divinas salutariter instruunt et Domini praecepta scribendo
longe lateque disseminant. Felix intentio, laudanda sedulitas, manu hominibus praedicare, digitis

Open Access. © 2021 Felix Heinzer, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-046
948 | Felix Heinzer

This stunning praise of the copyists of biblical codices, frequently quoted by

scholars dealing with medieval manuscript culture, occurs in Chapter 30 of the
first part of the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum, a guide con-
ceived by Cassiodorus Senator (d. c. 585) for the organization of intellectual life
at Vivarium, founded in the 550s by the author as a unique synthesis of monas-
tery and school on his family estate in Calabria.2
Cassiodorus’ intellectual attitude is deeply marked by his position at a
historical and cultural threshold: ‘in Cassiodoro vi è una sintesi di idee pagane e
idee cristiane, armonizzate con grande sapienza, ma dissimulate con natura-
lezza’.3 In fact, the novelty of the educational program developed by the Institu-
tiones may be boiled down to their attempt to amalgamate classical intellectual
heritage with Christian theology and spirituality: a momentous alliance, as
before long Cassiodorus’ opus was to cross the Alps and circulate in the high-
ranking institutions of Latin Europe.4 Nevertheless, at least at first glance, his
praise of scribes seems to be fundamentally indebted to what, in the wake of
Claudia Rapp’s impressive overview, we might term an early Christian aware-
ness of ‘Scriptural Holiness’,5 understood as the ‘projection’ of the dignity and
sanctity of the divine Word onto the biblical text, extending even to the materi-
ality of the codices transmitting this message and thus to ‘the letters that convey
the Word of God’.6 Cassiodorus’ promotion of the copying of biblical books to an
act of preaching appears to be a rather specific idea; yet the notion of a particu-
lar spiritual benefit for those producing books through the work of their hands
in order to disseminate Holy Scripture to the use of other readers can be found
equally, if less frequently, in the context of late antique Christianity, as Rapp
has been able to show.7
An aspect of Cassiodorus’ approach that is, however, particularly conspicu-
ous is its strongly bodily note: no less than three times the opening section of

||
linguas aperire, salutem mortalibus tacitum dare, et contra diaboli subreptiones illicitas calamo
atramentoque pugnare. Tot enim vulnera Satanas accipit, quot antiquarius Domini verba describit
(Cassiodorus, Institutiones I, 30, 1, ed. Mynors 1937, 75; English translation: Webber Jones 1947,
35 with some minor changes).
2 The bibliography on this unique institution and its famous, if widely dispersed, library is
abundant; cf. among others Troncarelli 1998; Schindel 2008, 1–15.
3 Troncarelli 2020, 7.
4 Perhaps with the papal library at the Lateran Palace as an important pivot of this dissemina-
tion, cf. Lapidge 2005, 18–20, and Troncarelli 2020, 97–103.
5 Rapp 2007, 194–222.
6 Rapp 2007, 200.
7 Rapp 2007, 209–212.
 Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting | 949

Institutiones I, 30 brings into play the copyists’ fingers holding the pen: the tres
digiti (1) are celebrated as ‘unleashing the tongues’ of the future readers,8 but (2)
also boldly associated with the Holy Trinity9 and (3) with Yahweh’s finger carv-
ing the Decalogue in the tablets of stone (Ex. 31:18).10 The act of copying is obvi-
ously credited with a strong ‘theological’ potential: a supercharging that recalls
a passage of the Letter to Melania by the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus
that presents beautiful handwriting as a metaphor for God’s creation of the
world.11
Interestingly enough, in this section of the text we can observe a short but
surprising opening toward the classically oriented cultural program that consti-
tutes the second wing of Cassiodorus’ treatise. I am referring to the short paren-
thesis on the potential faults of the monks dealing with the holy text: ‘if ever
they write correctly’ (si tamen veraciter scribant).12 Copying an exacting text
such as Holy Scripture demands orthographical skill; both the scribes and the
correctors, Cassiodorus insists, should thus study the appropriate textbooks:
orthographos antiquos legant (I, 30, 2). At first sight, such a recommendation in
this context, with its strong theological connotations, might appear rather un-
expected and even intriguing. Yet, considering the wording of the chapter’s title
– De antiquariis et commemoratione orthographiae, i.e. ‘On scribes and on re-
membering orthography’ – Cassiodorus’ insistence on scribal correctness turns
out to be a substantial part of his message.
If the saeculares litterae are thus assigned a place in the heart of what we
might call a theology of copying holy books, this striking prominence demon-
strates in nuce why the Institutiones are considered a seminal document in the
history of Western European monasticism. In fact, Cassiodorus’ attempt to tie
together religion and learning13 proved to be momentous. Emblematic docu-
ments such as Charlemagne’s Epistula de litteris colendis (arguably going back
to Alcuin)14 reveal that, at least since the so-called Carolingian Renaissance, the
antique liberal arts program found fertile ground in the educational curriculum

||
8 Felix intentio […] digitis linguas aperire (I, 30, 1, see n. 1 above).
9 ‘By three fingers is written what is said by the virtue of the Holy Trinity’: tribus digitis scri-
bitur quod virtus sanctae trinitatis effatur (I, 30, 1).
10 ‘In some way, they [the scribes] seem to emulate what the Lord did when writing his law by
operating with his almighty finger’: factum Domini aliquo modo videntur emitari, qui legem
suam, omnipotentis digiti operatione conscripsit (I, 30, 1).
11 Rapp 2007, 215.
12 See n. 1 above.
13 Brunhölzl 1975, 39.
14 Wallach 1951.
950 | Felix Heinzer

of clerical and monastic schools.15 This process turned out to be instrumental in

two senses: (1) for the survival of at least part of the classical intellectual culture
beyond the end of the ancient world and (2) for the promotion of the written
book – and consequently of book production! – to a place at the heart of pre-
modern Christian culture, especially in the context of monastic education. As
John Contreni has put it (in reference to the Carolingian situation at houses such
as St Gall, Lorsch, or Corbie): ‘An active and influential school depended for its
vitality on the resources necessary to copy books or to obtain them from other
centers’.16
Before returning to our topic, on the hunt for traces of the medieval afterlife
of Cassiodorus’ praise of handwriting, it might be of note to ascertain an earlier
source that may have inspired his metaphor of preaching with the hands,
namely, John Cassian (c. 360–c. 435), ‘another bilingual monk with extensive
eastern experience’, recognized by Cassiodorus who was apparently familiar
with the former’s writings as those of ‘a monastic and stylistic soulmate’.17 In his
treatise De institutis coenobiorum et de octo principalium vitiorum remediis X, 10,
commenting on Saint Paul’s claim that he had worked night and day not to be a
burden to the members of the community (II Thess. 3:6–10), Cassian coins the
phrase idcirco evangelium praedicans meis manibus (‘preaching the gospel with
my hands’), which he puts in the Apostle’s mouth,18 making him appear to some
extent a worker-priest avant la lettre, i.e., by his self-sustaining way of life. If I
am right in this surmise, Cassiodorus might have drawn on this concept, trans-
forming and intellectualizing Cassian’s phrase into his own formula manu
hominibus praedicare, while applying it to his monks who were charged with
copying biblical texts.
Yet, this view of Saint Paul as a worker is far from eclipsing his authorship
of the corpus of pastoral letters that was to form a substantial part of the New
Testament canon: in fact, the caption Sedet hic Scripsit (‘here he is sitting as he
was writing’) of the full-page miniature in the manuscript Stuttgart, Württem-
bergische Landesbibliothek, HB II 54 (c. 820–830, probably hailing from
St Gall), arguably one of the earliest author portraits of the Apostle in Western
manuscript tradition, stages him exemplarily as a scribe (see Fig. 1).

||
15 Contreni 1995, 725–747.
16 Contreni 1995, 724.
17 Stewart 1998, 25.
18 Petschenig (ed.) 1888, 183.
 Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting | 951

2 Twelfth- and thirteenth-century Carthusians as

Cassiodorus’s heirs?
The earliest evidence of an echo of Cassiodorus’ understanding of the monk as a
‘manual preacher’ which I have been able to find occurs in the first Customs of
the Carthusian Order elaborated by Guigo I, the fifth prior of the Grande Char-
treuse, in the late 1120s.19
If it is the Carthusian book culture of the later Middle Ages and its ‘tremen-
dous impact on devotional reading by other religious, and also by lay people’20
that presently attracts substantial scholarly attention, it is equally obvious (and
those specializing in this field insist on this continuity) that these fifteenth-
century efforts dedicated to writing, translating, and copying works of devo-
tional literature actually ‘fulfill the founders’ mandate’.21 In fact, what Michael
Sargent so aptly termed ‘the literary character of the spirituality of the Carthusi-
an Order’22 is already fully palpable in Guigo.23 His astonishingly detailed de-
scription of the items a monk needed in his individual cell for the making of
codices, contained in Chap. 28 on the standard equipment of the monk’s cella,24
is of highly ‘technical’ interest and probably remains ‘the most complete con-
temporary record of bookmaking supplies available to modern codicologists.’25
For the present article, however, the reflections on the spiritual aspects of writ-
ing books are of even greater interest, and it is here, in fact, that we meet with a
Cassiodorian echo:

||
19 See the edition of Laporte, Guigues I (1984). For reasons of the precarious availability of li-
brary holdings, however, I shall quote Guigo’s Latin text from vol. 153 of Migne’s Patrologia Latina
(PL 153 in what follows here), electronically processed by Philipp Roelli <http://mlat.uzh.ch/MLS/
xanfang.php?tabelle=Guigo_I_prior_Carthusiae_cps2&corpus=2&allow_download=0&lang=0>
(accessed on 2 Feb. 2021).
20 Brantley 2007, 47.
21 Patterson 2011, 136.
22 Sargent 1976, 240 (italics mine).
23 For the following, cf. Brantley 2007, 47–50.
24 Chap. 28,2 (PL 153, 693). Remarkably, Guigo mentions the fact that it happens very rarely
that utensils for crafts other than book making are needed, ‘for, if possible, we train almost
everyone we receive in the art of copying’ (omnes enim pene quos suscipimus, si fieri potest,
scribere docemus).
25 Brantley 2007, 48.
952 | Felix Heinzer

We desire that the books be made with the greatest attention and kept very carefully, like
perpetual food for our souls, so that because we cannot preach the word of God by our
mouth, we may do so with our hands. 26

A glance at the Latin text makes it obvious that it was exactly Cassiodorus’
comment on the vocation of the antiquarius at Vivarium that Guigo had in mind:

Cassiodorus Guigo

Felix intentio, laudanda sedulitas, manu Libros quippe tamquam sempiternum

hominibus praedicare, digitis linguas animarum nostrarum cibum cautissime
aperire, salutem mortalibus tacitum dare, custodiri et studiosissime volumus fieri,
et contra diaboli subreptiones illicitas ut quia ore non possumus, dei verbum
calamo atramentoque pugnare. manibus predicemus

Can we reconstruct the circumstances that led Guigo to draw on and recontex-
tualize the late antique reference text?
The phrase manibus praedicare was quoted and credited to Cassiodorus in a
Carthusian Chronicle of around 1260:27 an argument for supposing an aware-
ness, at least in the thirteenth century, of its Cassiodorian background. But
what about Guigo himself? Dennis Martin’s hint at the use of the phrase by
Guigo’s contemporary, Peter the Venerable, turns out to be an important clue:28
in his Letter 20, the abbot of Cluny celebrates Gilbert, a recluse at Senlis, as a
‘silent preacher of the Divine Word whose hand will loudly sound in the ears of
many people while his tongue remains silent’.29 Like Guigo, Peter addresses the
activity of a scribe, living in self-chosen seclusion but ‘travelling’, as it were, in
his manuscripts over land and sea (in codicibus tuis terras ac maria peragrabis),
‘a hermit by profession whose devotion, however, turns him into an Evangelist’
(professio te heremitam, devotio faciet evangelistam).30
The underlying idea is clearly the same as in Guigo’s Chapter 28, and again
a glance at the Latin (quoted in n. 29) makes the connection appear even more
striking: in its bold metaphor of the hand (manus) sounding with loud voices
(clamosis vocibus) and hence transforming the copyist into a taciturnus praedi-
cator, Peter’s wording very closely approaches that of Guigo’s Dei verbum

||
26 Guigo, Chap. 28:3 (PL 153, 693; English translation: Brantley 2007, 48).
27 Martin 1992, 232, n. 173.
28 Martin 1992, 232.
29 Sic plane sic verbi divini poteris fieri taciturnus praedicator, et lingua silente, in multorum
populorum auribus manus tua clamosis vocibus personabit. Constable 1967, vol. 1, 38. See also
Constable 1996, 213.
30 Constable 1967, vol. 1, 38.
 Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting | 953

manibus predicemus. Yet the question of exactly how (and at which moment)
Cassiodorus comes into play remains uncertain: based on chronology – Consta-
ble dates the letter to Gilbert ‘probably in the early 1130s’31 – the hypothesis that
Guigo, writing in the late 1120s, may have been inspired by Peter appears rather
unlikely. Should we then rather assume that Cassiodorus’ notion of the ‘preach-
ing copyist’ was more widely received among religiously fervent intellectuals of
this period?
Still, if almost six centuries later Cassiodorus’ laus scriptorum surprisingly
resurfaces, times and circumstances have decidedly changed, not only with
regard to the distinctive timbre of this ‘swansong’ of ancient civilization by the
former Roman statesman,32 but chiefly for the changing status of written cul-
ture: ‘Die Schriftlichkeit hatte sich gewandelt; der gleiche Gedanke, vom sech-
sten in das zwölfte Jahrhundert transponiert, musste einen anderen Sinn
erhalten’, as Johan Peter Gumbert insists.33
While reflecting on this cultural change, several of its aspects should be
emphasized:
(1) An important difference is immediately obvious on the level of content:
while Cassiodorus’ metaphor of the copyists preaching with their hands focused
on the verba Domini, i.e., on scriptural texts, the production of the Carthusian
scribes mainly concerns the field of theology and, in later periods, devotional
genres as well as, increasingly, vernacular texts. At the time of Guigo himself,
we remain of course in the realm of Latin, but the shift to non-biblical texts is
obvious. Again, this tendency is paradigmatically confirmed by Peter the Ven-
erable: in his often-quoted Letter 24 to the prior of the Grande Chartreuse,34 we
find a list of manuscripts, exclusively encompassing patristic writings,35 which
obviously refers to a shipment of books sent with the letter at Guigo’s request
(sicut mandastis, as Peter adds to the first item of the list).
(2) Peter’s mention of a textual problem in a Cluniac manuscript,36 a corrup-
tion obviously corresponding to and thus compromising the value of the
Carthusian copy, indicates that at least some of the manuscripts brought from
Cluny were destined to serve as master copies in the Grande Chartreuse’s scrip-
torium. At the same time, such details attest a mutual familiarity with the

||
31 Constable 1992, 320.
32 ‘Il timbro inconfondibile dell’affascinante canto del cigno della civiltà antica’ (Troncarelli
2020, 14).
33 Gumbert 1974, 310.
34 Constable 1967, vol. 1, 44–47.
35 Constable 1967, vol. 1, 4639 to 4715; cf. Brantley 2007, 49–50.
36 Hilary’s Commentarius in Psalmos, Constable 1967, vol. 1, 477–8.
954 | Felix Heinzer

holdings of the other side of this ‘intellectual commerce’.37 Perhaps we might

even suppose an exchange of library catalogues provided with indications simi-
lar to the famous Desideratenliste of the ninth-century catalogue from the Alsa-
tian abbey of Murbach in which important but absent works of a given author
are listed by means of rubrics like adhuc quaerimus, adhuc non habemus,
desideramus etc.:38 this system presupposes ‘interlibrary loans’, most likely
within the Cluniac confraternity system as was the case earlier with Murbach
and its network.39
(3) Equally revealing is the mention of a big codex (maius volumen) of the
Chartreuse’s own library containing a series of epistles of Augustine. Peter asks
for this book so that it could be copied in Cluny and aid the restoration of an
analogous volume which had been partly destroyed by a bear.40 Apparently,
thus, the exchange works in both directions, and we may even be allowed to
assume a continuous to-and-fro of reading and copying material between the
two houses. But there is even more, as in Peter’s accompanying letter we are
met with revealing evidence that such exchanges were not limited to the Char-
treuse and Cluny: in the case of Prosper of Aquitaine’s anti-Pelagian writing
against John Cassian (De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio), the abbot informs his
Carthusian correspondent that he had sent a messenger to the Cluniac abbey of
St-Jean d’Angély near La Rochelle in order to procure from there a copy of this
apparently very rare text.41 Perhaps, in this case, Peter relied upon the media-
tion of a well-connected figure: the Cluniac prior Henry, a former bishop of
Soissons, who also filled the position of abbot at St-Jean (intermittently) from
1104 to 1131.42 At any rate, Gumbert’s view that the Carthusian copyists, far from
emulating the wide diffusion of codices which Cassiodorus claims in his eulogy
of the Vivarium scribes (Domini praecepta scribendo longe lateque dissemi-
nant),43 chiefly worked for their own small community,44 clearly underestimates

||
37 Brantley 2007, 49.
38 Milde 1968, 62–130.
39 For Murbach see Heinzer 2017, 311.
40 The somewhat enigmatic indication that this happened in obaedientia must refer to a pri-
ory: Peter’s Statutes mention the administration of dependencies outside the monastery (extra
claustrum) as being charged to take care of alicuius obedientiae (Constable 1975, 72). Cf. equally
the mention of one of the four priories of Marmoutier near Tours, Cluniac since the late tenth
century, which is also called obedientia (Constable 1996, 60 n. 61).
41 Ad sanctum Iohannem Angeliacensem in Aquitania misimus, Constable 1967, vol. 1, 47.
42 On this rather colorful figure, see Constable 2010, 347–348.
43 The topical longe lateque, obviously one of Cassiodorus’ pet phrases, recurring almost a
dozen times in his writings, is purposefully chosen to rhetorically enhance his claim.
 Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting | 955

the performance of the librarians and copyists under Guigo’s leadership. In this
period, thanks to its relations to Cluny, the Grand Chartreuse was embedded in
a far-flung network reaching even beyond the realm of its own order.

3 Jean Gerson and his De laude scriptorum of

1423
The first independent work on scribal practice45 is a long time coming: De laude
scriptorum doctrinae salubris (‘On Praising the Scribes of Healthy Doctrine’)46
was written in April 1423 by Jean Charlier de Gerson (1363–1429), probably one
of the most prolific and popular writers of the fifteenth century. This opuscule,
which is structured in twelve rather short articulations, actually represents, as
the short preface indicates, a response to a request by a Carthusian (quaesivit
quidam de monachis domus Carthusiae),47 arguably a monk of the Grande Char-
treuse,48 on the issue of the permissibility of copying manuscripts on feast days.
Taking this rather scrupulous question49 as a stepping-stone, Gerson turns be-
fore long to a more general perspective. Of course, books – and just to recall, at
that time they were all still handwritten books – would not exist without the
dedicated work of those copying them. Gerson underlines this point in the pref-
ace: qualiter habebuntur [scripturae] si non scribantur? he asks rhetorically. Still,
if he expresses appreciation for the (good) scribe, the gist of the treatise is actu-
ally a matter more and more common among authors in this period, namely,
anxiety about whether their intellectual production was faithfully reproduced

||
44 ‘Glaubte Cassiodor noch, an die weite Verbreitung der geschriebenen Exemplare erinnern
zu müssen oder zu dürfen, so arbeitete der Kartäuser-Schreiber in erster Linie für die kleine
Gemeinschaft, der er selbst angehörte’, Gumbert 1974, 310.
45 Hobbins 2009, 2 and 166.
46 The phrase doctrinae salubris seems to be part of the original title, as the manuscript evi-
dence suggests; see Hobbins 2009, 227 –228 (n. 10 of p. 2).
47 For Gerson’s regular practice of such activities as a consultant, especially replying to in-
quiries on behalf of Cartusians, see the short mention in Glorieux 1961, 136.
48 This date of inquiry and answer perfectly fits the situation of Gerson’s retirement in Lyon
from the end of 1419 up to his death in July 1429: a period marked by frequent corresponding
with the (relatively) close-by Grande Chartreuse (Glorieux 1961, with more details); this surmise
is well-matched by the indication of the questioner’s provenance as a monk of the domus
Carthusia.
49 On the typical tinge of religious anxiety that marks a good deal of the questions posed to
Gerson, often dealing with details of Carthusian daily routine, see again Glorieux 1961, 144.
956 | Felix Heinzer

by the scriptores quasi mechanici et manuales librorum (as Gerson, again in his
preface, calls them). Indeed, the real concern, ‘just beneath the surface of this
entire work’, is in fact ‘authorship itself’50 including the ability of authors ‘to
control the reception of a text.’51
However, now re-focusing our attention on the topos of the copyists’
preaching with their hands, the preface of the treatise leaves no doubt about
Gerson’s familiarity with this tradition, as he states that ‘a good copyist busy
with books of healthy doctrine … may indeed be said to be preaching. In fact,
while his tongue is silent, his hand is preaching, and sometimes even in a more
fruitful way in that Scripture thereby reaches a wider audience than a transitory
sermon.’52
Less clear is the question of the source of this awareness. While we cannot a
priori exclude the possibility that he drew directly on Cassiodorus, I am rather
inclined to consider that Gerson was indebted to the Carthusian tradition, given
his obvious familiarity with this context. The wording itself unfortunately does
not help us to solve the riddle.
At the end of the short introduction, the idea of the preaching scribe is tak-
en up again. Gerson introduces the twelfth consideratio of his text with three
hexameters, each of them consisting of four cue-like elements, thus acting as a
succinct (and easily remembered) poetic abstract of what follows:53

I
Praedicat atque II studet scriptor, III largitur et IV orat
V
Affligitur, VI sal dat, VII fontem VII lucemque futuris,
IX
Ecclesiam ditat, X armat, XI custodit, XII honorat.

Remarkably enough, the Windesheim Canon regular Gabriel Biel (1420–1495),

in his programmatic Tractatus de communi vita clericorum, written to urge the
semi-religious Brethren of Common Life in Germany to take the direction of a
regular (Augustinian) form of life,54 quotes the three emblematic verses in his
chapter on the labor scribendi.55 The borrowing per se is not all that surprising,
given Gerson’s popularity among the partisans of the ‘Devotio Moderna’; in fact

||
50 Hobbins 2009, 72.
51 Hobbins 2009, 167.
52 Scriptor idoneus et frequens librorum doctrinae salubris […] praedicare dici potest. Certe si
lingua silet manus praedicat et fructuosius aliquando quanto scriptura venit ad plures uberior
quam transiens sermo, ed. Glorieux 1973, 424. – See also the statement by Peter the Venerable,
quoted above, p. 952, n. 29.
53 The twelve cues appear again as captions at the beginning of every consideratio.
54 Van Geest 2017, 123–125.
55 Faix 1999, 64–65, 82, 363 (edition of the text).
 Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting | 957

Biel refers to Gerson in other contexts as well.56 Nonetheless, Biel’s borrowing of

the notion of ‘manual’ preaching in a lovely way confirms Gerson’s own as-
sessment of the far-reaching agency of scriptura.

4 In guise of a conclusion: Johannes Trithemius’

printed praise of scribes if 1492
It seems natural to let the medieval career of Cassiodorus’s dictum come to its
end with Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, who composed his own
Praise of Scribes in 1492, a little less than a century after Jean Gerson.57 This
short lapse of time, however, spans a momentous media change: after 1450 in
Europe, thanks to Gutenberg’s innovation, making a book can mean two techni-
cally and economically rather different manufacturing processes. This shift had
far-reaching consequences for the scriptor and his status. It is therefore of note
that Trithemius published his treatise in commendation of the art of hand-
copying in the new way, having it printed by Peter Friedberg in 1494 at Mainz,
the emblematic place of Gutenberg’s seminal achievement.58
This is not the place for an in-depth discussion of either the universal as-
pects of this epochal change or of what Noel Brann termed the consequent ‘mo-
nastic dilemma’ standing behind Trithemius’ choice. I should, however, join
Brann in emphasizing that the Sponheim abbot, far from being ‘a reactionary in
the face of the printing revolution’, was actually one of its ‘most vigorous advo-
cates’.59 Trithemius argues for the value of the book as such, be it handwritten
or printed, as a key agent in what he deems the heritage of monastic erudition;
viewed from this perspective, there is no contradiction in Trithemius’ dissemi-
nation of a work in praise of manuscript copying, by means of printing. His
intention is actually twofold: while idealizing the work of monastic manuscript
copying, he aims (1) to return to its pristine state ‘the glorious idea of vera erudi-
tio monastica’60 with regard to both learning and sanctity as a signature quality
of the Order’s ‘golden centuries’, which he consistently evokes and augurs; and

||
56 Faix 1999, 62–63.
57 Arnold 1973.
58 For a panorama of the ideological exaltation of this medio-historical innovation, celebrated
by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century ‘progressivists’ as an achievement most dramatically un-
derscoring ‘the advancement of modernity over antiquity’, see Brann 1979, 164 (n. 1).
59 Brann 1979, 151.
60 Brann 1979, 163.
958 | Felix Heinzer

(2) to emphasize this activity as the most appropriate form of the labor manuum,
requested and elevated to a noble status by the Benedictine rule as an integral
part of the monks’ daily life.
If Trithemius differs fundamentally from Gerson in so far as he had the op-
tion to make use of the new technology of book publishing, the concept of his
opusculum as an independent work on the topic clearly emulates the latter’s,
including its programmatic title: De laude scriptorum. But there is obviously
more: Trithemius does not shy away from lifting material from his model.61 On
the very first side of the prologue (a IIIr )62 the statement about the necessity of
copyists for the existence of texts (absque scriptoribus non potest scriptura diu
salve consistere) is clearly indebted to Gerson’s qualiter habebuntur [scripturae]
si non scribantur63 and the ensuing celebration of the wholesome effects of the
scribe’s ministry begins by drawing verbatim on the beginning of the third of
Gerson’s emblematic verses (also quoted by Gabriel Biel, as we have seen): Unde
ipse ecclesia ditat. And as if that were not enough, the entire package, quoted
above (p. 956), reappears at the end of Trithemius’ Chapter V: Quidam – Gerson
is not named – sic cecinit: Praedicat […] – […] honorat!64
Perhaps even more worthy of note is that the starting point of the chain we
are observing here itself resurfaces. In fact, Trithemius remarkably returns to
Cassiodorus here, mentioning him in Chap. IV:
(1) as the figurehead of a catalogue of abbots, all of them Benedictines (evi-
dently with the exception of Cassiodorus himself) celebrated for their fer-
vent engagement with the copying of ancient works and their solicitude for
the libraries of their monastic houses;65
(2) immediately thereafter, this time connecting him with Peter Damian,66 as a
pair of authors who published singulares ac preclaros tractatus de hac in-
dustria (i.e. about the meritorious work of scribes).67

||
61 Wakelin 2014, 25.
62 I refer to the digitized copy of the Mainz print of 1494 (GW 47538), now housed in Munich,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek <https://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0003/bsb00037424/images/
index.html?fip=193.174.98.30&id=00037424&seite=1> (accessed on 2 Feb. 2021).
63 See above, p. 955.
64 GW 47538, a VIIIv .
65 Cassiodorum, Bedam, Alcuinum, Rabanum, Reginonem [Regino of Prüm], ibid., a VIv.
66 Trithemius may have in mind strophe 8 (Scriptores recta linea / Veraces scribant litteras
etc.) of a poem (Carmen 8) whose attribution to Peter Damian is now considered rather doubt-
ful: Giordano Lokrantz (ed.) 1964, 145.
67 GW 47538, a VIIr.
 Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting | 959

Other passages of De laude scriptorum reveal an even closer (and more explicit)
familiarity with Cassiodorus and his key text of Institutiones I, 30. In Chap. VI of
Trithemius’ treatise, the phrase Monachi autem scribendo libros divinos … cum
sermone praedicare non valeant, manu et calamo voluntatem domini longe futuris
annunciant68 obviously draws on the passage from Cassiodorus quoted at the
beginning of this article: this applies to the qualification of the divine books
(libros divinos) as well as to the pair manu et calamo, as neither the specification
of copying biblical books nor the mention of the reed pen are found in either
Guigo or Gerson, and must therefore go back to Cassiodorus’ discussion of scrip-
turas divinos and his celebration of the scribes’ fight against Satan calamo atra-
mentoque.69 Moreover, in his Chap. VIII (De orthographia), Trithemius brings
back into play an aspect particularly cherished by his sixth-century role model:
the concern for textual correctness, so prominently placed, as we remember, in
the title of Cassiodorus’ chapter: De antiquariis et commemoratione orthographiae.
Things are coming full circle here – an impression given weight and corrob-
orated by a final observation on an element that we found in Cassiodorus but
have not again come across in this parcours until now: the scribes’ fingers.
Trithemius, again in his Chap. VI, comes back to that theme, while alluding to a
monk ‘in one of our cloisters’, exceptionally zealous as a copyist, whose three
writing fingers with which he had written so many volumes (quibus tot volumina
scipserat), after many years (post multos annos) when his grave was opened,
were still preserved (integri et incorrupti) while the rest of his corpse had entirely
disintegrated down to the bones. As the author comments, it was a miraculous
attestation of the holiness of this office before God Almighty (quam sanctum hoc
officium, apud omnipotentem deum iudicetur).70 This very bodily projection of
the copyist’s saintly achievement onto his hand or, more precisely and more
pointedly, onto his fingers, proves to be another tribute to the late antique ref-
erence, even though the tribute’s ‘materializing’ approach might seem to be in
conflict with Cassiodorus’ analogical and highly spiritual interpretation of the
effort of the human scribe’s tres digiti to multiply the caelestia verba on the
parchment as an ‘embodiment’ of the message uttered by the Trinitarian God.
Hence, at the end of this survey we should yield the floor for the final say to
those who are the real protagonists of this paper: the copyists themselves. The
attempt to spiritualize manual production of texts and books by Cassiodorus
and his medieval followers has a haunting counterpart in the guise of a well-

||
68 GW 47538, b Ir.
69 See above n. 2.
70 GW 47538, b Iv.
960 | Felix Heinzer

known colophon, attested in many variants from as early as the seventh or

eighth century:

Tres digiti scribunt et totum corpus laborat. 71

Three fingers write, but the entire body strives.

If this phrase equally evokes the triplicity of the scribe’s writing fingers, as a call
from the ‘shop floor’ – unobstructed by idealizing superstructures as it was in
Cassiodorus’s association of the scribal act with the Holy Trinity’s self-
communication – it rather sternly reminds us that copying of manuscripts was
first and foremost painstaking and laborious travail.

Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Nicholas David Yardley Ball for his wise and sensitive rec-
ommendations on how best to restructure some of my inevitably Germanic sen-
tences in English as well as to Caroline Macé and Richard Bishop for the final
editing.

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Study’, Speculum 26: 288–305.
Webber Jones, Leslie (1947), An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings by Cassiodorus
Senator, New York: Columbia University Press.
 Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting | 963

Fig. 1: Saint Paul as a scribe; Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB II 54, fol. 25r;
early ninth-century, probably hailing from Saint Gall. © Württembergische Landesbibliothek in
Stuttgart.
David Holm
Where did the Ngạn People Come From?
Ritual Manuscripts among the Ngạn in
Northern Vietnam
Abstract: The Ngạn people are a small local population of Tai-language speakers
in the eastern districts of Cao Bằng province in northernmost Vietnam. They are
reportedly descendants of bodyguards hired by the Mạc royal court during the
seventeenth century. It is the aim of this paper to investigate where they came
from, using Vietnamese and Chinese ethnological studies, on-site fieldwork,
and textual analysis. My preliminary conclusion is that the original homeland of
the Ngạn was in the Youjiang River valley in central-western Guangxi. Numer-
ous strands of information point to a strong connection with the native chief-
taincy of Tianzhou, while the lyrics of traditional songs sung by the Ngạn point
to the region of the former chieftaincy of Si’en, just to the east of Tianzhou.

1 Introduction
The present paper is the product of two related research projects. The aim of the
first is to produce critical annotated editions of traditional manuscripts in
Zhuang and related Tai-Kadai languages from Guangxi and contiguous prov-
inces in the southern part of China.1
The aim of the second project is to consolidate our survey of traditional
Zhuang manuscripts, extending it further to the southwestern part of Guangxi
and across the border into Vietnam. In Vietnam, our potential range includes all
of the north-eastern and northern provinces in which Tai speakers and Chinese-
style character scripts are found. Basically, this means all the territory to the
north of the Red River valley, though Tai groups and character scripts are also
found in scattered locations well to the south. A key focus here has been to doc-
ument separately the languages and vernacular scripts of the Tày and the vari-
ous Nùng groups. The Tày are mostly residents of very long standing in this
region, to all intents and purposes indigenous, while the Nùng are relatively
recent migrants from China.

||
1 Holm and Meng (forthcoming).

Open Access. © 2021 David Holm, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-047
968 | David Holm

The Nùng are mostly speakers of Southern Zhuang dialects from the south-
western part of Guangxi or eastern Yunnan, and in Vietnam the various sub-
groups are often referred to by their places of origin in China. Thus the Nùng An
come from Long’an 隆安 county in west-central Guangxi, the Nùng Chau come
from Longzhou 龍州 in the far southwest, and the Nùng Fanh Sling come from
the former chieftaincy of Wancheng 萬承 in present-day Tiandeng 天等 county.
The languages they speak are distinct from each other, even if there is often a
certain degree of mutual intelligibility.2 Their vernacular scripts are also differ-
ent from each other, and different also from the Tày vernacular script.
One of the provinces in which I conducted my earliest fieldwork in Vietnam
was Cao Bằng 高平, a mountainous province more or less directly north of Ha-
noi, just south of the border with China. This is an area which until quite recent-
ly had an overwhelming majority population of Tai speakers, both Tày and
Nùng, but also some other groups. One of the most intriguing of these other
groups was a group called the Ngạn, who are now officially classified by the
Vietnamese government as a ‘local sub-group’ of the more populous Tày. The
classification itself was anomalous, and perhaps a sign that the Ngạn would be
worth investigating.
The Ngạn were said to be descendants of a group of mercenary soldiers who
were hired as bodyguards for the Mạc 莫 royal court during the time when the
Mạc dynasty had its seat of government in Cao Bằng, during the 16th and 17th
centuries. The men were said to be sturdily built, and good at hunting and the
martial arts. Their settlements were distributed along the main roads along
which the Mạc royal retinue travelled from its citadel in present-day Hòa An
district through the mountains to the east. The Ngạn were first mentioned in a
report dated 1908 by the French commandant of the 2nd Military District (Cao
Bằng), Major Leblond, and were reported to be a brave people renowned for
their marksmanship, who lived along the packhorse route between the provin-
cial seat of Cao Bằng and Quảng Uyên to the east.3 The Ngạn population was
relatively small. In Vietnam there are a number of different accounts of where
the Ngạn people came from. The one most often cited is that they came from
Guizhou province in China.4

||
2 A similar mixture of Southern Zhuang speakers from various localities is found on the other
side of the border, in the counties just to the north. For details see Holm 2010. An extensive
wordlist of several of these speech forms is given on pp. 41–58.
3 Hoàng Văn Ma 2009, 318.
4 Ty văn hóa Cao Bằng 1963, 46–47, quoted in Hoàng Văn Ma 2009, 320–321. The above source
was a draft history of Cao Bằng province compiled by the provincial Cultural Department in the
1960s.
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 969

At any rate I included the Ngạn in my research plan, along with visits to
Nùng An and Tày villages in the same general area. My visits were preliminary
visits to selected village communities, with the aim of recording basic vocabu-
laries from a range of different speakers, both male and female, but were also
more specifically targeted at religious practitioners with ritual texts, with the
aim of recording recitations of ritual texts by their traditional owners (the
priests), and conducting follow-up investigations on the meaning of words,
phrases, and longer chunks of text. For the Ngạn, I visited a village community
in Phi Hải commune in Quảng Uyên district, some 40 kilometres to the east of
the Cao Bằng provincial city. A preliminary visit was made in February 2015,
and a follow-up visit took place in August of the same year.

2 Mogong and their rituals

It was during the second stay that I visited the home of Mr. Hòang, a mogong
priest, and recorded his recitation of a ritual to call back the vital spirits of a sick
person.
Before going into a detailed description of the ritual itself, a couple points
need clarification. Mogong 麽公 is the name in Chinese (Zhuang bouxmo) for
male ritual practitioners who conduct Tai-style text-based rituals, with texts
written in a vernacular script recited in the local language. Mogong are found
not only among the Zhuang, Bouyei, and other Tai-speaking groups in China,
but also very widely across mainland Southeast Asia.5 Similar practitioners (mo)
are also found among the Dai in Sipsong Panna in southernmost Yunnan, but
there their ritual texts are written in an Indic script. Mogong rituals may be
small-scale, conducted by single priests for individual households, or may be
larger-scale rituals conducted on behalf of communities, or in former times on
behalf of the chiefly lineage and the welfare of the domain. The core of these
rituals is the recitation of a sacred text, rather than sacred dances, mudrās, and
other ritual manipulations (‘methods’) as practiced by Buddhist and Daoist
priests.
A very common type of mogong ritual was the recalling of vital spirits
(‘souls’) that had gone astray. Among the Tày at least, there were held to be
twelve such vital spirits (khwan). Throughout much of the far south of China,
but also in Thailand and Laos, there was a view that the vital energies of human

||
5 See Holm 2017, 173–189.
970 | David Holm

beings, animals, and even plant crops could easily leave their bodies and take
flight, leading to loss of energy, illness or even death. There was a range of rituals
performed by mogong to address this: there were texts for the recall of the souls
of rice, buffaloes, chickens and ducks, fish, and also human beings. The function
of such rituals was to locate the lost souls, bring them back, and re-install them
in the body.6 It is worth noting that mogong in Guangxi recite their ritual texts
based on a version that they learnt by heart, orally and usually at an early age,
rather than on the basis of a literal reading of the text. This phenomenon is
commonly referred to as ‘performative literacy’. It turns out that Mr. Hòang’s
recitation also was based on a similar mechanism.7 Apart from liturgical manu-
scripts, recited during the conduct of rituals, Mr Hòang had other manuscripts
in his possession. Among these was a family register handed down in
Mr Hòang’s family (Fig. 1). This was a Chinese-style jiapu 家譜, written in Chinese.
This stated clearly that the family came from a village in Tianzhou (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1: Cover of Mr Hòang’s family register.

||
6 See Holm 2004.
7 What this means is that such texts alone, abstracted from their original social and
performative context or taken from their traditional owners, cannot be used as a guide to their
use in society and culture, or even their meaning on the lexical level.
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 971

Fig. 2: First page of Mr Hòang’s family register, showing reference to Tianzhou 田州 (second
line).

3 The recitation
The recitation was conducted by Mr Hòang in the main room of his house, a
traditional house made of wooden planking and bamboo with the living quar-
ters elevated above ground level. The main room was also where the family’s
ancestral altar was located. A small square table was set up facing the ancestral
altar, and offerings of flowers, a bowl containing uncooked glutinous rice, and
various ritual paraphernalia – a small hand bell and a wooden ‘thunder block’
of the kind used by Daoist priests – were placed there in readiness. The words of
the ritual are held to be the words of the ancestors, and here at least people held
to the belief that the words of the ritual could not be recited outside their ritual
context without incurring displeasure and punishment from the ancestors and
other spirits. Performance of the ritual would also require a gift of money,
placed inside an envelope and put on the altar table along with the other of-
ferings.
972 | David Holm

Mr Hòang opened the ritual proceedings by banging the thunder block on

the offerings table and ringing the small hand-bell, said to be done in order to
attract the attention of the spirits, and usher them down into the ritual space.
He then began his recitation of the text, which took the form of a chant, unac-
companied by any musical instruments. During this recitation, he sat cross-
legged in front of the altar table, with the ritual manuscript in front of him, turn-
ing the pages at more or less the right time (Fig. 3). After the recitation, there
was a short procedural segment, during which the returning vital spirits of the
sick person were cemented in place. I was then allowed to photograph the man-
uscript, and conduct a short follow-up interview with Mr Hòang.

Fig. 3: Mr Hòang prepares for the recitation.

The manuscript Mr Hòang used for the ritual recitation was a small thread-
bound volume, measuring roughly 11 cm each side, with character text written
in columns Chinese-style from right to left (Fig. 4). In the same volume there
were other sections containing ritual texts, Chinese-style astrological tables,
and illustrations of human bodies and faces. There was not enough time to ask
Mr Hòang about any of these matters.
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 973

Fig. 4: Title page of Mr Hòang’s ritual manuscript.

4 The ritual text

After a preliminary analysis of both the manuscript itself and Mr Hòang’s recita-
tion, there are a number of unanswered questions, both at the lexical level (the
meaning of individual words) and at the broader ethnographic level. At 244
lines, this ritual segment is relatively short. Still, preparation of an interlinear
version of the text allows us to make a preliminary analysis.
First, and at the most obvious level, the formulaic lines at the beginning of
the text did indeed conform to the pattern found in mogong texts from the Tian-
zhou region in west-central Guangxi. What follows are the first four lines of
Mr Hòang’s text:8

三 盖 三 皇 住 1
ɬaːm1 kaːi5 ɬaːm1 vaːŋ2 ɕɯː5 3a:1
three world three king establish
The Three Realms were established by the Three Kings,

||
8 In the second line, giving the pronunciation transcribed in IPA, I give tone categories (num-
bers 1–8) for each word, but no tone flags. The recitation was chanted, rather than spoken. Actual
tone values will have to be ascertained during follow-up investigations in the field.
974 | David Holm

四 盖 四 皇 造 2
tiː5 kaːi5 tiː5 vaːŋ2 lɐɯː4
four world four king create
The Four Realms were created by the Four Kings.

皇 造 立 造 連 3
vaːŋ2 ɕaːu4 lɐpm7 ɕaːu4 liɛn2 3a:2
king create darkness create light
The Kings made the darkness and made the light,

皇 造 天 造 地 4
vaːŋ2 ɕaːu4 tiɛn1 ɕaːu4 tiː6
king create heaven create earth
The Kings made Heaven and made the Earth.

If we compare these opening lines with the opening lines of the Hanvueng ritual
text from southern Bama county, north of Tianzhou, we find:

三 盖 三 王 至。 1
ɬaːmA kaːi@ ɬaːmA βuǝŋb ɕiː@
sam gaiq sam vuengz ciq
three world three king establish
The Three Realms were established by the Three Kings,

四 盖 四 王 造。 2
ɬɤiː@ kaːi@ ɬɤiː@ βuǝŋb ɕaːu\
seiq gaiq seiq vuengz caux
four world four king create
The Four Realms were created by the Four Kings.

王 造 立 造 連。 3
βuǝŋb ɕaːu\ lɐpe ɕaːu\ liːǝn b
vuengz caux laep caux lienz
king create darkness create light
The Kings made the darkness and made the light,

王 造 天 造 地。 4
βuǝŋb ɕaːu\ tiɛnA ɕaːu\ tiː f
vuengz caux dien caux deih
king create heaven create earth
The Kings made Heaven and made the Earth.

Apart from some minor differences in written representation and pronunciation,

the lines are identical. These lines opening the ritual mark the transition from
mundane speech to sacred speech. They are cosmogonic in nature: they provide
a succinct account of the beginnings of the world which human beings inhabit.
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 975

The Three Kings and Four Kings are variously identified: in the Tianzhou area,
the Three Kings are identified with Heaven, Earth and the Underworld, and the
Four Kings with the spirit owners of the sky, earth, mountains, and waters.9
Local differences in interpretation are doubtless found.10 These lines, even if
written in different ways, remain essentially ‘the same’. In fact, though, the char-
acters in the Ngạn text are almost exactly the same as those in a mogong text
from Yufeng 玉鳳 parish in northern Tianyang county.11 In some texts the for-
mula is reduced to a single couplet. The way in which the first couplet is written
is very similar in all cases. The only differences are that in some manuscripts 王
wáng ‘king’ is written instead of 皇 huáng ‘emperor’, and 置 zhì ‘to establish’ or
始 shǐ ‘to begin’ is written instead of 至 zhì ‘to arrive’ at the end of the first line.12
This is further confirmation that the Ngạn text is part of the same tradition.

Fig. 5: First page of Mr Hòang’s ritual text.

||
9 For full discussion see Holm 2004, 69–70.
10 See Holm 2004, Original Notes on Text 1, 64–65.
11 See the photograph of the first page of MS 4 in Plate 38, Holm 2004. The only difference is
the character 至 zhì ‘to arrive’ rather than 住 zhù ‘to dwell’ at the end of the first line. The
characters 王 wáng ‘king’ and 皇 huáng ‘emperor’ are both pronounced the same in Zhuang, as
vuengz, and are regarded as interchangeable.
12 This includes manuscripts MS 1 and MS 3–7. Places of origin in present-day Tianyang,
Bama and Bose counties are shown on Map 2 on p. 9 in Holm 2004. For further examples see
ibid. Plates 40–42 and 49. The lines would be recited in the same way in any case, regardless of
slightly different ways of writing them.
976 | David Holm

Mr Hòang’s text for recalling vital spirits goes on to narrate the creation of fami-
lies, springs (water sources), fish, and so on. Other mogong texts go on to nar-
rate the origins of other entities, depending on the focus of the ritual.13 In the
case of the Hanvueng text, which is recited at rituals to quell intractable family
quarrels, the text goes on to tell of the origins of the Demons of Enmity.14
This particular formulaic opening in mogong texts is found in texts from the
area of Tianzhou, on the northern bank of the Youjiang River.15 It is not found
elsewhere – further to the north, even nearby in Donglan 東蘭, and so far has
not been found either in other parts of Guangxi, eastern Yunnan, or Guizhou.16

5 The Ngạn script

Overall, the vernacular script used in this manuscript is of the same pattern as
the scripts from the Tianzhou area, and is quite different from the vernacular
script of the Tày. Clear differences can also be seen between the Ngạn script and
Nùng scripts. A quick overview can be obtained by looking at the Appendix,
which lists the most common graphic representations of the 60 common words
used in our survey of the traditional Zhuang character scripts (Table 2). In the
table, Bama (BM) represents the Tianzhou scripts, the Cao Bằng marriage songs
(CBMS) represent Tày, and Cao Bằng Nùng (CBN) represents an example of a
Nùng Giang script.
In this short ritual text only 48 out of the 60 common words are found, but
that still allows us to draw up a preliminary profile. In the case of two mor-
phemes, we have two graphs that are equally common, so that makes a total of
50 exemplars altogether. We can compare the graphic renderings of these com-
mon words in the Ngạn manuscript with those found in Guangxi, Guizhou,
Yunnan, and northern Vietnam. Full information about the overall distribution
of each of the graphs in the survey is found in the relevant sections of Part 2 in

||
13 See the examples in Texts 1–12 in Holm 2004.
14 Holm and Meng 2015, 51–53 (English translation), 91–99 (interlinear text), and 286–295
(textual and ethnographic notes) (lines 13–76 respectively).
15 See especially the twelve mogong ritual texts included in Holm 2004.
16 Our survey of Zhuang and Bouyei manuscripts from 45 locations included mogong texts
from all these areas. For discussion see Holm 2013. I say ‘so far’ because our survey was far
from exhaustive, and there may well be other pockets of similar mogong manuscripts in other
localities.
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 977

Holm 2013. Overall, we can classify the graphs in the Ngạn text in the following
categories:17
A. The same graph or a graph in the same semantic-phonetic series is domi-
nant in Tianzhou:
32 examples (2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18a, 21, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33,
34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 44, 50, 51, 52, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60)
B. A different graph or graphic series is dominant in Tianzhou, but the Ngạn
graph is also found:
11 examples (18b, 22, 30, 33b, 35, 37, 42, 43, 53, 54, 56)
C. The graph is not found in Tianzhou but found elsewhere in the Zhuang-
Bouyei area:
4 examples (15, 46, 47, 49)
D. Local innovations:
4 examples (6, 23, 40, 48)
E. Borrowings from the Tày vernacular script:
1 definite example (3), and two possible examples (37, 53)

Taking the first two categories together gives us a total of 43 graphs out of 50, or
86% commonality between the Ngạn script and that of Tianzhou. This is a rela-
tively high percentage, given that the migration of the Ngạn people is said to
have taken place in the 16th and 17th centuries. Manuscripts from within the
Tianzhou area in any case evince a degree of commonality of 87.5% at the high-
est but an average more like 79%.18 By comparison, the degree of commonality
in the Tày vernacular script over a much wider area – several Vietnamese prov-
inces – is somewhat higher.19
The Tianzhou system itself exhibits only a low level of correlation with manu-
scripts from Guizhou.20 For the Ngạn script, the percentages of commonality with
Guizhou manuscripts are even lower.21 Low percentages like this are an indication
of separate origins of script varieties and subsequent lack of social interaction at
the local level. While the number of Guizhou manuscripts surveyed thus far is on
the low side, and this evidence could be deemed insufficient, nevertheless it

||
17 The numbers below correspond to the items listed in the Appendix (Table 2).
18 For discussion see Holm 2013, 746–748 and Map 61.1.
19 On which see Holm 2020, 202–203.
20 The percentages are 15.1% for Zhenning, 15.2% for Ceheng, and 27.3% for Libo. See Holm
2013, Map 61.1.
21 The percentages are 6.7% for Zhenning, 3.6% for Ceheng, and 23.4% for Libo. These
calculations are based on the number of possible matches with the relevant entries in Holm
2013, 814–825 (Appendix 3, ‘The Most Common Representations of Common Words’).
978 | David Holm

appears as if there is no evidence here of any connection between the Ngạn and a
hypothetical Guizhou homeland, as suggested by Vietnamese sources.
The question of borrowings from the Tày script is made somewhat more
complicated by the fact that the Tày script has quite a few characters in common
with the Zhuang script of the Xijiang 西江 (West River) area in central Guangxi,
including Tianzhou. Overall, the Tày script has around 30% in common with
Zhuang scripts north of the border, along with around 70% in a more recent
stratum dating from around the 17th century that is quite different from the
Zhuang scripts.22 The Tày script of Lạng Sơn has more of these graphs in
common with Zhuang than the Tày vernacular script of Cao Bằng. In the
analysis here, I have identified one clear case of borrowing from the Tày script
into the Ngạn script in our list of 60 common words. Other graphs Zhuang and
Ngạn have in common with Tày are:
16 examples (2, 5, 7, 12, 14, 17, 31, 33b, 37, 40, 44, 51, 53, 54, 57, 58)

Whether or not any of these other graphs are seen locally as Tày borrowings is a
matter for further investigation. At any rate, it should not be surprising that the
Ngạn have borrowed graphic usages from the Tày, living in an environment in
which Tày is the lingua franca. Social interaction and text borrowing over
decades and centuries would naturally result in texts which show the traces of
these interactions.

Table 1: Discussion of specific examples.23

Zhuang Ngạn commentary

2 aeu Õ dominant in Tianzhou, Mashan and Wuming, but also found over a wide
area from Liuzhou in the east to Napo in the SW, and in eastern Yunnan
(EY) and Cao Bằng; found in Libo in Guizhou but not further north (for
map see Holm 2013, 100).
3 bae 悲 borrowed from Tày. Found in the graphic systems of the marriage songs
of Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn, and also Tianbao in SW Guangxi. Not found
elsewhere in Guangxi or Guizhou (map 3.1 in Holm 2013, 110). The graph
here has been simplified by removal of 去 qù ‘to go’ on the right-hand
side. The graphs $ and x, both graphs common in Tày manuscripts,
are also found in the Ngạn text, though in smaller numbers.

||
22 See Holm 2020, 203–205.
23 NE = north-eastern Guangxi; EC = east-central Guangxi; CN = central-northern Guangxi.
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 979

Zhuang Ngạn commentary

4 baenz 分 graphic series dominant in Tianzhou, with distribution similar to (2)

aeu. Most common graph in Tianzhou is 貧 pín ‘poor’, but 分 fēn ‘to
divide’ is also found. Found east as far as Guiping in eastern Guangxi
(map 4.1 in Holm 2013, 124). 貧 is also found in the Ngạn manuscript.
5 bak 百 graphic series found in Tianzhou, Mashan, and other areas (map 5.1 in
Holm 2013, 134). 咟, with a MOUTH radical, is the dominant graph in the
areas covered by the Tianzhou and Si’en chieftaincies and in other Cen
domains; here the Ngạn graph represents a simplification.
6 bi " Pí 皮 ‘skin’ is not found elsewhere as a phonetic component. See map
6.1 in Holm 2013, 146. The graph here is likely to be a local innovation.
7 boux 甫 most common graph in Tianzhou, Wuming, Libo, Tianlin, and Cao Bằng
Tày (map 7.1 in Holm 2013, 154).
11 daeuj 斗 most common graph everywhere (map 11.1 in Holm 2013, 202).
12 dawz 提 found in 31 locations including Tianzhou (map 12.1 in Holm 2013, 210)
13 de 他 found in 26 locations including Tianzhou, the NE, and EC Guangxi (map
13.1 in Holm 2013, 222)
14 dox 度 found in the Tianzhou area, Mashan, and east as far as Guiping (map
14.1 in Holm 2013, 230)
15 duz 度 found in Huanjiang in the north and Xichou in eastern Yunnan;
Tianzhou mostly has 啚 tú (map 15.1 in Holm 2013, 240)
17 faex A 10 locations, including Tianzhou, the north, the SW, and northern
Vietnam; represents the pronunciation mai4 (map 17.1 in Holm 2013, 264).
18a gaiq 盖 dominant in the Tianzhou area, found in 11 locations (map 18.1 in Holm
2013, 276)
18b 鶏 found in Tiandong, Mashan, and Pingguo.
21 gou 古 common along with 故 gù in Tianzhou, also in north (map 21.1 in Holm
2013, 304)
22 guh 國 found in 8 locations including Tianzhou, Guiping, and Tianlin; dominant
graph in Tianzhou is 郭 guō (map 22.1 in Holm 2013, 312)
23 gwn # 斤 jīn not found elsewhere as a phonetic component (map 23.1 in Holm
2013, 326). This is likely to be a local innovation.
24 gwnz 忐 found in 11 locations, especially Tianzhou but also east as far as Laibin
(map 21.1 in Holm 2013, 304)
26 haemh ( series based on 含 hán, widespread and dominant in Tianzhou (map
26.1 in Holm 2013, 356)
28 haeuj 口 found in 19 locations, widespread in EC and Guiping as well as
Tianzhou (map 28.1 p. 373)
29 haeux ) found in 13 locations, mainly in Tianzhou but also Mashan, Shanglin
and central north (map 29.1 in Holm 2013, 383)
980 | David Holm

Zhuang Ngạn commentary

30 hauq . series found in Tiandong, Tianyang song, Mashan, and the north; series
based on 毛 máo is dominant in Tianzhou (map 30.1 in Holm 2013, 394)
31 hawj 許 found in 20 locations, in Tianzhou but also EC, CN, eastern Yunnan and
northern Vietnam (map 31.1 in Holm 2013, 402)
32 hwnj u widespread, and dominant in Tianzhou; series has 15 variant graphs
(map 31.1 in Holm 2013, 402)
33a lai X widespread, series with 9 variants in 11 locations including Tianzhou
(map 32.1 in Holm 2013, 426)
33b 来 found in 11 locations including 3 in Tianzhou
34 laj 忑 found in 12 locations, dominant in Tianzhou (map 34.1 in Holm 2013, 436)
35 lawz 吕 series is found in 3 locations: Mashan, Funing and Guiping; in Tianzhou
黎 lí is dominant (map 35.1 in Holm 2013, 446)
36 lwg 力 Series dominant in Tianzhou, also found in Mashan, EC, CN, and
Guiping (map 36.1 in Holm 2013, 464)
37 ma : series found in 17 locations, including Tianzhou; in Tianzhou 馬 mǎ is
dominant (map 37.1 in Holm 2013, 472). The graph : is a vernacular
variant of 麻 má, particularly common in Vietnam.
38 mbouj 不 found in 28 locations including Tianzhou, and as far east as Guiping
(map 38.1 in Holm 2013, 480)
39 mbwn q series dominant in Tianzhou, with 12 graphic variants in 19 locations
(map 39.1 in Holm 2013, 494)
40 miz 0 series dominant in Tianzhou, and widespread elsewhere (map 40.1 in
Holm 2013, 504). The Ngạn graph 0 represents a form of 眉 méi with a
COWRY radical replacing the normal EYE radical. The two are graphically
similar. This seems to be a local innovation.
42 naeuz 丑 found in Bose as well as Napo in the SW, and Yishan and Luocheng in the
NE (map 42.1 in Holm 2013, 524). The actual basis of the phonetic
borrowing is 扭 niǔ ‘to twist’, 紐 niǔ ‘knot’, or another graph in the same
graphic series.
43 ndaej 得 a semantic borrowing found in 14 locations, including Tianzhou; in
Tianzhou 礼 lǐ is mostly dominant (map 43.1 in Holm 2013, 536)
44 ndang & variant of ', a common Zhuang graph for ndang found in 20 locations;
dominant in Tianzhou but also in Mashan, Wuming, CN, SW and
northern Vietnam (map 44.1 in Holm 2013, 546)
46 ndei 黎 found in the SW and in Cao Bằng Nùng; 利 lì dominant in Tianzhou (map
46.1 in Holm 2013, 568)
47 ndeu 刁 found in 4 locations in eastern Guangxi (map 47.1 in Holm 2013, 580)
48 ndwen 1 not found elsewhere; the dominant form in Tianzhou is !, with 年 nián as
the phonetic element (map 48.1 in Holm 2013, 592). The 且 qiě element
on the right-hand side may be a graphic substitution for 旦 dàn; the
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 981

Zhuang Ngạn commentary

graphs 吞 tūn and y are found for ndwen in Tianzhou and Funing in
eastern Yunnan.
49 neix 女 found in Tianlin and Bose (northwestern locations); dominant in
Tianzhou is 你 nǐ, found in 26 locations (map 49.1 in Holm 2013, 604)
50 ngoenz 昙 most common form, found in 13 locations and dominant in Tianzhou
(map 50.1 in Holm 2013, 614)
51 ok 屋 most common form, found in 14 locations and dominant in Tianzhou
(map 51.1 in Holm 2013, 624)
52 ra , various forms of 羅 luó are dominant in Tianzhou but also east as far as
Guiping (map 52.1 in Holm 2013, 634). , is a vernacular simplification
of 羅 luó common in texts throughout Guangxi and northern Vietnam.
53 raemx 淰 most common form, found in 17 locations; 淋 lín series is more
dominant in Tianzhou (map 53.1 in Holm 2013, 646)
54 raen 吞 6 variants found in 14 locations; 吞 found in the EC: Laibin, Shanglin,
Xincheng, Mashan, and Guiping; 忻 xīn dominant in Tianzhou (map 54.1
in Holm 2013, 656)
55 ranz r vernacular variant of 蘭 lán; series dominant in Tianzhou and most
common graphic series; character subject to various radical
simplifications (map 55.1 in Holm 2013, 668; see also pp. 672–673).
The ‘diacritical marks’ on either side of the central graphic elements are
a cursive (‘grass hand’) rendering of 门 mén ‘doorway’.24
56 roengz / most common series, found in 24+ locations with 17 graphic variants;
隆 lóng dominant in Tianzhou (map 56.1 in Holm 2013, 682); the Ngạn
graph / is a vernacular variant of 陇 lǒng.
57 rox 鲁 most common representation, dominant in Tianzhou and also EC,
Guiping, Napo, and northern Vietnam (Lạng Sơn Tày) (map 57.1 in Holm
2013, 694)
58 vaiz Ð dominant in Tianzhou, though in varying simplified graphic forms (ex-
plained in Holm 2013, 713–715); this variant found in 8 locations, repre-
sents a radically simplified form of 懷 huái (map 51.1 in Holm 2013, 710).
59 vunz 伝 found in 23 locations and dominant in Tianzhou (map 59.1 in Holm
2013, 718)
60 youq ? series dominant in Tianzhou, as well as Mashan, Laibin and the SW
(map 60.1 in Holm 2013, 728); this variant of > (幼) with the SILK radical
on the left is also found in manuscripts from Tianzhou. 25

||
24 For similar examples see Furutani 2001, 717.
25 See Liang Tingwang 2009 for the Chang Tangwang 唱唐王, a novel in verse from Sitangzhen
四塘鎮 in Bose.
982 | David Holm

Analysis of the Ngạn material in comparison with texts from Bose, Tianyang,
Bama and Tiandong allows us to identify the following graphs as borrowings
from the Tày script: (3) bae, and possibly also (37) ma, and (53) raemx. The bor-
rowing indicates a certain level of interaction with the wider society within
which the Ngạn found themselves. This could be a result of text borrowing or
text stealing from local mogong, or broader exposure to the Tày script. All the
other graphs except for one or two are well attested in the Zhuang scripts of the
Youjiang area. The one or two exceptions are likely to be local innovations.
Traditional manuscripts from the Youjiang area also show signs of readings
based not on the local spoken dialect or lingua franca, but on dialects from both
northern Guangxi or the Bouyei areas and from the southern Central Tai areas. I
have shown that such traces can be linked with past historical events and with
patterns of mobility and migration.26 Local people including the priest may have
forgotten such connections, or not recognise the lexical items or pronunciations
as exotic, but their recitations and the way the manuscript text is written bears
the traces of them.
For this reason, it is not surprising to find traces of script borrowing and
possibly also forms of adaptation in Ngạn manuscripts in Vietnam.

6 Conclusions
(a) The recitation of the text indicates that the language of the Ngạn shows very
clear characteristics of the Youjiang sub-dialect of Northern Zhuang, includ-
ing affricated initial consonants (e.g. tɕɐu3 rather than kjɐu3 for ‘head’),
tone values very close to those found in the Youjiang River area, and basic
spoken vocabulary close to that of Northern Zhuang in the same area, with
some admixture of Tày borrowings;
(b) both the format of the text-based mogong recitation and the details of the
vernacular script itself show a clear linkage with the mogong recitations
from Tianzhou, again with some admixture of Tày borrowings in both ritual
vocabulary and graphic usage;
(c) the family register of the Hòang family states specifically that their ancestor
came from Tianzhou.

||
26 Holm 2015, 1–32.
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 983

The mogong manuscript discussed here is in basically the same format as the
mogong manuscripts we have analysed in previous publications.27 All these
ritual texts begin with the same formulaic introduction, and are written and
performed in five-syllable lines of verse exhibiting canonical parallelism.
Poetics and parallelism of this kind are a general feature of Zhuang ritual texts
and song texts across a very wide area, but thus far the same formulaic opening
has been found only in mogong texts from the area of Tianyang, Bama, Bose,
and Tiandong counties, in the former area governed by the Tianzhou
chieftaincy. Mogong texts from the southern parishes of Donglan county, just to
the north, lack this formulaic opening and show quite a different style; this area
was a part of Donglan, a different native chiefly domain, during the pre-modern
period.
On the other hand, there are close parallels with the Ngạn brigands’ song
lyrics and the song culture of present-day Pingguo and Tiandong counties fur-
ther east along the Youjiang River, to the east of Tianzhou. It is possible of
course that the Ngạn people came from a number of different localities within
the Youjiang River region. By analogy, there are reportedly four different sub-
groups of the Nùng An people in Quảng Uyên district east of Cao Bằng,28 so this
may also possibly be the situation with the Ngạn.
The historical context of the arrival of the Ngạn people, or at least the con-
tingent who served as a force of elite troops guarding the Mạc royal court, is in
need of further clarification. The Mạc had their capital in Cao Bằng for a period
of over 70 years, from 1601 to 1677.29 The overall military history of this period,
and the general pattern of administration at the court and in the territories un-
der their control, is reasonably well-documented, as is their policy of fostering
education and holding relatively frequent imperial examinations and recruiting
successful graduates into their service,30 but more specific detail about military
organisation is needed. It may be also that further fieldwork in the area will turn
up local documents, including family registers, that might shed light on these
matters.

||
27 Holm 2004, Holm and Meng 2015.
28 David Holm, fieldwork, Quảng Uyên district, February and August 2015.
29 See especially Lịch sử Tỉnh Cao Bằng 2009, 274–287 (Chapter IV Part III ‘Nhà Mạc ở Cao
Bằng’).
30 On which see Niu Kaijun 2000, 46.
984 | David Holm

Acknowledgements
Research on which this article was based was supported by an Australian
Research Council-funded large grant project on The Old Zhuang Script, 1996–
1999. Subsequent support came from a research grant from the Science Council
of Taiwan (MOST) from 2011 to 2017, project title ‘Vernacular Character Writing
Systems among the Tai-speaking Peoples of Southwest China and Northern
Vietnam’ (grant nos. 102-2410-H-004-055–, 103-2410-H-004-111–, and 104-2410-
H-004-162–).
In Guangxi my principal collaborator over many years has been Professor
Meng Yuanyao of the Guangxi University for Nationalities. My other long-time
research associate was the late Ling Shudong, formerly Deputy Director of the
Zhuang Ethnological Museum in Jingxi. In Vietnam my chief collaborator has
been Professor Trần Trí Dõi of the National University for Humanities and Social
Sciences Hanoi. Many thanks are due to him and my research assistant Bui Hai
Binh for their invaluable assistance.

References
Furutani Sōin 古谷蒼韻 (ed.) (2001), Mei Sei gyōsō jiten 明清行草字典, Tokyo: Nigensha.
Hoàng Thị Quỳnh Nha (2003), Sli lượn hát đôi của người Tày Nùng ở Cao Bằng [Antiphonal
songs of the Tày and Nùng in Cao Bằng], Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Văn hóa Thông tin.
Hoàng Văn Ma (2009), ‘Người Ngạn và Suy nghĩ về vấn đề xác định thành phần dân tộc’ [The
Ngạn people and some thoughts on the question of determining their ethnic
composition], in Tạ Văn Thông (ed.), Tìm hiểu Ngôn ngữ các dân tộc ở Việt Nam
[Investigations into the languages of the ethnic groups of Vietnam], Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản
Khoa học Xã hội, 318–330.
Holm, David (2004), Recalling Lost Souls: The Baeu Rodo Scriptures, Tai Cosmogonic Texts from
Guangxi in Southern China, Bangkok: White Lotus.
Holm, David (2010), ‘Linguistic Diversity along the China-Vietnam Border’, Linguistics of the
Tibeto-Burman Area, 33/2: 1–63.
Holm, David (2013), Mapping the Old Zhuang Character Script: a Vernacular Writing System
from Southern China (Handbuch der Orientalistik, 4:28), Leiden: Brill.
Holm, David (2015), ‘Dialect Variation within Traditional Zhuang Manuscripts’, International
Journal of Chinese Character Studies, 1/2: 1–32.
Holm, David (2017), ‘Mogong and Chieftaincy in western Guangxi and Southeast Asia’, Asian
Ethnicity, 18/2: 173–189.
Holm, David (2020), ‘The Tày and Zhuang vernacular scripts: Preliminary comparisons’, Journal
of Chinese Writing Systems, 4/3: 197–213.
Holm, David and Meng Yuanyao (eds) (2015), Hanvueng: The Goose King and the Ancestral
King, an Epic from Guangxi in Southern China (Zhuang Traditional Texts, 1), Leiden: Brill.
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 985

Holm, David and Meng Yuanyao (eds) (forthcoming), The Brigands’ Song: Serving in the Army
of the Native Chieftain. A Traditional Song Text from Guangxi in Southern China (Zhuang
Traditional Texts, 2), Leiden: Brill.
Liang Tingwang 梁庭望 (ed.) (2009), Hanzu ticai shaoshu minzu xushishi yizhu 漢族題材少數民
族敘事詩譯注 [Annotated narrative poems of minority peoples with Han Chinese subject
matter], Beijing: Minzu chubanshe.
Lịch sử Tỉnh Cao Bằng [History of the province of Cao Bằng] (2009), Tỉnh Ủy – Họi Đồng Nhân
Dân Ủy Ban Nhân Dân Tỉnh Cao Bằng and Viện Sử Học Việt Nam (eds), Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản
Chính trị Quốc gia.
Niu Kaijun 牛凯軍 (2000), ‘Annan Mo shi Gaoping zhengquan chutan’ 安南莫氏高平政權初探,
[A preliminary enquiry into the Annam Mạc lineage regime in Cao Bằng], Dongnanya 東南
亞 3–4: 45–51.
Ty Văn hóa Cao Bằng (ed.) (1963), Sơ thảo lịch sử Cao Bằng [A preliminary discussion of the
history of Cao Bằng], Cao Bằng: Ty Văn hóa Cao Bằng.

Appendix:
Common Words in Ngạn, Zhuang, Tày and Nùng
Manuscript codes:

BM manuscript from Yandong 燕洞 parish in Bama county (Holm 2013, 801)

CBNg manuscript from Phi Hải commune, Quảng Uyên district, Cao Bằng
CBMS Cao Bằng marriage songs (Holm 2013, 812)
CBN Cao Bằng Nùng mogong manuscript, Trà Lĩnh district, Cao Bằng (Holm 2013, 812)

Notes:
– Two characters listed indicates that they were found in equal numbers.
– A hyphen (-) indicates that no example of the word was found in the
requisite manuscript.
– Ngạn transcription is taken from Hoàng Thị Quỳnh Nha 2003, 15–40.
986 | David Holm

Table 2: Common Words in Ngạn, Zhuang, Tày and Nùng.

Zhuang gloss Ngạn Tày BM CBNg CBMS CBN

1
1 aen (Ɂan ) clf. for objects ẳn ăn 恩 - 咹 个
2 aeu (Ɂau1) to take ảu au 歐 * > j
1
3 bae (pai ) to go pảy pây 批 悲 $ k
4 baenz (pan2) to accomplish pằn pần 貧 分 边 貧
7
5 bak (Ɂbaːk ) mouth pác pác 咟 百 咟 咟
6 bi (piː1) year pỉ pi 脾 " 4 年
7 boux (pou4) clf. for people pù pú 甫 甫 5 5
8 cam (ɕaːm1) to ask sam sam R - 6 尋
2
9 coenz (ɕɵn ) clf., sentence sòn cằm v - 7 -
10 daengz (tɐŋ2) to arrive tằng thâng 滕 - 汨 `
11 daeuj (tɐu3) to come táu - 斗 斗 - l
2
12 dawz (tɐɯ ) to take in hand cẳm thư, cằm 提 提 書3 提
13 de (tɛː1) he, she, it tẻ mìn 他 他 8 -
14 dox (toː4) each other tò căn 度 度 根 同
15 duz (tuː2) clf. animals tua tua 啚 度 9 -
16 dwk (tɯk7) to hit tức tức 得 - - 打
17 faex (fai4) tree mày mạy T ß A T
5
18 gaiq (kaːi ) clf.; this, that cái cái 盖 盖 鶏 - -
19 gangj (kaːŋ3) to speak cáng cảng 講 - ; -
20 gonq (koːn5) before cốn cón 貫 - 羣 官
1
21 gou (kou ) I, me củ ngò 故 古 - -
22 guh (kuː6) to do cuộc hất 郭 國 < 乞
1
23 gwn (kɯn ) to eat cửn kin 哏 # = m
24 gwnz (kɯn2) above, on cừn nưa U 忐 @ @
3
25 gyaeuj (kjɐu ) head cháu hua 九 - - -
26 haemh (hɐm6) evening hăm khằm V ( - -
7
27 haet (hɐt ) morning hắt nâư < - - -
28 haeuj (hau3) to enter háu khảu 口 口 叺 -
4
29 haeux (hau ) rice hảu khẩu ) ) B n
30 hauq (haːu5) speech háo kháo W . - -
31 hawj (hɐɯ3) to give hấư hẩư 許 許 許 許
3
32 hwnj (hɯn ) to ascend hứn khỉn 恨 u C 肯
33 lai (laːi1) much, many lải lai X X 来 来 -
34 laj (laː3) below lá tẩư 逻 忑 D -
 Where did the Ngạn People Come From? | 987

Zhuang gloss Ngạn Tày BM CBNg CBMS CBN

2
35 lawz (lɐɯ ) which lầư rầư 黎 吕 E -
36 lwg (lɯk8) child lực lực 力 力 F F
1
37 ma (maː ) to come back mà mà w : 麻 e
38 mbouj (Ɂbou3) not bo, bô bấu 不 不 保 否
1
39 mbwn (Ɂbɯn ) heaven, sky bửn bân Z q G 奔
40 miz (miː2) to have mì mì 眉 0 眉 眉
2
41 mwngz (mɯŋ ) you mừng mầư 明 - - -
42 naeuz (nɐu2) to say nàu cạ [ 丑 H -
3
43 ndaej (Ɂdɐi ) to get đày đáy \ 得 帝 礼
44 ndang (Ɂdaːŋ1) body đảng đang ' & 身 '
45 ndaw (Ɂdɐɯ1) inside đẩư đâư 内 - I o
1
46 ndei (Ɂdei ) good đỉ đây 俐 黎 低 黎
47 ndeu (Ɂdeːu1) one đêu đeo 吊 刁 刀 -
48 ndwen (Ɂdɯːǝn1) month đưởn bươn - 1 J 月
49 neix (nei4) this nì nẩy 你 女 乃 -
50 ngoenz (ŋɵn2) day ngòn hoằn 昙 昙 K 旻
51 ok (Ɂoːk7) to emerge ôóc oóc 屋 屋 沃 屋
1
52 ra (ɣaː ) to look for lả, rả xa 羅 , 車 架
53 raemx (ɣɐm4) water lằm nặm 淰 淰 淰 淰
54 raen (ɣɐn1) to see hẳn hăn 忻 吞 L p
55 ranz (ɣaːn2) house làn rườn 蘭 r M 槤
56 roengz (ɣɵŋ2) to descend lòng lồng 隆 / N g
57 rox (ɣoː4) to know lò rụ, chắc 魯 鲁 聀昼 鲁
58 vaiz (vaːi2) water buffalo [vài] hoài 懷 Ð O 怀 h
2
59 vunz (vʌn ) person hùn cần 伝 伝 P i
60 youq (Ɂjou5) to be at dú giú > ? Q Q
Oliver Huck
(Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of
John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme
Abstract: Jazz is generally viewed as the opposite of a musical genre fixed in a
score, thus assuming that manuscripts do not play an important role in jazz
history. After an overview of manuscripts in early jazz emphasizing the im-
portance for obtaining copyright, the autograph manuscripts of John Coltrane’s
A Love Supreme are examined. By comparing the different takes of the recording
session and a concert registration to these manuscripts and the liner notes of
the album, the role of manuscripts in performances is questioned. For the fourth
part of A Love Supreme it is most likely that in the recording session – in con-
trast to the concert in Antibes – Coltrane had a manuscript of the so-called po-
em or prayer in front of him, but this cannot have been any of the extant ones.

Because of its reliance on improvisation, jazz is generally viewed as the oppo-

site of a musical genre fixed in a score. To the best of my knowledge, there is no
history of jazz in which any manuscript plays an important role. There are sev-
eral reasons for this: First, it is variety in the actual performance – due to jazz’s
emphasis on improvisation – and not the score that is considered as the art of
jazz. Second, recordings are traces of musicians as originators of jazz and these
recordings are regarded as originals; autograph music manuscripts are only
appreciated as devotional objects. Third, notated music, either printed or in
manuscript form, is considered only an aid for teaching, learning, analysing
(transcriptions of recordings, so-called descriptive notation), or preparing a
performance (scores, master rhythm parts, lead sheets, and parts, all types of
so-called prescriptive notation).1 Writing jazz history, therefore, is writing the
history of albums and recorded concerts documenting the state of the art in
performed jazz. However, there are also valid reasons for Robert Witmer’s rejec-
tion of this view as the ‘common misconception that jazz is an unwritten music’.2
From the perspective of jazz as unwritten music, which must be revisited on
the grounds of both ontology and methodology, John Coltrane’s major contribu-

||
1 See Witmer and Finaly 2002, 168: ‘prescriptive notation for performance; descriptive notation
for the teaching and learning of jazz; and descriptive notation for transcription and analysis’.
2 Witmer and Finaly 2002, 168.

Open Access. © 2021 Oliver Huck, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-048
990 | Oliver Huck

tion to the history of jazz is the release of his album A Love Supreme in 1965, the
year that has been considered ‘the most revolutionary year in music’.3 The im-
portance of this album has been highlighted by dozens of jazz historians, but
almost none of them mentions the existence of an autograph manuscript of A
Love Supreme.4 Since it came to light in 2004,5 one page of this manuscript in
particular has become iconic, is now in the public domain,6 and has even been
recently reproduced on the cover of a printed commercial music notebook.7 But
this manuscript has not been studied in detail,8 it has only been adored as a
monument, proof of Coltrane’s genius as a composer writing jazz.

1 Acknowledgement: Manuscripts in jazz and in

jazz studies
The paradigm of a musical work represented in a score – the conception of mu-
sic as a written opus, embedded in Western European culture since the early
modern period and exported to the United States of America – went unchanged
by the emergence of jazz. Beyond the question of how independently jazz de-
veloped in terms of its musical structure and performance practice, there is a
legal framework which defines rules for obtaining copyright to a work of music.
Performance and recording did not replace the score in jazz for one very simple
reason: the only way to obtain copyright for a piece of music is the legal deposit
of a notated score in the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, DC.
As David Chevan has pointed out, copyright can be obtained only for a mel-
ody and its text, not a chord progression.9 Therefore, most of the early copyright
deposits of unpublished jazz music ‘consisted of a lead sheet containing only

||
3 See Jackson 2015.
4 See, for example, Parker 2012, 35: ‘there was never a score’ – five years after the publication
of reproductions of fols I and II of the music manuscript in Kahn 2007, 125–127. Two pages of
the prayer manuscript were first reproduced in Jones 2011, 91–92.
5 See Ratcliff 2005.
6 The document is available at <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:A_Love_Supreme.jpg>
(accessed on 1 March 2020).
7 See the Cahier de Musique, Les Éditions du Soleil Rouge, 2020, ISBN-13: 979-8614801847.
8 See Kahn 2020, xvii, who, in the introduction to this new edition – in contrast to Kahn 2002 –
mentions the manuscripts and even reproduces some pages (xxi), but does not draw conclu-
sions from the manuscript evidence.
9 See Chevan 1997, 240.
 (Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of A Love Supreme | 991

the melody’.10 Chevan distinguishes between three types of manuscripts: single

line melodies (lead sheets), single line melodies with text underlaid (lead sheets
with text), and fully realised (but unorchestrated) scores (piano scores).11 In his
case study of the copyright deposits of Louis Armstrong,12 concentrating on
sixteen manuscripts in four different hands, Chevan identifies the first three
hands as those of Armstrong himself, his wife Lillian Hardin Armstrong, and
Paul Barbarin. The fourth hand has not yet been identified.13 When comparing
the dates of the copyright deposit and the recording, Chevan distinguishes be-
tween prescriptive and descriptive manuscripts and assumes that the latter are
transcriptions of the recorded music.14
When comparing the keys of the manuscripts and the recordings, Chevan
singles out some pieces that, in the manuscripts, are notated a whole tone
above sounding pitch on the recordings, concluding from that difference that ‘it
might be possible that these manuscripts were initially used as performance
sketches or even as parts’ for B♭ trumpet.15 What Chevan does not do is interre-
late all this information and consider the material evidence of the manuscripts.
The only piano score in the collection studied by Chevan is Don’t Forget to
Mess Around, likewise the only manuscript in the hand of Paul Barbarin, listed
as a co-author.16 Evidence for the descriptive character of the manuscripts in this
collection can be found in all the manuscripts written by hand D, all submitted
after their respective recordings. Moreover, the latter are the only manuscripts
that add basic harmonic indications to the melody.17 All manuscripts written by
the composer himself and his wife are lead sheets, only a few of which contain
lyrics. In most of the manuscripts, the melody is notated a whole tone higher than
it sounds on the recordings. Because there is no evidence that those manuscripts
handed in for copyright after the recording differ from the others, I consider all
of Armstrong’s copyright deposits to have originally been parts and therefore

||
10 Chevan 1997, 246. He provides a list of 85 composers and their copyright deposits in Ap-
pendix F, 490–520.
11 See Chevan 1997, 247–248.
12 See also Chevan 2001/2002.
13 See Chevan 1997, 273–274.
14 See Chevan 1997, 266.
15 Chevan 1997, 272.
16 See the reproduction in Chevan 1997, 474–475.
17 Heah Me Talkin’ to Ya’, Muggles, and Knockin’ a Jug, see Chevan 1997, 274 and the repro-
ductions on 480, 483, and 482.
992 | Oliver Huck

prescriptive manuscripts.18 In the case of the unrecorded Papa What You Are
Trying To Do To Me, one can assume the same. The copyright deposit of Yes! I’m
in the Barrel is missing19 and I doubt the recording refers to the same version as
that notated as I Am in the Barrel, Who Don’t Like it?. Those songs, co-authored
by Armstrong and Hardin, have not been notated as trumpet parts; Coal Cart
Blues is at the voice’s sounding pitch and in the case of When You Leave Me
Alone, which was not recorded, one can assume the same. The only exceptions
are Gully Low Blues and Gut Bucket Blues. For the first one, the manuscript is
notated a minor third higher than it sounds on the recording and was submitted
for copyright only after the recording was made. Chevan speculates that it is
either a descriptive manuscript or that the composer (identified by Chevan as
Armstrong) ‘based this manuscript more on how the piece was being played at
the time of copyright in late November of 1927 than on its recorded perfor-
mance’.20 Chevan considers the lead sheet of the latter a descriptive man-
uscript;21 it is in the same key as the recording. More significant than variants
between the lead sheet and the recording is the fact that Gut Bucket Blues is the
only one of Armstrong’s copyright deposits written on music paper, identifying,
at the bottom, Clarence Williams Music Publishing Co. as the copyright holder.22
One can extrapolate from this that the company commissioned this manuscript
for copyright deposit.
Apart from Chevan’s general study of notated music in early jazz,23 only a
few case studies focus on manuscripts in jazz, for example, on manuscripts of
Duke Ellington,24 Fats Waller,25 Charlie Parker,26 and those used for Miles Davis’s

||
18 This includes Weather Bird Rag (Armstrong’s first composition that was recorded as well as
copyrighted; see Chevan 1997, 293), a manuscript considered by Chevan 1997, 282, as descrip-
tive. In my view, the designation of the second ending with a fermata (reproduced in Chevan
1997, 486) invalidates this hypothesis.
19 See Chevan 1997, 264.
20 Chevan 1997, 291.
21 See Chevan 1997, 282.
22 See the reproduction in Chevan 1997, 479.
23 Chevan 1997. On the musical literacy of early jazz musicians see also Chevan 2001/2002.
24 See van de Leur 2017, 157–176.
25 Machlin 1994 gives an inventory of Waller’s manuscripts in the Institute of Jazz Studies,
Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, including a few reproductions. Apart from some parts for
Spreadin’ Rhythm Around the manuscripts are vocal scores, piano scores, piano scores with
only the melodic line leaving the second stave empty, and sketches in Waller’s hand.
26 See Martin 2018.
 (Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of A Love Supreme | 993

nonet.27 Most of these manuscripts codify music for larger ensembles and will
not be considered here in detail. Ellington, however, is a good example of the
difference between the narrative of jazz as an oral practice and the common use
of written artefacts. The composer and bandleader publicly stated that he did
not care about his manuscripts, claiming that he gave them away and ‘people
wrap[ed] their lunches in them’.28 In reality, however, he has kept most of his
manuscripts, which constitute today 4.7 cubic metres of material, in 470 archiv-
al boxes, housed in Archives Center, National Museum of American History
(Smithsonian Institution).29 Walter van de Leur gives as an example a descrip-
tion of the manuscript of I Never Felt this Way Before.30 It is a compressed (or
condensed) score that served as the model for the copyists who were writing out
parts for the members of Ellington’s big band. Neither the vocal part nor the
rhythm section are included in this score which, moreover, is in concert nota-
tion and lacks any indications of articulation or dynamics. All these details were
added later in the rehearsals, where the parts were edited; van de Leur calls this
‘bandstand editing’31. Ellington notated the basic structure of the arrangement
and there are examples in which he reworked the original compressed scores for
later performances by revising the manuscripts (e.g. adding parts for his grow-
ing ensemble).32
In the case of Parker, both manuscripts for copyright deposit, now in the Li-
brary of Congress, and individual parts33 thought to have been used in a record-
ing session have survived. Out of 90 copyright deposits only four manuscripts
are from Parker’s own hand.34 Henry Martin assumes that the individual trum-
pet parts of Swedish Schnapps and Back Home Blues35 were used in the recording
session on 8 August 1951. He points out that there are no corrections and
assumes on that basis that the parts might have been recopied from earlier

||
27 For a discussion see Sultanof 2011, where he writes that, apart from Deception, for which ‘a
two-stave piano manuscript that is a condensed score including all of the instrumental parts
from bars 1 through 59’ survives (Sultanof 2011, 210) only parts are extant; no reproductions are
provided.
28 Van de Leur 2017, 174–175.
29 See van de Leur 2017, 164.
30 See van de Leur 2017, 168.
31 Van de Leur 2017, 173.
32 See van de Leur 2017, 173.
33 Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ.
34 See Martin 2018, 1.6.
35 Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ. See Martin 2018, note 6.
994 | Oliver Huck

manuscripts.36 However, in contrast to Armstrong, there is a significant differ-

ence between manuscripts that served as parts and those that were prepared to
serve as copyright deposits (the reproduction of Bill’s Bounce given identifies it
as a master rhythm part).
When it comes to a systematic survey of the jazz manuscript culture, apart
from scores and parts similar to Western European art music,37 more specific
types of manuscripts to be mentioned are lead sheets and master rhythm parts.
Both provide all the musicians engaged in a performance with the same musical
information – as in a score – from which every musician extracts and/or adds
what is needed to play his/her part. In general, none of these manuscripts pro-
vide an outline of the ‘overall form, structure, and organization of the perfor-
mance’ regarding the ‘order, number, and length of choruses and improvised
solos.’38 But this is exactly the intent of Coltrane’s manuscript for A Love Su-
preme.

2 Resolution: The manuscripts of A Love Supreme

What today is kept in the Archives Center, National Museum of American Histo-
ry (Smithsonian Institution), in Washington, DC, as manuscripts of A Love Su-
preme is a folder containing three music folios and four text folios, which I will
refer to as the music manuscript (with folio numbers) and the prayer manuscript
(with page numbers).39 All the folios – perhaps with the exception of fol. III
which may have been written between the recording sessions and the album’s
release – must have been written before 9 December 1964, but there is no inter-
nal evidence to suggest that they had been completed in ‘early September 1964,’
as Ashley Kahn claims.40 Only the story of Coltrane coming down the stairs in
their home ‘like Moses coming down from the mountain’ after finishing the
composition, as told by Coltrane’s wife Alice,41 suggests this dating. The sole

||
36 See Martin 2018, 1.5.
37 See, for example, van de Leur 2017, 166: ‘Ellington not only could work as his European
classical colleagues, he most often did’.
38 Witmer and Finaly 2002, 169.
39 The manuscript can be viewed at <https://sova.si.edu/record/NMAH.AC.0903?s=0&n=10&t
=C&q=coltrane&i=0> (accessed on 29 Feb. 2020), the collection is numbered AC.0903. Repro-
ductions are given in the booklet for the so-called ‘super deluxe CD edition’ Coltrane 2015, 9–14.
40 See Kahn 2020, xvii.
41 Alice Coltrane, interviewed by Branford Marsalis 2004, as reported by Whyton 2013, 26.
 (Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of A Love Supreme | 995

internal evidence for dating is a note on fol. IIv, ‘buy reeds in S. F’. The Coltrane
quartet played in the San Francisco Jazz Workshop on 6–18 October 1964,42
therefore we can reasonably assume that this note was written prior to 6 Octo-
ber 1964.

2.1 Music manuscript

Coltrane used commercial staff paper, Passantino Number 9, with eighteen
printed staves and eight printed barlines only on the recto (the verso is blank),
paper designed for big band arrangements. The use of this kind of paper is a
mission statement qualifying A Love Supreme as a ‘composition’, as the entry of
the title in the respective printed rubric in the upper left corner on fol. Ir states.
The use of such paper for sketching a composition is unusual. Even more unu-
sual is that, in comparison to the amount of text, the number of notes written on
the staves is fairly small. Coltrane entered the page number in the upper right
corner, but ‘I’ is both the first and the only numbered page; the entire work fits
on one page (I consider the verso and the two additional folios paratexts).
The format and number of staves show Coltrane’s ambitions in creating a
composition for a group larger than the line-up of his contemporaneous so-
called classic quartet (including McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin
Jones). On the top of fol. Ir he indicated the designated instrumentation of the
piece, the ‘horns’43 including ‘tenor saxophone | one other horn’ and the ‘ry-
thymn [sic] section’ comprised of ‘piano | trap drum | 2 bass | 2 conga | 1 tymbal’.
Obviously, this is not the scoring of his classic quartet which recorded A Love
Supreme, but is closer to the line-up used in the recording session on 10 Decem-
ber 1964 in which Archie Shepp (tenor saxophone) and Art Davis (bass) joined
the quartet – but this session was not included in the album.
A significant difference between Coltrane’s indications in the manuscript
and both recording sessions is the Afro-Cuban percussion. Neither congas nor a
timbale were used but – in addition to the drum set44 (trap drum) – gong and
timpani. Coltrane only began including additional percussion players in 1965.45

||
42 As discussed by Porter, DeVito, Wild, Fujioka, and Schmaler 2008, 308.
43 The transcriptions from Coltrane’s manuscripts given here ignore Coltrane’s use of capital
letters almost throughout.
44 For the use of the various instruments in Part I see Porter 1985, 607.
45 On this see Kahn 2020, 255–284. In Coltrane’s last live recording, at the Olatunji African
Cultural Center in Harlem, NYC, 23 April 1967, the lineup included Algie Dewitt playing a bata
drum; see Whyton 2013, 92–93, where a photo from the session is included.
996 | Oliver Huck

The entire manuscript contains only four short passages in musical nota-
tion, none of which use clefs to indicate the absolute pitches:
(1) the ‘horn opening,’ providing only unrhythmicized pitches to be read in
treble clef with transposition for tenor saxophone. The series of notes (b5,
b4, e5, f♯5, b4, e5, b5, b4, e5, f♯5), with their harmonies indicated by the chord
symbol ‘E♮’, is not so much a melodic theme – the opening Coltrane played
in the recording46 uses the same pitches, but in different order – but an evo-
cation of the pitch set of one of the quartet’s favourite tunes, My Favorite
Things;47
(2) the ‘primary rythmymic [sic] motif’ (quaver, bar line, crotchet, two quavers,
crotchet rest, quaver rest, etc.);
(3) the ‘bass + piano’ riff (the so-called A Love Supreme motif), according to the
final work to be read in treble clef; and
(4) the ‘voices concert key’ for the A Love Supreme motif according to the final
work to be read in treble-clef, transposed for tenor saxophone.

Other indications for the ensemble are written out. For example, at the end of
the piece, Coltrane indicates ‘attempt to reach transcendent level with orches-
tra’, ‘rising harmonies to a level of blissful stability at end’, ‘all paths lead to
God’, and ‘last chord to sound like the final chord of Alabama’. In the album,
this final directive has been achieved by adding an overdub.48
In addition to the musical notation, the manuscript offers a map of the pro-
cess and formal structure of A Love Supreme. In the recorded album there are
four parts, numbered I to IV, the first including ‘voices chanting motif in E♭mi
“A Love Supreme” two male’ and ‘motif played in all keys together’, the second
in ‘blues form’, and the last as a ‘musical recitation of prayer [marginal note]
<entitled “A Love Supreme”> by horn in Cmi’. But there are significant differ-
ences between the tonal plan here and in the recorded album.49 Part I, which
(after the introduction in E minor) is in F minor on the recording, was originally
intended – according to the manuscript – to be in E♭ minor. Part II, recorded in

||
46 See the transcription in Coltrane c. 2000.
47 See Whyton 2013, 17. This is not the place to discuss the reason for alluding to Richard
Rogers’ and Oscar Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things, which Coltrane had recorded in 1960 on
the album of the same name, but I would suggest that the unconventional postulant Maria,
protagonist of the musical The Sound of Music from which this song has been taken, is a mirror
of Coltrane’s own spirituality, despite the different religious traditions from which Maria von
Trapp and Coltrane came.
48 See Kahn 2020, 188–190 and the undubbed version on Coltrane 2015, disc 2, track 5.
49 On the album’s tonal plan see Porter 1985, 605.
 (Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of A Love Supreme | 997

E♭ minor, was originally intended to be in B♭ minor. The same holds true for the
sequence of solos. At the end of Part II, the manuscript contains the indication
‘bass move into solo’, with which the third part should begin. On the recording,
however, there is no bass solo at the end of Part II and Part III begins with a
drum solo.
In contrast to the first folio, the second folio’s recto is almost exclusively
devoted to music. The connection with A Love Supreme is not indicated in the
rubric ‘composition’ in the upper left, but by the title written in the middle of
the page, perhaps added after the music was notated. I consider it a page of
sketches elaborating two of the sections from fol. Ir. Picking up the A Love Su-
preme motif also found on fol. Ir, the repetition of this motif is notated not at the
same pitch but a third lower, offering a starting point for the indication ‘move in
all keys’ (fol. Ir) here specified as ‘move in all 12 keys’. But the aim of repeating
the motif a minor third lower is not to indicate tonal progression, it is to show
the motif’s treatment as a two-part canon between the ‘tenor [saxophone]’ and
an ‘other instrument’. Surprisingly, this idea of a strictly imitative treatment of
the motif was not realised in the extant takes of the second recording session,50
nor has it been mentioned in any analysis of A Love Supreme. In addition to the
treatment of the motif, Coltrane indicated the ‘rhythm’ of Part I and its key:
‘start + end in E♭ concert minor’. Furthermore, what has been indicated on fol. Ir
as ‘horn melody’ in Part II, without any indication of what this melody might be,
is described here as ‘melody tenor’. It is the entire theme to the eight-bar blues
form, repeated multiple times on the recording, written here with two different
endings (the second indicated as ‘II’).
What connects fols I and II is not so much the content of the rectos, but that
of the versos. The first line of text on fol. IIv is the beginning of the poem ‘A Love
Supreme’ published in the album’s liner notes; the text on fol. Iv is its conclusion.
The third folio contains neither parts of the musical composition nor of the
poem. It is, rather, a first draft of Coltrane’s introductory text for the album’s
liner notes, beginning on fol. IIIv (used in portrait format) and continuing on the
lower half of fol. IIIr (now used in landscape format). This folio had been used
before – the music and the chord symbols written in the upper half of fol. IIIr
have nothing to do with A Love Supreme – and was recycled for drafting the
liner notes. This manuscript did not serve as a master copy for publication of the
liner notes in the album, but is only a first draft. To give just one example: the
title of the introduction in the liner notes is ‘dear listener’; however, in the man-
uscript, the opening salutation is ‘dear reader’.

||
50 As evidence I refer the reader to the six takes in the CD-set Coltrane 2015, disc 2, tracks 6–11.
998 | Oliver Huck

2.2 Prayer manuscript

There is one more manuscript to consider, consisting of four folios (written not
on staff paper, but on single side blank notebook paper), that contains a copy of
the poem. It shows variants compared to both the first draft of the poem in the
music manuscript and the printed version in the album’s liner notes. The first
page is numbered on the top; the only other numbered page is page 3. This page
was written with a different pen (one with black ink instead of blue) and it
therefore seems to have been inserted only after the other three pages were
completed, suggesting that the entire section from ‘God loves | May I be ac-
ceptable in thy sight’ to ‘To whom all praise is due. Praise God’ may be a later
addition.
I am not certain that the word ‘poem’ is an accurate classification of
Coltrane’s text. In the liner notes for the album, the fourth part of the music is
called ‘psalm’ by Coltrane,51 a title that is in keeping with the poem’s structure
as a series of religious verses, but, from a purely literary point of view, I prefer to
label it a ‘prayer’, as Coltrane himself does on fol. Ir of the music manuscript. In
the introductory portion of the liner notes (as well as on fol. Ir), he hints that the
final part of the recording is based on the prayer: ‘The last part is a musical
narration of the theme, “A LOVE SUPREME” which is written in the context’.52 This
is not the first time that Coltrane modelled his instrumental music on texts.53
Coltrane might have copied the final version – and also a pre-final version lack-
ing page 3 – of the prayer from the first draft on fols Iv and IIv of the music man-
uscript. Although these drafts look more like a series of random jottings (see, for
example, fol. IIv, which includes a drawing and the ‘buy reeds in S. F.’ memo)
than aligned text, they have been copied in exactly the same sequence as the
one found in the music manuscript. Taking this into account raises the question
of the source from which Coltrane copied the passages missing on fols Iv and IIv.
One possible explanation is that there was one more folio, now absent, original-
ly placed between fols I and II. This folio might have resembled the other three
and contained on its verso the text passages (except, perhaps, those on page 3
of the prayer manuscript) missing between those on fols IIv (ending with ‘It is
merciful. Thank you God’) and Iv (beginning with ‘I’ve seen God + I’ve seen

||
51 See the liner notes of the album in Coltrane 2015.
52 John Coltrane: Dear Listener, liner notes to the album, quoted after Coltrane 2015.
53 Coltrane stated that Wise One, Lonnie’s Lament, and The Drum Thing are also based on
poems; see Michel Delorme and Claude Lenissois, ‘Je ne peux pas aller plus loin’, in Jazz Hot,
September 1965, quoted in Kahn 2020, 117.
 (Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of A Love Supreme | 999

devils ungodly’). What may have been written on its recto – if anything – is
unclear. It might have been sketches similar to those on fol. IIr for one of the
other Parts of A Love Supreme.

3 Pursuance: Tracing music manuscripts in

performances
Tony Whyton has pointed out that there are two competing narratives concern-
ing the making of A Love Supreme; the narrative of a John Coltrane composition,
in which the complete work was pre-determined prior to the recording sessions,
versus the narrative of improvisation in which the classic quartet collectively
gave birth to A Love Supreme in the recording session.54 The construction of a
binary opposition of composition versus improvisation, shared by both narra-
tives, is by no means appropriate for jazz in the 1960s.55 What is of interest here
is the question if and how music manuscripts may have been used in the three
performances of A Love Supreme; the recording sessions on 9 and 10 December
1964 and the only live performance of the entire work on 26 July 1965.56
There is no photographic documentation of the recording session on 9 De-
cember 1964. Evidence for the question of the presence of manuscripts in the
studio comes from an interview conducted by Ashley Kahn with pianist McCoy
Tyner, but Tyner’s statements do not align with the extant manuscripts. On the
one hand, he states that the whole session was ‘an on-the-spot improvisation,
honestly approached music’,57 and that the instructions for Elvin Jones and
Jimmy Garrison had been given orally.58 But a possible explanation for the dif-
ferent keys occurring in Part I in the manuscript (E♭ minor) and the recording
(F minor) is that the bassline Tyner had to play in the first part had been
presented to Garrison with the help of a manuscript. In this manuscript, the A
Love Supreme motif would have been transposed for tenor saxophone and
notated in treble clef (as seen on fol. Ir of the music manuscript – not at the

||
54 See Whyton 2013, 21–28.
55 See Whyton 2013, 39–40.
56 McCoy Tyner reports – in an interview with Ashley Kahn – that the quartet ‘had played
some of the music in the clubs before we recorded it’, Kahn 2020, 139. There is a bootleg record-
ing of the third part made by Frank Tiberi on 18 September 1964, in Pep’s Musical Bar in Phila-
delphia; see Kahn 2020, 157–158.
57 Kahn 2020, 138.
58 See Kahn 2020, 138.
1000 | Oliver Huck

beginning of Part I but only later – so presumably not this manuscript). Garrison
would have read and played it in exactly the key in which it had been notated if
one does not take into account the transposition resulting when played by a
tenor saxophone – in F minor, and the other musicians would have taken up
this key. On the other hand, Tyner himself claims that when Coltrane provided
him with a manuscript, ‘He’d write down the symbols to a set of very basic
chords – B-flat, B-natural, E, just regular chords’.59 If Coltrane in fact had
written down some chords for Tyner intended to be played in A Love Supreme,
he could not have copied them from the extant manuscripts, which do not show
any chord progression resembling that mentioned by Tyner. Coltrane might
have written theses chords from memory but Tyner’s statement seems to have
no connection at all with this work: Within A Love Supreme, the progression
B♭-B-E does not occur, nor does Tyner play any ‘regular chords’ at the beginning
but, rather, chords built on superimposed fourths.60 This leads me to wonder if
Tyner’s story about the manuscript dedicated to him is trustworthy. The subtext
of his statement is more about who in the quartet was musically literate and his
place in the hierarchy, and about the role of the leader as composer. In this
narrative, the manuscript is the highest award which can be given from the
leader to a member of his combo; no wonder that Tyner claims it for himself.
Moreover, if Coltrane had only written ‘regular chords’ it would have been only
Tyner creating the extraordinary harmonic texture.
The recording session on 10 December 1964 was documented by photogra-
pher Chuck Stewart. Some of the published pictures – which could only be tak-
en as witnesses if it is to believe that they document the session and are not
staged – show music manuscripts on music stands and in Coltrane’s hands,
highlighting his role as a composer. It seems that Coltrane and Archie Shepp
had two music stands in front of them – one photograph shows Coltrane point-
ing to Shepp’s part61 – but none of the musicians of the rhythm section had done
so. Furthermore, there are pictures showing Coltrane close to a music stand,
writing on a manuscript displayed on it,62 with a manuscript in his hands that
he is showing Garrison. The latter manuscript is definitely not one of the extant
manuscripts because, unlike them, it is in portrait format.63 Judging from the

||
59 Kahn 2020, 138.
60 See Porter 1985, 606–607.
61 The photographs are reproduced in Kahn 2020, 191 and 204.
62 See Kahn 2020, 198–199. This manuscript was certainly not intended for Tyner, as Kahn
suggests, because Davis and Garrison are looking at the manuscript.
63 See Kahn 2020, 140.
 (Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of A Love Supreme | 1001

published photos, all the manuscripts on the music stands are in landscape
format, as are the extant music manuscripts. But it is unlikely that these are the
ones displayed on the music stands. For example, on fol. IIr Coltrane sketched
the beginning of the interaction between the two saxophones at the end of
Part I. The basic idea of this sketch is a strict canon between the two voices,
both repeating the A Love Supreme motif in the first instance a third lower, the
second voice starting with a distance of two crotchets. Neither the strict canon,
nor the sequence a third lower have been realised in any of the extant takes.
One could imagine that Coltrane had sketched a different and more elaborate
version of the interaction of the two ‘horns’ (which he only adumbrated on
fol. IIr) in a manuscript no longer extant. But the remaining tapes from the
recording session do not prove this hypothesis, because all the takes of this
passage are different. In the four extant complete takes of Part I, the idea of the
imitative treatment of the A Love Supreme motif has been realised three times
(takes 1, 4, and 6 – the exception is take 264), but always in different ways, so it
is unlikely that there was an entirely notated version of the antiphonal, call-
and-response-like interaction of the two saxophones.
A Love Supreme as an entire work (sometimes called a suite) was performed
only once by Coltrane and his quartet in concert, on 26 July 1965 in Antibes. The
photographs documenting this concert do not show music stands in front of the
musicians,65 thus no manuscripts were used in the performance. Evidence for
the reinvention of A Love Supreme as a memorized work can be found through-
out the performance.66 To give just one example: after the introduction, it is not
the bass player, but Coltrane who first intones the A Love Supreme motif, feed-
ing Jimmy Garrison his part in order to remind him of what had been introduced
to him in the studio recording session the year before. Garrison has no oppor-
tunity to begin playing the motif himself and when he tries to join the group he
fails initially, entering on a downbeat rather than an upbeat.

4 Psalm: Reading out the prayer manuscript

There is no doubt that Coltrane’s plan to recite his A Love Supreme prayer in-
strumentally in the fourth part was realised in the recording session on

||
64 See the six takes in Coltrane 2015, disc 2, tracks 6, 7, 9, and 11.
65 See the photo in Whyton 2016, 209.
66 Coltrane 2015, disc 3.
1002 | Oliver Huck

9 December 1964. Lewis Porter gives a detailed analysis of the interrelation be-
tween the prayer and the music.67 But Porter does not mention any manuscripts
because they only came to light twenty years after the publication of his article.
Moreover, Porter does not consider the reference point of Coltrane’s perfor-
mance, the question of whether he remembered the prayer by heart or read it.
Porter states that ‘the concert version of “Psalm” differs significantly […] be-
cause it does not follow the poem at all.’68 Taking into account the fact that
Coltrane and his musicians did not use any manuscripts in this live performance
in Antibes, it is plausible that Coltrane did not play the recorded studio solo
based on the memorized prayer,69 because he could have done the same in the
concert successfully, too. But if there was a manuscript in the recording session,
which one was it? While Porter states that there are ‘words apparently omitted
from the recording’,70 it is more likely that the manuscript Coltrane used had
readings that differed from the liner notes given in the album. But it is clear that
Coltrane did not read from any of the extant manuscripts. Comparing Porter’s
transcription of lines 57–6271 to the prayer manuscript, it becomes clear that the
passage ‘It’s true. Blessed be his name’ is missing in the prayer manuscript,72
but was played by Coltrane. In the music manuscript not only this passage but
also the following, ‘Thank you God’, do not appear. The same is true for line 22,
from which ‘Thank you God’ is missing in both the prayer manuscript and the
music manuscript, but was played by Coltrane.73 So Coltrane might have had a
manuscript at hand which was closer to the readings in the liner notes than to
those in the prayer manuscript. On the other hand, lines 9 and 10 in the liner
notes are played in reverse order in the performance,74 which is the order in
which they occur in the prayer manuscript.
These facts suggest that, in contrast to the studio session, in concert,
Coltrane neither had a manuscript of the prayer at hand nor had memorized it.
What he plays in the fourth part is an evocation of a recitation of an unspecified
text.75 We do not know if Coltrane had already decided to play A Love Supreme

||
67 See Porter 1985, 613–619.
68 Porter 1985, 619.
69 As posited by Kahn 2020, xx.
70 Porter 1985, 615.
71 See Porter 1985, 618.
72 On the differences between the prayer manuscript and the liner notes see also Jones 2011,
90–96.
73 See Porter 1985, 614, and Coltrane c. 2000, 21.
74 See Porter 1985, 614.
75 See Porter 1985, 601.
 (Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of A Love Supreme | 1003

in Antibes when the quartet embarked for Europe but it is doubtful, because he
apparently did not take a manuscript of the prayer with him in order to recite
from it. Or, to reframe the theory: If we reduce all performances of A Love Su-
preme to their lowest common denominator,76 a literal musical recitation of the
prayer as indicated in the music manuscript on fol. Ir cannot be considered a
mandatory element of the work.

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nascita, 1901–2001 (Quaderni di jazzit, 1), Terni: Vanni, 11–69.
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Kahn, Ashley (2007), The House that Trane Built. The Story of Impulse Records, New York:
W. W. Norton.
Kahn, Ashley (2020), A Love Supreme. The Creation of John Coltrane’s Classic Album, London:
Granta Books.
Machlin, Paul S. (1994), ‘Fats Waller Composes: The Sketches, Drafts, and Lead Sheets in the
Institute of Jazz Studies Collection’, Annual Review of Jazz Studies, 7: 1–24.

||
76 On 29 August 1973 – six years after Coltrane’s death and shortly after the release of the
album Love Devotion Surrender by Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin on 20 July 1973, which
includes A Love Supreme (Part I) as the opening track – a ‘sheet’ of A Love Supreme was given
to the United States Copyright Office obtaining copyright for A Love Supreme as number
EU429308 <https://lccn.loc.gov/2019562053> (accessed on 18 March 2020), cf. Catalog of Copy-
right Entries, 2234. Unfortunately due to the closure of the Library of Congress, Washington,
this manuscript is not accessible since March 2020.
1004 | Oliver Huck

Martin, Henry (2018), ‘Four Studies of Charlie Parker’s Compositional Processes’, Music Theory
Online, 24/2 <https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.18.24.2/mto.18.24.2.martin.html> (ac-
cessed on 26 Feb. 2020).
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Waal and Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski (eds), The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce,
New York: Fordham University Press, 26–43.
Porter, Lewis (1985), ‘John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: Jazz Improvisation as Composition’,
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38: 593–621.
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Coltrane Reference, New York: Routledge.
Ratcliff, Ben (2005), ‘Pieces of Jazz History Head to Auction Block’, The New York Times, 20 Jan.
2005 <https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/arts/music/pieces-of-jazz-history-head-
to-auction-block.html> (accessed on 1 March 2020).
Sultanof, Jeffrey (2011), ‘The Miles Davis Nonet Manuscripts Lost and Found: From Manuscript
to Publication’, Journal of Jazz Studies, 7: 192–257.
van de Leur, Walter (2017), ‘‘People Wrap Their Lunches in Them’: Duke Ellington and his Writ-
ten Music Manuscripts’, in John Howland (ed.), Duke Ellington Studies, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 157–176.
Whyton, Tony (2013), Beyond A Love Supreme. John Coltrane and the Legacy of an Album,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whyton, Tony (2016), ‘Seeking Resolution: John Coltrane, Myth, and the Audiovisual’, in Björn
Heile, Peter Elsdon, and Jenny Doctor (eds), Watching Jazz. Encounters with Jazz Perfor-
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tionary of Jazz, Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol. 3, 167–175.
Silpsupa Jaengsawang
A Ritual Manual of Healing:
The Body-Balance of the Four Elements and
the Four Key Factors of Manuscript
Production and Usage
Abstract: The article presents a Northern Thai manuscript titled Withi bucha
that thang si (‘How to pay homage to the four physical elements’). The text has
been used as a master version in traditional healing rituals. It is analysed what
roles different parts of the text play in these ritual by applying four key factors
(production, use, setting, patterns) as heuristic tool. The manuscript is textually
dominated by a main prayer named okāsa reflecting the twofold communica-
tion between the spiritual sphere and the human sphere based on the local
belief system encompassing Buddhism and spirit cults. Three hybrid modes
related to the manuscript are identified: hybrid content, hybrid use, and hybrid
communication, structurally comprising oral parts for recitation and non-oral
parts for silent reading.

1 Introduction: Traditional healing in Northern

Thailand
Traditional healing by means of paying homage with offerings related to the
four physical elements is a part of the life-extension rituals widely practiced in
Northern Thailand. There are three kinds of life extensions: extension of a city’s
(or city-state’s) age; extension of a village’s age; and extension of human life.
The ritual can be performed on different occasions: New Years, Tang Tham
Luang,1 birthday ceremonies, or after a person has undergone or survived a
serious illness or accident. Life-extension rituals thus serve the purposes of
auspicious derivation and reconciliation. In other regions of Thailand, life-

||
1 Tang Tham Luang or Bun Phawet Festival is the annual ceremony in which thirteen episodes
of the Vessantara Jātaka are chanted. Those who listen to the whole story within one day are
believed to obtain a rebirth in the future era of Buddha Maitreya. Some also join the festival at
the end of the ‘agricultural cycle’ to extend their lives (Premchit and Doré 1992, 78).

Open Access. © 2021 Silpsupa Jaengsawang, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-049
1006 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

extension rituals are also found, but they are less complicated than those of the
Northern Thai regions. The Tai ethnic groups in the eastern sections of the Shan
State of Burma (Myanmar) – Tai Yai, Tai Yòng, and Tai Khün – as well as the
Lua people in northern parts of Thailand, also include the ritual as a part of
their traditions.2
The three occasions for which people organize a life-extension ritual are the
following:3 (1) auspicious opportunities connected to one’s life and social sta-
tus, such as house-warming ceremonies, career promotions, wedding ceremo-
nies, birthdays; (2) the departure of suffering, accidents, sickness, natural
disasters, or punishment; and (3) four kinds of misfortunes. The ritual of life
extension, however, is not intended for children. As elaborately explained by
Ganjanapan and displayed in the following diagram (Fig. 1), the life-extension
ritual is regarded as non-violent or ‘cold’ magic.
According to the title of the manuscript studied in this article, namely, Withi
bucha that thang si (‘How to pay homage to the four physical elements’), the
manuscript is intended to support ritual use. However, the text includes both
the core prayer to be recited by the ritual expert and the other parts which are
not to be read aloud; the manuscript therefore seems to contain a hybrid text.
The present article discusses the purpose for which the different parts in the
hybrid text of the manuscript are intended and how they play a role in the ritu-
al. In order to deal with the research questions, the terms use and patterns from
the heuristic methodology of the four key factors are applied. Inasmuch as the
manuscript was written to support ritual use, the other two key factors, produc-
tion and setting, are also applied. Besides the preliminary finding that the man-
uscript contains a hybrid text, other kinds of hybridity may also be found, since
different parts of the manuscript reflect different kinds of communication and
purposes.
The present article begins with general information on traditional healing
and well-being in balance with the four physical elements. After this general
information, the case-study manuscript will be presented, as well as a short
explanation of the relationship between the manuscript and the ritual. To deal
with the research questions, the heuristic tool of the four key factors will then be
applied to elaborately analyse the manuscript; this analysis constitutes the
majority of the article.

||
2 Chimphanao 1986, 109, cited by Hirunro 2014, 47.
3 Hirunro 2014, 52.
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1007

Fig. 1: The position of healer in the moral system (redrawn by the author on the basis of
Ganjanapan 2000, 62).

2 Four physical elements and body balance

The human body is composed of four physical elements, each of which is
known as dhātu. The four elements are also called the Four Mahābhūta (‘the
Four Primary Elements’; ‘primary matter’); they are: Paṭhavī-dhātu (‘element of
extension’; ‘solid element’; ‘earth’); Āpo-dhātu (‘element of cohesion’; ‘liquid
element’; ‘water’); Tejo-dhātu (‘element of heat or radiation’; ‘heating element’;
‘fire’); and Vāyo-dhātu (‘element of vibration or motion’; ‘air element’; ‘wind’).4

||
4 Payutto 2015, 71.
1008 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

The four elements are part of the Pañca-khandha (‘the Five Groups of Existence’,
‘Five Aggregates’) of which a living being is composed. The Five Aggregates
comprise: (1) Rūpa-khandha (‘corporeality’); (2) Vedanā-khandha (‘feeling’;
‘sensation’); (3) Saññā-khandha (‘perception’); (4) Saṅkhāra-khandha (‘mental
formations’; ‘volitional activities’); and (5) Viññāṇa-khandha (‘consciousness’).5
Lan Na people believe that sickness is due to several causes,6 notably the imbal-
ance between the four physical elements of human bodies: solid, liquid, heat,
and gas. The ritual is thus held when one is diagnosed by a local healer with
physical disorders or element abnormality.7
The healing ritual related to the four physical elements is similar to, or part
of, or a variation on life-extension rituals, but the healing ritual is intended
especially for patients who suffer from chronic or serious illness despite taking
medicine. Patients who have not recovered from symptoms despite using medi-
cine may decide to host a ritual aiming at life extension, e.g. Su Khwan Kòng
(‘reconciliation with a meal box’), Su Khwan Luang (‘great reconciliation [with
long chanting]’), Suat Chata (‘chanting for one’s fortunes’), and Suat That
(‘chanting for [the four] physical elements’).8
Life-extension rituals have two purposes: one for healthy people and one
for sick people.9 Led by the ritual leader, known as Nan (‘ex-monk’),10 the ritual
is organized at the house of the host; a chapter of monks is invited to the house
in order to chant a series of texts. At the beginning of the ritual, the ritual leader
reads an okāsa word as an introduction to the patient as well as to his or her
purposes in hosting the ritual. The ritual lasts for thirty to forty minutes. Okāsa
(masc.) in Pali means ‘room; open space; chance; permission’, and okāsakamma
(neut.) means ‘permission’.11 Hirunro defines okāsa words as the expression of
ritual causes that can be properly oriented to actually fit a certain occasion.12

||
5 Payutto 2015, 162.
6 There are seven causes of illness in the belief of Lan Na people: (1) imbalance of the four
physical elements, (2) spiritual weakness, (3) misfortunes caused by past deeds, (4) evil spirits,
(5) possession by ka ghosts, (6) black magic, and (7) taboo breaking (Department of Mental
Health 2016, 48–49).
7 Parinyan 1987, 307.
8 Parinyan 1987, 306.
9 Parinyan 1987, 305–306.
10 Nan is a male ritual leader who is not fully in trance, as in the case of a female spirit medi-
um, who is described by Anan as sensitive-minded: ‘In contrast, mo muang do not go into a full
trance, which is exclusively in the female sphere. Women and in some cases, transvestites, are
culturally viewed as having a “soft soul” (khwan on)’ (Ganjanapan 2000, 61).
11 Mahāthera 1997, 69.
12 Hirunro 2014, 58 and 268.
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1009

The okāsa word is thus known as an introduction for a particular occasion or

event. The ritual preparation is the collaborative responsibility of the ritual
leader and the patient’s family members; the okāsa word is the task of the lead-
er, whereas the series of standardized Pali texts is prepared by the chanting
monks. The case-study manuscript, which may have been written by a scribe
who acted as a ritual leader, thus includes a list of offerings and an okāsa word,
but it excludes the homiletic Pali texts ritually chanted by the monks.

3 The case-study manuscript

As a manual for a ritual leader who starts the event before the series of chants
by the monks, the manuscript provides a list of offerings, the sequences of the
ritual’s beginning, and the okāsa word, which dominates the largest part of the
manuscript and introduces the patient who hosts the ritual for the purpose of
healing or balancing his or her four physical elements, which is done by paying
homage to Lord Buddha and other deities with a set of offerings. Dependant on
the experience and skill of the ritual leaders, okāsa words vary in rhetorical
style, word choice, and metre, since they are not suttas or standardized texts
mnemonically recited by monks in religious rituals. Okāsa words can therefore
be flexibly composed by individual scribes or ritual leaders, while the offerings,
ritual processes, and ritual sequences are fixed.

3.1 Object
Textual and paratextual evidence in the case-study manuscript leads us to a
clear-cut conclusion that the manuscript was used as a manual in traditional
healing rituals. The manuscript, which is titled Withi bucha that thang si (‘How
to pay homage to the four physical elements’), is archived at Wat Phra That
Hariphunchai, Lamphun province in Northern Thailand.13 The manuscript is
made of Khòi paper, from the bark of khòi trees (Streblus asper);14 it is 58.6 cm in
length and 17.8 cm in width, measured like two vertically adjoined pieces of A4
paper. To facilitate storage and circulation, the manuscript is folded in leporello
fashion into six sections that are roughly 10 cm in width (Fig. 2); the text was
written only on four sections, with 9–10 lines each.

||
13 <http://lannamanuscripts.net/en/manuscripts/4102> (accessed on 7 May 2021).
14 Grabowsky 2011, 145.
1010 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

Fig. 2: The manuscript Withi bucha that thang si. <http://lannamanuscripts.net/en/

manuscripts/4102> (accessed on 7 May 2021).
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1011

The marginal lines on the left and right margins and the textual lines belonging
to the main text were made beforehand, so that the handwriting could be well
organized within the marginal lines and below the textual lines. Unlike in palm-
leaf manuscripts, the handwriting is not interrupted by a space left for a binding
hole; the content is thus layed out in a single column. The manuscript was neat-
ly written in the Dhamma Lan Na script, in Pali and in vernacular languages,
without a colophon.

3.2 Text
The manual begins with a short introduction: ‘First, the process of paying hom-
age to our four physical elements will be explained here. One who will pay
homage should prepare […]’ จักกล่าววิธีบูชาธาตุทงั ๔ แห่งคนเราก่อนแล
ผูใ้ ดจักบูชาหือแปง,15 which is followed by a list of offerings in specific amounts:
twenty flasks of rice grain, twelve flasks of water, six holy flags16, four candles,17
and a cloth of the ritual host, to be dedicated to the four elements. The text con-
tinues with ‘the okāsa word is here […]’ คําโอกาสว่าดัง$ นี and is followed by the
okāsa prayer in a long section of Pali and vernacular prose, in which the name
of the patient is to be said aloud. Within the prose section, there are some ex-
pressions guiding the users to repeat a certain Pali verse included in the text,
‘pray the Pali verse three times’ หือว่าบาลี ๓ หน, three times and then to contin-
ue praying the okāsa prayer, ‘then pray the following’ แล้วต่อไปว่า. Such expres-
sions are written in the vernacular language and are only memorized by the
ritual leader, rather than being spoken aloud as part of the prayer; hence the
ritual performance features a hybrid content – one part for ‘announcement’ and
the other for ‘perception’. This issue will be discussed further in section 5.2
(‘Use’). The long prose portion is followed by a short, concluding expression:
‘[the text of] paying homage to the four elements ends here’ บูชาธาตุทงั ๔
แล้วหนีแล. In summary, the manuscript text is structured with the introduction,
the ritual preparation, the prayer, and the ending.

||
15 All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicate.
16 The flags are small triangles, about two inches in width, and made of paper of different
colours – usually white, red, black, and yellow (Chotisukkharat 1971, 230).
17 The set of offerings represents the four physical elements of life: rice grains for solidity
(earth), water for fluidity (water), holy flags for air (wind), and candles for heat (fire). In the Tai
Yuan tradition, there are three kinds of offering sets for life-extension rituals, representing
three different things: (1) auspicious agents of the host, (2) four physical elements of life, and
(3) abundance (Hirunro 2014, 123–124).
1012 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

According to the content of the okāsa word in the manuscript, the patient
pays homage to Lord Buddha with the four kinds of offerings that are associated
with the four physical elements of the human body, in exchange for blessings of
good health. The meritorious results of this act are also to be gained by various
deities and spirits who would in return safeguard the patient and ward off dan-
gers. According to textual analysis, the patient is viewed as paying homage to
Lord Buddha and other deities in exchange for protection and well-being rather
than to the four elements of one’s physical body, even though the text is titled
Paying Homage to the Four Elements.

4 Manuscript and ritual

The ritual leader prays the okāsa prose prayer written in the manuscript while
the ritual host or ‘the patient’ sits behind the leader with his or her venerating
hands on the chest. The patient expects to gain apotropaic powers against his or
her sickness from the virtues of Lord Buddha and other deities. The content
includes the list of offering items to be prepared before the ritual and other pro-
cess guidelines to be followed during the ritual. The okāsa prose prayer, which
is the principal prayer, can be copied onto a separate piece of paper, to be
memorized prior to the ritual, so that the leader can recite the prose by heart
during the ritual. The manuscript was written in the Dhamma Lan Na script,
thereby requiring those who copy the okāsa prayer to be literate in the special
script. Because the host dedicates the offerings to Lord Buddha and other dei-
ties, the leader has to recite the prose portion, with venerating hands in front of
an image of Buddha. Unlike other ways of merit-making which are dedicated to
phò kam mae wen (‘Deceased persons or spirits whom the donor caused harm in
the past and who can come back and torment the wrongdoer in the form of
ghosts or maledictions’), the ritual of paying homage to Lord Buddha and other
deities, evidenced in the manuscript, mentions none of those spirits, despite the
similar purpose of health and body-balance well-being.

5 The four key factors

The four key factors, which is a heuristic tool for the comparative study of man-
uscripts from different manuscript cultures, was proposed by Hanna Wimmer,
Dmitry Bondarev, Janina Karolewski, and Vito Lorusso in 2015, in affiliation
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1013

with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Culture (CSMC), University of Ham-
burg, Germany. Unlike printed books that can be made with a production ratio
of 1: ∞, a manuscript is considered unique because it is made with a 1:1 produc-
tion ratio; each manuscript is thus a unicum reflecting the choices, preferences,
requirements, skills, and errors of individual producers, users, and owners.18
The study of manuscript cultures deals with texts (content) and objects (physi-
cal), thereby requiring further analysis of the material and visual characteristics
that are closely related to a manuscript’s contexts (social, economic, political,
religious, and other backgrounds). The heuristic tool of four key factors was
accordingly proposed to facilitate comparative studies of manuscripts existing
in different cultures and comprises the aspects of production, use, setting, and
patterns. These four key factors are closely related; the effects of one key factor
on a manuscript cannot be viewed without considering the others.19 The present
article applies this heuristic methodology to study the relationship between the
case-study manuscript and the ritual of body-balance healing.

5.1 Production
In order to make a manuscript, a production agency and a production practice
are required. The production agency includes the persons (individually or in a
group) or institutions directly or partly responsible for producing the manu-
script, a process that includes both preparation and the writing process. As
explained by Wimmer, the production agency has an impact on the physical
manuscript as an object: ‘A scribe or illuminator, too, will have a degree of auc-
torial agency insofar as their decisions will have an impact on the manuscript’s
physical characteristics, which in turn determine in part how the manuscript’s
contents will be read and understood, and how the manuscript itself can be
used’.20
A large number of religious palm-leaf manuscripts discovered in Northern
Thailand are found to have been collaborative productions by a group of lay-
people or members of the Sangha; the collaborative effort is due to the length of
these religious texts, which are to be copied onto numerous leaves of palm trees
as writing support. Such a group planned and shared responsibilities before they
started the writing. This kind of collaborative work in manuscript production

||
18 Wimmer et al. 2015, 2.
19 Wimmer et al. 2015, 10.
20 Wimmer et al. 2015, 2–3.
1014 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

can also be found in Luang Prabang, the ancient Lao royal capital, where manu-
script production activity is alive and influenced by modern printing technolo-
gies.21
The manuscript in my case study contains no colophon; background infor-
mation on the production of the manuscript, especially on the production agent
and year, is thus not provided. However, considering the paracontents that
remain, the manuscript itself reveals the social status of the scribe and the
sponsor. Evidenced by the homogenous handwriting, the manuscript was writ-
ten by one person, who was most likely both the scribe and the sponsor. The
neat and well-organized handwriting implies that it was copied from a proto-
type by a scribe-sponsor who was experienced in Dhamma Lan Na script; the
scribe-sponsor must have been a monk, novice, or an ex-monk because this
script was taught in monastic classes among Sangha members. The manu-
script’s current location in a monastery does not in itself allow us to identify
sponsor-scribe as a monk or novice, because a manuscript that was written by
laypeople could also be dedicated to a monastery in order to gain merit derived
from copying religious books. However, some paracontents in the manuscript
imply the social status of the sponsor-scribe as an ex-monk rather than a monk
or novice. First, the text is a ritual manual that includes a prayer recited by a
master of ceremony or ritual leader. The ritual deals with folk medication,
which is supposed to be performed by a lay expert rather than a monk. Second,
the manuscript contains no colophon that expresses the scribe’s wishes or even
communicates with other users; it was thus perhaps made to serve the private
use of the scribe-sponsor or, evidenced by the decent handwriting, as a master
version for further copies. Third, the manuscript was obviously written for the
body-balance healing ritual as it includes a list of offerings in specific amount,
the principal prayer, and the sequences of the process; decorations and greeting
words are not found. The manuscript would thus mainly benefit the ritual leader.
The manuscript was not produced for a single use on a specific occasion but
could be used repeatedly, with a symbol indicating the place for announcing
the name of the ritual host or patient. More specifically, instead of a person’s
name written in the position of the symbol, a combination of two double-marks

||
21 ‘Not surprisingly, most of the laypersons who acted as sponsors came from town quarters
such as Ban Khili, Ban Vat Saen and Ban Kang, all situated in the neighbourhood of the “twin
monasteries” Vat Si Mungkhun and Vat Si Bunhüang. With roughly two-thirds of all dated
manuscripts falling into Sathu Phò Hung’s tenure as abbot of Vat Si Mungkhun (1904–1945), it
seems likely that it was due to this venerable abbot’s initiative that the bulk of the manuscript
collection in the monastery library (hò tai) of Vat Si Mungkhun was established’ (Khamvone
and Grabowsky 2017, 32–33).
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1015

(||) and a letter with the sound of /b/ (บ) was written (||บ||) (see the red frames in
Fig. 3), perhaps an abbreviation of บุคคล (‘person’). The manuscript could thus
be used by replacing the symbol with the name of the patient. After analysing
the textual content, the lack of a colophon, the handwriting, the clearly secular
processes, and the symbol suggesting repeated use, it can be concluded that
this manuscript was made by a ritual leader for personal use or as a master
copy.

Fig. 3: The symbol to be filled in with the host’s name (detail of Fig. 2).

Regarding the production practices, the manuscript was written on Khòi paper,
bound into a 58.6 × 17.8 cm leporello book, and folded into six parts, each ap-
proximately one third of an A4 sheet of paper in size; the shape and the size of
the manuscript facilitated portability and storage for the users. The paper was
bound, the left and right marginal and textual lines were drawn before the writ-
ing; two sides were therefore unintentionally left blank.
Unlike other leporello manuscripts, this case-study manuscript was written
on one side of the paper due to the short length of the text. Some missing sen-
tences were added above the lines to complete a lacuna, with a small marker
indicating the position in the text of the newly added parts. The manuscript was
simply made from accessible writing-support and bookbinding materials. The
newly added part filling in the incomplete sentence implies that the manuscript
was intended to be read, not to be shown to an audience; such a correction was
1016 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

thus simply added above the line. In other words, the manuscript served as a
ritual manual rather than as an aesthetic object.

5.2 Use
As with the production, use may be regarded under two aspects – practice of
use and agency of use – that will be discussed together. As the manuscript
could be used as a ritual manual or a master copy, two kinds of users were in-
volved: the users in the ritual and the copyist. As mentioned before, the manu-
script could be used both before and during the ritual. The user could study the
ritual process as well as memorize the prayer from the manuscript in advance;
the user could also hold the manuscript during the ritual to ensure that the
ritual was well organized. This hybrid or twofold manuscript usage in relation
to rituals also has two aspects: cultic use and discursive use. The cultic use of a
manuscript refers to its symbolic status as an object representing something
meaningful, while discursive use refers to its treatment as a text. Veidlinger
defines cultic use and discursive use as follows: ‘The main feature that distin-
guishes the discursive from the cultic category is that in the discursive, the
words of the texts are actually read, whereas in the cultic, the manuscript as a
whole is treated iconically, generally as a physical embodiment of the teaching
of the Buddha’.22 The case-study manuscript was mainly used discursively23 but
also cultically if the ritual expert held the manuscript in his hands or placed the
manuscript in a container as part of the ritual without reading it, for the purpose
of ensuring the ritual’s efficacy.
Only the okāsa word was read during the ritual; that is, the text in the man-
uscript could partly be read aloud. The ritual-process guidelines mentioned in
section 3.2 (‘Text’) are in the vernacular language; they are silently acknowledged
by the ritual leader rather than being orally spoken out as part of the prayer,
illustrating the ritual performance of hybrid content – one part of the material is
for ‘announcement’ and the other is for ‘perception’. Wimmer explains that a
manuscript can be read silently or aloud by chanting, reciting, or murmuring,
for one’s own ears alone or to an audience. It can be read thoroughly from

||
22 Veidlinger 2006, 5.
23 Regarding the discursive usage of manuscripts, there are three modes identified by Paul
Griffiths, composition, display, and storage, all of which are associated with textual usage:
‘Works will usually be displayed after (or simultaneously with) their composition; more rarely
they may be stored after they have been displayed; and those that have been stored may some-
times be taken from storage for redisplay’ (1999, 22).
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1017

beginning to end or by skimming or used to memorize the contents or to look up

particular passages and paragraphs.24
The okāsa or the main prayer found in the manuscript was written in Pali
and in the vernacular, reflecting the twofold communication in the ritual to-
wards the two spheres: the spiritual sphere and the human sphere, mediated by
the ritual leader. The prayer is in the vernacular because the ritual aims at heal-
ing and comforting the ritual host, to be relieved by the protective power of the
Buddha and other deities. The ritual leader thus served as a medium linking
spiritual beings to human beings, so that the holy spirits could acknowledge the
pleading and react to the patient with blessings. Belief in the existence of the
two domains is alive in the ritual. Durkheim defines the two spheres as profane
and sacré, where humans and spirits separately exist, thus a medium is needed:

All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present one common characteris-
tic: they presuppose a classification of all the things, real and ideal, of which men think,
into two classed or opposed groups, generally designated by two distinct terms which are
translated well enough by the words profane and sacred (profane, sacré). This division of
the world into two domains, the one containing all that is sacred, the other all that is pro-
fane, is the distinctive trait of religious thought; the beliefs, myths, dogmas, and legends
are either representations or systems of representations which express the nature of sa-
cred things, the virtues and powers which are attributed to them, or their relations with
each other and with profane things.25

Humans need blessings given by virtuous spirits and, in order to be ensured of

gaining holy apotropaic power, a consecrated person who serves as a medium
and enables communication with the spirits by means of sacred words is re-
quired. The spirits exist in the sacred world, with which laypeople cannot con-
nect, as Durkheim explains: ‘The sacred thing is par excellence that which the
profane should not touch, and cannot touch with impurity’.26 A special proce-
dure is thus created to permeate the boundary and allow a connection between
the two domains, because the medium, the ritual leader in this case, is sup-
posed to be an expert in spiritual communication, with his knowledge of the
Pali language, his literacy in the Dhamma script, and his experience as a monk:
‘There are words, expressions and formulae which can be pronounced only by
the mouths of consecrated persons; there are gestures and movements which
everybody cannot perform’.27

||
24 Wimmer et al. 2015, 5.
25 Durkheim 1947, 37.
26 Durkheim 1947, 40.
27 Durkheim 1947, 37.
1018 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

5.3 Setting
Temporal (time) and spatial (place) settings are fundamental contexts in which
a manuscript is produced and used. Setting also covers social, economic, and
cultural factors. The manuscript is involved in life-extension rituals in which the
Buddha and other deities are invoked to bless the patient in exchange for offer-
ings, and belief in the existence and protective power of holy spirits is alive in
the Northern Thai regions. The setting of this manuscript therefore involves a
micro-setting and as a macro-setting, both of which share the fundamental
characteristics of the Lan Na society in which the people have been influenced
by belief in spirits and Buddhism.

5.3.1 Micro-setting: Ritual event

The manuscript leaves no clues as to where and when it was written, yet we can
make a few speculations based on its user, who was perhaps an ex-monk, a
ritual leader, and also the scribe. The manuscript was possibly written at his
house and used for life-extension rituals before it ended up at the monastery
where it is kept today; the micro-setting of this manuscript is thus associated
with its use rather than its production. Another speculation, however, is that the
manuscript has always been kept at the temple from the beginning, which may
be indicated by the okāsa word in the manuscript, which mentions the follow-
ing:

ด้วยนิสันทบุญญรวายสี เยืองนีนา มีผลอานิสงส์กว้างขวางมากนักหนา

มูลศรัทธาอุบาสกอุบาสิกาห่งศรี สัพพัญ/ูพระพุทธเจ้ากระทําได้แล้วจักอุทิศบุญรวายสีเยิงนีไปรอด
จอดถึงยังเทวบุตรเทวดาอันรักษาวัดวาศาสนาอารามที$นันเป็ นเคล้าเป็ นประธาน [...]
May the merit derived from this act be greatly transferred to other deities who safeguard
the monastery where the ritual is held […].

A life-extension ritual would be requested by a patient, or by his or her family

members, to be organized by a ritual leader who is a local expert and an ex-
monk known as Nan (‘ex-monk’) or Can (‘teacher’, ‘master’). Perhaps in collabo-
ration with members of the patient’s family, the expert would be responsible for
the preparation of ritual items, tools, and offerings, as well as scheduling the
date and inviting a monk or a chapter of chanting monks. In the process of
preparation, the expert or ritual leader could use the manuscript as a checklist
for the offerings, a manual to preview the ritual sequences, and as a prayer book
for practising the okāsa recitation. Even though the manuscript could also play
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1019

a role in the preparation process, collectively accomplished by both the expert

and the patient’s family, the manuscript could only be read by an expert literate
in the Dhamma Lan Na script. The ritual would be held at a monastery or at the
house of the patient in a spacious hall known as a Toen, where all participants
could be welcomed.28
The duration of the ritual ranges from one hour to three nights, depending
on the number of Pali chanting texts selected by monks in accordance with the
availability of time and place, the number of patients, as well as possible budg-
etary constraints.29 No matter how long the overall ritual takes, the role of the
expert at the beginning of the ritual is rather fixed. He starts the ritual with the
okāsa prayer describing the offerings and the reasons the ritual was organized.
The manuscript is brought either from his house or a temple where the manu-
script is kept, to be held in the hands of the expert while reciting or placed on a
raised tray nearby. Later on, the monks chant the prepared Pali texts until the
ritual ends. The manuscript can still be placed on the tray or kept by the expert
after the end of the ritual.

5.3.2 Macro-setting: The Northern Thai regions

The manuscript is an outcome of Northern Thai society where, in the past, due
to the minimal availability of health services and medicine, people relied on a
local expert who was educated in a monastery and believed to be able to link
the secular world to the spiritual world. Sometimes, when people could not
recover from diseases in spite of treatment by a variety of herbal medicines,
then evil spirits and phò kam mae wen were suspected to be the causes of the
illness. Because these evil spirits were invisible, those who were supposed to
facilitate hybrid communication between the two spheres of humans and spirits
were required as ritual practitioners. Life-extension rituals did not emerge pri-
marily to heal sick people but rather to ensure the patients of protective powers
against any possible (invisible) evils, undetectable and unsolvable by means of
medicine. In other words, medicine removed the secular causes of disease while
life-extension rituals removed the spiritual causes of disease; medicine solved
physical problems while life-extension rituals provided psychological relief. The
result that patients expected from treatment was not what they expected from

||
28 Chotisukkharat 1971, 60.
29 One hour: Pongsakorn, interviewed by the author in 2020; three nights: Parinyan 1987, 307.
1020 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

hospitals, but was more spiritual and moral in nature.30 The ritual is a combina-
tion of belief in spirits and Buddhism. The Department of Mental Health gives
four reasons why local folk doctors or experts were popular in Northern Thai-
land: (1) the high costs of healthcare; (2) the long distances to access and the
minimal availability of modern medicine; (3) the difficulties of diagnosing and
treating unknown illnesses; and (4) the unique abilities of ritual experts to
communicate with spirits.31 Consequently, the significance of life-extension
rituals contributed to the ritual sequences recorded in the manuscript, to the list
of offerings, as well as to the okāsa or introduction to the ritual. According to
the text in the manuscript, however, besides the belief in evil spirits, Northern
Thai people also believed that physical disorders could be caused by imbalanc-
es in the four elements of human bodies.

5.4 Patterns
‘Patterns’ refers to the organization of a manuscript in terms of its verbal con-
tent and as a visible object and thus gives directions about how a manuscript is
to be used. A number of factors influence a manuscript pattern: textual genre,
purposes of use, available materials, financial support, etc., all of which are
recognized in advance before the writing begins. Patterns, then, is regarded as a
part of the preparation for manuscript production. Wimmer gives an explana-
tion of patterns, stating that they act as keys or frames that structure and guide
the production and the use of a manuscript. Patterns significantly enable, facili-
tate, encourage, or impede specific kinds of production and use, and concern
both the presentation of content by linguistic means or other sign systems. The
ways in which the contents of a manuscript are made and organized in the
manuscript materials are also associated with patterns.32
The patterns reveal the core purpose of the case-study manuscript as a
manual for hybrid communication to laypeople and to spirits. The okāsa word is
provided for imploring blessings and fortunes from Lord Buddha and other
deities, while the other sections are intended for laypeople, i.e., the direct user
(= ritual leader) and the indirect user (= patient and audience), so that they
could prepare the offerings and behave properly during the ritual.

||
30 Ganjanapan 2000, 65.
31 Department of Mental Health 2016, 47–48.
32 Wimmer et al. 2015, 7.
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1021

Considering both the verbal pattern and the visual pattern, the manuscript
was produced to serve as a manual. The ritual instructions and the okāsa word
are given as one text, instead of one as a text and the other as paracontent, as in
the case of other manuscripts in which a prayer is the core content, surrounded
by ritual instructions as paracontent. As a result of the combination of prayer
and ritual instructions, textual and non-textual paracontent was employed to
aid the user in navigating different instructions and performing the ritual
properly; the manuscript users must have comprehensively recognized and
understood the content and its structure. The most frequently found non-textual
paracontent is the double marker (||) dividing different sections: the list of offer-
ings, the okāsa word, the repetition, and the end; this marker is necessary be-
cause the text was written scriptio continua without indents.
Within the okāsa word, there is a Pali expression followed by a short ver-
nacular sentence demanding the ‘threefold repetition of the Pali [phrase]’
หือว่าบาลี ๓ หน; the ritual leader has to be careful not to read the vernacular
sentence three times but rather the Pali expression. On the other hand, the Pali
expression was not written in threefold repetition, but instead the scribe wrote
the short vernacular sentence. As mentioned in section 5.1 (‘Production’), the
manuscript was not intended for a single use on a specific occasion but rather
for repeated use, as evidenced by the symbol ||บ|| which indicates the place for
announcing the name of the patient. The manuscript could thus be used by
replacing the symbol with the name of the patient. Besides that, the marker
indicating the newly added part’s position in the text is another non-textual
symbol used in the manuscript.
Regarding visual patterns, the text was written in scriptio continua with
some of the aforementioned symbols inserted without an indent. Because the
manuscript was bound before it was written, the scribe must have aligned the
text with one side of the paper, otherwise the manuscript would have been re-
bound. As a consequence, the user of this manuscript had to recognize the
okāsa prayer among the ritual instructions during a recitation. As explained in
section 3.1 (‘Object’), the manuscript, when folded, is of a portable and handy
size; the text was written in 9–10 lines with letters in a legible size. Thus, not
only could the manuscript be easily taken anywhere, it could also be held in the
ritual leader’s hands, to be read in a sitting posture in front of a Buddha image
during the ritual.
The prerequisite skill in the Dhamma Lan Na script and in the Pali language
imply users who were monks or ex-monks, which shows that the ritual manual
was intended as a book for experts. Especially the Pali expressions as a part of
the okāsa prayer require a person literate in Pali, because the Pali orthography
1022 | Silpsupa Jaengsawang

is different from that of the Lan Na vernacular, despite the use of the same
Dhamma Lan Na script for both. The users had to be able to understand the
orthography of both languages. Veidlinger argues that activities involved in
Buddhism required literacy, unlike those practices associated purely with spir-
its or ghosts, in which only simple memorized spells were needed:

Those who deal with the spirits, called phi, do not in general need to be literate, as their
practices consist largely of invoking simple memorized spells and incantations and con-
tacting the spirits through trances. The more literacy is required for a practice – and thus
the more associated with Buddhism the practice is – the higher the prestige accorded it in
this system. Practicing monks may be involved in khwan rites, but they generally try to
avoid the phi cult, as it is regarded as something that is not condoned by Buddhism. 33

In life-extension rituals, even though other deities or holy spirits are mentioned,
Lord Buddha is praised as the foremost object of veneration; prayers, sutta, and
sermons are also derived from Buddhist canonical texts and chanted by Bud-
dhist monks. In addition, two kinds of numerals, the hora numeral and the nai
tham numeral34, illustrated the manuscript’s mixed character; the manuscript
was thus supposed to be used by an expert.
Even though the ritual was intended for communication with spiritual be-
ings, the vernacular part dominates the manuscript as well as the okāsa prayer.
The ritual aims at soothing the patient and his or her audience with protective
power given by the Buddha and other deities; thus, the prayer had to be under-
standable for all the participants, who would be relieved and ensured of its
apotropaic efficacy. In addition to the language, the prayer was written in a
simple prose style instead of in more complex verse. The manuscript appears to
have been written to serve a ritual in which the sacred world and the profane
world reciprocally communicate.

6 Conclusion
Analysed with the four-key-factors, the case-study manuscript has been found
to contain three hybrid modes: hybrid content, hybrid use, and hybrid commu-
nication. The manuscript was produced as a ritual manual, thereby including

||
33 Veidlinger 2006, 161.
34 The two kinds of numerals are basically different; the Hora numeral is derived from Burma
and is used in manuscripts of secular texts while the Nai Tham numeral is used in manuscripts
of religious texts (Jaengsawang 2019, 138).
 A Ritual Manual of Healing | 1023

two different parts: the oral part for pronunciation and the silent part for per-
ception, revealing that the use and the production of the manuscript had to be
thoroughly understood by the user, if that user was to avoid reading the silent
part aloud. The hybrid use of the manuscript has also been considered in two
dimensions: purpose and mode. Concerning the dimension of purpose, the
manuscript was intended as a ritual manual as well as a master version for fur-
ther copies, while it could also be used in both a discursive mode (text) and in a
cultic mode (object) for life-extension rituals, depending on individual experts.
The hybrid communication facilitated by the manuscript is reflected in the set-
ting and the patterns. In the micro-setting, or the life-extension ritual itself, as
evidenced by the verbal pattern or the hybrid language (Pali, vernacular), the
manuscript text offers two kinds of communication: one for the secular sphere
(profane) and the other for the spiritual sphere (sacré), connected by a medium
or a ritual expert. The hybrid communication of the manuscript significantly
emphasizes the dependence of local people on influential spirits and Buddhism,
still active in present-day Northern Thailand.

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ประยุกต์คมั ภีร์และพิธีกรรม ‘สืบ ส่ง ถอน’ ที$เกี$ยวกับพิบตั ิภยั ในปัจจุบนั , PhD dissertation,
Chulalongkorn University.
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พจนานุกรมพุทธศาสตร์ ฉบับประมวลธรรม, Bangkok: Museum for Sustainable Buddhism.
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Charles Ramble
The Volvelle and the Lingga: The Use of
Two Manuscript Ritual Devices in a Tibetan
Exorcism
Abstract: This article considers the construction and application of two manu-
script objects that feature in Tibetan rituals. One is a type of device known vari-
ously as a ‘volvelle’ or a ‘wheel chart’, among other names, that is used in
various cultures to perform certain simple computations. The example consid-
ered here comprises a pair of paper discs that are manipulated for the purpose
of elemental and astrological divination. The other object is a block print of an
effigy representing the receptacle for the soul of a demon that is ‘imprisoned’
inside it and subsequently destroyed. The article describes a particular exorcis-
tic ritual in which both devices play a role, before focusing on the composition
of the objects themselves. Translations of Tibetan texts related to their use are
also provided.

1 Introduction
Tibetan religion in general, and the minority Bön religion in particular, feature a
large and often bewildering variety of rituals, the majority of which have never
been documented. The number of known rituals is steadily growing as more and
more caches of manuscripts come to light, most of them in private collections in
culturally Tibetan parts of China and the Himalayan region. Since most of these
rituals are either obsolete or are performed only in a few isolated communities,
such research as has been done in this domain has tended to concentrate on the
available textual component. However, rituals also make use of a wide variety
of objects of which some, such as the mandala – a central constituent of most
tantric performances – are very well known, while others have attracted little or
no scholarly attention at all. Objects may range from unmodified pieces of
plant, animal or mineral material to constructions of great complexity requiring
multiple and often rare substances in their composition. This contribution will
present two manuscript objects that feature in the performance of certain apo-
tropaic rituals. There is no necessary connection between these two devices,
and I have seen them used separately at a number of ceremonies, but I shall
discuss them in the context of a ritual in which they were both used, in order to

Open Access. © 2021 Charles Ramble, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-050
1026 | Charles Ramble

illustrate how objects like these may be employed in concert to ensure the suc-
cessful outcome of rituals. As indicated in the title, the objects in question are,
first, a volvelle, consisting of concentric, superimposed paper discs that rotate
separately; and second, an object known as a lingga (Tib. ling ga),1 comprising a
sheet of paper bearing a blockprint or a freehand drawing representing a de-
mon, and then inscribed with magic formulae. Before describing these objects
and the way in which they are used, a brief introduction should be given about
the particular setting in which I was able to document their usage.

2 The ritual and its setting

The ritual in question took place in 2008 in the village of Kag in the southern
part of Nepal’s Mustang District. The inhabitants of Kag are followers of Tibetan
Buddhism, but in order to propitiate their household gods and to perform a
number of other rituals, notably relating to protection and prosperity, certain
families require the services of Bönpo householder priests from a nearby village,
called Lubrak, with whom the Kag families have hereditary ties of patronage. In
2008 a woman in Kag, named Chönyi Angmo, lost her husband. This happened
to be the third in a series of deaths in the husband’s family within a relatively
short period of time. Diseases and untimely deaths are often attributed to the
action of a disgruntled god of a predatory demon, and sequential deaths among
people of a similar age, such as young children or men in their prime of life, as
was the case here, are the hallmark of a particular type of creature called hri
(Tib. sri), commonly translated into English as ‘vampire’. Hri are usually invisi-
ble, though they may take the form of one or another animal depending on
which of nine categories they belong to (for example, those that prey on babies
normally manifest as weasels). The main lama of Lubrak, Tshultrim, was ac-
cordingly invited to Kag to perform a ritual for the destruction of the vampire
that was haunting Chönyi Angmo’s in-laws. The ritual is described at some
length, with accompanying video footage, on a website dedicated to Bön ritual,2
but the procedure may be described briefly here with particular reference to the

||
1 At their first appearance in the main text, Tibetan terms and the names of divinities will be
presented in roughly phonetic form, followed by the orthographic rendering; in footnotes, only
the orthographic form will be given. For personal names and toponyms, only the phonetic form
will be used.
2 Kalpa Bön, ‘Vampire subjugation – Kag 2010’ <http://www.kalpa-bon.com/performances/
vampire-subjugation-kag-2010> (accessed on 10 March 2021).
 The Volvelle and the Lingga | 1027

episodes involving the two devices that are the main subject of this contribu-
tion.
The ritual took more than two full days, beginning in the afternoon of the
first and ending late at night on the second. The main location was the shrine
room in Chönyi Angmo’s house.

Fig. 1: Lama Tshultrim inscribing magical syllables on the block-printed lingga.

Lama Tshultrim and his assistants began by preparing the different effigies,
offerings, and other objects that were to be used in the performance. These in-
cluded a homa pit or homkhung (Tib. hom khung), which is a triangular clay
vessel topped with a palisade of barberry sticks that would later serve as the
‘prison’ into which the soul of the vampire would be lured to its death. Inside
the pit the lama placed three small effigies, made by pressing dough into a
1028 | Charles Ramble

wooden mould. On top of these small effigies he placed a larger one of a supine
dough figure with its belly hollowed out to form a cup, and into the cup he in-
serted a cloth wick and pour red-dyed butter, representing the life-blood of the
effigy. Finally, he lit the wick to produce a flame, representing its life force. The
last item to be placed in the homkhung was a sheet of paper bearing a print; the
print was made from a wooden block coated with ink of soot and water. The
images represented a non-specific demon bound hand and foot. Before placing
this image in the pit, Lama Tshultrim chanted a litany, and as he did so in-
scribed letters on the paper using a wooden stylus dipped into a bowl contain-
ing a reddish ink (Fig. 1). He then folded the paper, wrapped it loosely with yarn
of five different colours, and inserted it into the pit (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: The lingga, folded into a triangle and wrapped in coloured yarn, ‘trapped’ inside the
homkhung amid other ritual objects.
 The Volvelle and the Lingga | 1029

The three small dough imprints, the larger dough effigy with the butter-lamp
belly, and the paper print were all versions of an effigy known as lingga, and I
shall return to them presently.
Vampire-subjugation rituals require that the effigy in which the vampire
has been trapped be buried in a pit at an appropriate location, depending on the
particular type of vampire one is dealing with. The type that had killed Chönyi
Angmo’s husband had been identified as one that had to be buried at a cross-
roads, of which there was one conveniently located in the main street just out-
side the courtyard of the house. A neighbour was asked to dig the hole – a three-
sided pit – before the main ceremony was begun. However, the direction in
which one should face before digging a hole for any purpose – whether to lay
the foundations of a house or to bury a vampire – must first be determined by
geomantic calculations if one is to avoid misfortune or death. It was to make
this calculation that Lama Tshultrim employed a paper volvelle intended for
this purpose. Once these and the preparations had been made, he and his assis-
tants proceeded to read the litany.
The general structure that frames rituals of this sort is broadly similar in
most cases. After various purificatory preliminaries, the major and minor gods,
whose presence is required to empower the proceedings, were invited to enter a
row of decorated dough effigies that had been arranged on a shrine as their
temporary residences. They were given offerings to please their senses and then
entreated to carry out the tasks that were assigned to them. After this propitia-
tion – which took much of the first evening and a good part of the following
day – the part of the ritual that was specifically concerned with the destruction
of the vampire was performed. A crucial component of this performance was the
recitation of the narrative that recounts the first, mythic occasion on which the
ritual was performed in illo tempore, an evocation that justifies and ensures the
efficacy of the performance being enacted. The lama assumed the identity of the
culture-hero – in this case Shenrab Miwo, considered by Bönpos to be the
founder of their religion – and the vampire was identified with the demoness
who featured in that account, a revenant girl. When the soul of the vampire had
been enticed into the paper and dough lingga contained in the pit, the lama
proceeded with a rite that is euphemistically referred to as ‘liberation’ (dral,
Tib. bsgral), that is, killing. With his ritual dagger he stabbed out the flame rep-
resenting the life of the supine effigy. The folded paper print was then placed on
a board, and as the lama read the appropriate text, the man of the house – in
this case a male relative of the widow – proceeded to assault the paper with a
series of weapons. First, he shot several arrows into it and then struck it with a
mattock and finally with a hammer (Fig. 3). The paper was then stuffed into the
1030 | Charles Ramble

left horn of a yak along with the dough lingga and other ritual items, and the
mouth of the horn covered with black cloth and firmly bound. After a series of
further manipulations, the lama dropped the horn into the pit that had been
dug at the crossroads. The hole was covered over and a fire built on top of it.

Fig. 3: Striking the lingga with the back of a mattock after it has been shot with arrows.

From this cursory summary of what was in fact a long and quite complex cere-
mony, I would like to single out just two elements for closer consideration. The
first is the device that the lama used to determine the direction in which his
assistant had to face when digging the triangular pit at the crossroads; and the
second is the paper lingga.
 The Volvelle and the Lingga | 1031

3 The volvelle
The first of these is a device contained in a handwritten almanac that Lama
Tshultrim uses for making astrological calculations. It consists of two concentric
paper discs, a smaller one superimposed upon a larger, and secured to the page
with a twist of paper that functions as an axle. The outer rim of the lower disc is
divided into twelve segments, each containing one or two syllables, and the
upper, smaller one bears a drawing of a creature with a human torso and the
head of a horned animal. The lower part of the body tapers away in a scaly tail.
The creature in question is Toche Nakpo (Tib. lto ’phye nag po), ‘Black Belly-
Crawler’, the divinity of the earth. The position in which Toche Nakpo lies
changes through the year as she slowly rotates with the months, and when the
earth is dug extreme care must be taken not to strike her in the wrong place
(Figs 4 and 5).3 The text that accompanies the diagram is perfectly explicit about
this:

If she is struck in the head, the man and his parents and children will die; it will be partic-
ularly bad for the lama. It is the same whether she is struck on her mane or on her face.
[…] If she is struck on the tail there will be conflicts, and it will be bad for the cattle. But if
the digging takes place on her belly, all the benefits and blessings will be had. If you dig at
her back, that will not be good for you – the hearts of your younger sisters and daughters
will burst, and your children will die.

Fig. 4: Volvelle featuring Toche Nakpo, the divinity of the earth.

||
3 For the importance of lto ’phye in the context of Tibetan ‘earth rituals’ (sa’i cho ga), see
Cantwell 2005, 6; for further references see ibid., 6 n. 9.
1032 | Charles Ramble

Fig. 5: Key to the volvelle of Toche Nakpo (drawing: Monica Strinu).

Devices of this sort, consisting of two or more superimposed discs of paper or

other materials, known variously as ‘wheel charts’, ‘information wheels’, and
‘volvelles’, and used for the purpose of computation, are found under a variety
of names in numerous cultures. In Europe they are sometimes known as
‘Llullian circles’, on the grounds that they were created by the Catalan mystic
Ramon Llull (1232–1316). In fact, it seems that Llull’s calculator was itself based
on the device known as zā’irjah, which was widely used in the Muslim lands
where he had travelled.4 While Llull employed it as a means of establishing
universal truths for the purpose of converting the Muslims from whom he had
acquired it, its use in Tibet seems to be mainly, if not exclusively, for making
computations in the domains of astrology and elemental divination. Tibetan
volvelles, known as tsikhor (Tib. rtsis ’khor), ‘calculation wheels’, can be com-
plex and aesthetically very elaborate, comprising several superimposed discs
and able to perform a range of computations. The Newark Museum of Art in

||
4 Link 2010, 216; see also Urvoy 1990.
 The Volvelle and the Lingga | 1033

New Jersey, for instance, holds a particularly fine example of a printed almanac
from 1763, with three sophisticated volvelles.5 Lama Tshultrim’s volvelle is con-
siderably simpler in conception and more rustic in execution than these, but it
serves its purpose perfectly adequately.
The opening lines of the accompanying text, preceding the passage quoted
above, state: ‘Whatever month it happens to be, that is where her tail should be
positioned. Her head touches the “Marginal Seventh”’. The Tibetan term that I
have translated here as ‘Marginal Seventh’ does not appear in dictionaries, but
occurs in certain ritual texts as one of a number of hostile powers that are to be
averted. The following excerpt is from the text of a ritual known as Tonak
Gosum (Tib. gTo nag mgo gsum) ‘The Three-Headed Man of the Black Rituals’, in
which the eponymous man of the ritual is a monster with three animal heads
that is subjugated and compelled to apply its power to the destruction of a long
list of adversaries. The list includes the following passage:

First, may this ritual repel the obstructions of one’s own birth year; secondly, may it repel
serious illness; third, may it repel misfortune and loss; fourth, may it repel the ‘Fourth-
Year Harmer’; fifth, may it repel the ‘Particular Ones’; sixth, may it repel dreadful curses;
seventh, may it repel the ‘Marginal Seventh’; eighth, may it repel the ‘Evil Eighth’; ninth,
may it repel the ‘Raptor’; tenth, may it repel the ‘Cemetery Cell’; eleventh, may it repel the
‘Clutch of Death’; twelfth, may it repel ‘Violent Tussles’; and thirteenth, may it repel ‘Vic-
tory’; repel all that might harm our beneficent patron! 6

The terms given here in inverted commas are in fact all the names of adverse
astrological configurations, one of which is the Marginal Seventh. The Marginal
Seventh is the term that designates the month that stands diametrically oppo-
site to any given month featuring on the perimeter of the inner disc. By counting
seven spaces in either direction from the space corresponding to any month,
one will reach its ‘Marginal Seventh’. The animals in question stand for mutual-
ly hostile attributes. Thus a man and a woman born, respectively, in 1986 and
1993 (a hare year and a bird year, seven years apart) might be prohibited from
marrying; or, if they are determined to do so and their families are soft-hearted,
they would need to commission the performance of rituals to offset the dangers
posed by their incompatibility. The animal that is located at right-angles to the
diameter drawn between the Marginal Sevenths, and facing Toche Nakpo, rep-
resents the most auspicious month.

||
5 For images of this almanac and its volvelles, see Kapstein (forthcoming).
6 For the Tibetan text, see Kalpa Bön, ‘mGo gsum’ <http:// http://www.kalpa-bon.com/
texts/mgo-gsum >, fols 8v–9r (accessed on 10 March 2021).
1034 | Charles Ramble

In Figures 4 and 5, at right angles to the diametric line formed by Toche’s

head and tail – respectively, in the snake and the horse sections – lies the mon-
key. The direction to which the monkey corresponds is not given in the diagram,
or indeed anywhere in this geomantic text. It is one of the things that lamas
learn during their early training: the formation of the universe from the body of
the cosmic tortoise. According to an early Bön work on cosmogony, the universe
was created by a divinity called Künbum Goje (Kun ’bum go ’byed), a name that
may be translated approximately as ‘He who Apportions Spaces for All the
Hundreds of Thousands’. According to this work,

[Künbum Goje] brought together the sheen of one of his hairs, the spittle of his mouth and
the metallic gleam of his fingernails, the warmth of his body and the breath of his mouth,
the impurities upon the surface of his body and the radiance of his mind. With them he
wrote the Nine Heroic Syllables of the elements on a precious golden tablet. Then he cast
the tablet to the ground. In the centre of the golden earth, there came into being the foun-
dation for the lives of the world: a yellow tortoise of gold.7

Different parts of the tortoise’s body became the five elements, and these in turn
were associated with the directions, animals, trigrams, stars, and planets. From
the tortoise’s lungs came the element iron, lying in the west and associated with
the monkey and the bird, the planet Venus, and the trigram ☱ which is known
in Tibetan as da (Tib. dwa; Ch. dui).
The monkey, then, signifies the west, and this is the direction in which
Chönyi Angmo’s neighbour had to face when he proceeded to dig up the street.

4 The lingga
Let us now turn to the second manuscript, the lingga. The term lingga (Tib. ling
ga) represents the Sanskrit liṅga, the term for phallus, a metonym for the Hindu
god Śiva. The use of the term in the context of Tibetan exorcism is a reference to
a Buddhist myth about the subjugation of Rudra, a wrathful form of Śiva, by a
Buddhist god, usually Vajrapāṇi.8 In the Bönpo version of the ritual described
here, the principal divinity responsible for the act of subjugation, and with
whom the officiating lama must identify, is a major tantric god Takla Membar
(sTag la me ’bar). The lingga effigy may in fact represent any one of a number of

||
7 Ramble 2013, 214.
8 Discussions of this myth are to found in several works, including Davidson 1991, Stein 1995,
and Dalton 2011.
 The Volvelle and the Lingga | 1035

demons or enemies that are to be destroyed in the course off a rite of ‘liberation’
(see above). In the case of paper lingga, the effigy is usually block-printed, but
certain priestly communities have a preference for hand-drawn images. The text
actually gives instructions for drawing, rather than printing, the image. The
identity of the demon may be bestowed by the form of the drawing or the block-
print, and the text cited below does in fact give specific directions for different
forms of lingga according to the purpose for which they are intended. More
commonly, however, especially when a block-print is used, the image is that of
a generic demon, and its specificity is established by means of appropriate syl-
lables that the lama inscribes on and around the printed form.
The procedure for making lingga, and directions for much of the subsequent
treatment that it should receive in the course of the ritual, are set out in a text
entitled ‘Ritual for drawing the lingga and the lustration of the lingga’ (Ling ga’i
bri (’bri) chog ling khrus rnams bzhugs pa legs so), a translation of which is pre-
sented below. Lama Tshultrim’s copy is a manuscript Tibetan longbook of six
folios written in the headless ume (Tib. dbu med) script. Text in smaller lettering
represents instructions, while larger writing is used for the passages to be
chanted. In the translation given below, the instructions will be rendered in
italics (even though it seems that the scribe has sometimes erroneously used the
larger script for this). For reasons of space, the transliterated text will not be
given here, but may be found in the corresponding part of the website of the
Kalpa Bön Rituals project.9 There remain uncertainties concerning the transla-
tion of certain passages, but these have been glossed over since they are unlike-
ly to be of interest to non-specialist readers.
The rite of ‘liberation’ belongs to a class of tantric rituals that are classified
as ‘violent’ (drakpo, Tib. drag po), and the theme of violence is extended to the
materials with which the lingga is produced. The text specifies that the paper on
which the lingga is to be drawn should be poisonous, and the stylus made from
an arrow that has killed a yeti (or possibly a bear). The ink is a mixture of blood
from different animals that have suffered violent or unpleasant deaths. Ingre-
dients of the sort that are required in such manuals can be exotic, to say the
least, and by no means always easily available. Tantric priests such as Lama
Tshultrim usually have reserves of the kinds of substances that are specified in
their grimoires, but add only a minuscule quantity to a base that is made of
readily-accessible substitutes. In the present case, most of the blood that Lama
Tshultrim used to inscribe the syllables on the print consisted of a wash of red

||
9 Kalpa Bön, ‘Ling ga'i 'bri chog’ <http://kalpa-bon.com/texts/sri/ling-gai-bri-chog> (accessed
on 10 March 2021).
1036 | Charles Ramble

clay mixed with reconstituted dried yak blood. I did not ask him whether the
stylus he used was actually made from an arrow with the prescribed history.

5 The destruction of the lingga

The text presented here is concerned primarily with the creation and purifica-
tion of the lingga; but as we have seen, the process whereby the lingga is de-
stroyed is also an important part of the ceremony and therefore of the life cycle,
so to speak, of this particular manuscript. The instructions for the immolation of
the lingga are in fact spread across several texts, but we may conclude here with
one that accompanies a particularly important part of the ritual: the sequence in
which the stand-in for the man of the house attacked it with arrows, a mattock,
and a hammer. The text that Lama Tshultrim chanted during this procedure
covers a single piece of paper entitled ‘A little folio about the “liberation” ritual’
(bsGral ba’i shog chung bzhugs pa legs s+hō). The procedure itself consisted of
shooting arrows into the lingga, then hitting it with a mattock and with a ham-
mer (for which the back of the mattock’s head was used, because there was no
hammer in the house). Lama Tshultrim read the text three times, and on each
occasion his assistant used a different one of the three implements. In fact, the
text does not mention a mattock, only a bow and arrows and a hammer; we may
therefore attribute the integration of an agricultural implement into the arsenal
used against the vampire to the inventiveness that lamas often display with
regard to the interpretation of their texts. In this short text, the main tutelary
divinity is again Takla Membar. There is also the mention of another major god
named Tsomchok Khagying (Tib. gTso mchog mkha’ ’gying), whose relevance
here is that one of the attributes he holds in his numerous hands is a hammer.

6 Translations
6.1 Translation of the lingga text
[fol. 1r] The ritual for drawing the lingga and the lustration of the lingga. [fol. 1v]
Draw the lingga according to the main text and say as follows. Hey, I am Takla
Membar – hear me, you vow-breaking malefactors! First of all, anger develops
from the father, and anger, which is the cause of the hells, is present in you.
Then desire develops in the womb of the mother, and desire, the cause of the
realm of the hungry ghosts, is present in you. Then stupidity takes form as the
 The Volvelle and the Lingga | 1037

body, and stupidity, that is the cause of the animal realm, is present in you.
Thus all three poisons, the three lower realms, are within you.10 [fol. 2r] To re-
nounce forever the three lower realms, make an effigy, a lingga. Swo! I am Takla
Membar. There is nothing on which to draw the lingga, and a surface on which
to draw the lingga must therefore be sought. Make the surface on which the
lingga is to be drawn from poison paper measuring one span and four finger-
widths.11 Since there is no stylus with which to draw the lingga, make that stylus
with which to draw the lingga out of a piece, measuring one span and four fin-
ger-widths, of an arrow that has killed a yeti.12 [fol. 2v] Nor is there any blood
with which to draw the lingga. Take the blood of a yeti that has died on the edge
of a sword; the blood of a mule that has suffered a bad death by poisoning, and
the blood of a dog that has died a bad death by rabies, and from a mixture of
these three make the blood to be used for drawing the lingga. For a general-
purpose lingga, begin to draw from the crown of the head; for a male lingga,
begin to draw from the right shoulder, and for a female lingga begin to draw
from the left shoulder. For an enemy lingga, proceed to draw from the right foot;
for a demon lingga, begin from the left foot, and for a child lingga begin from the
middle of the privy parts. Therefore listen – hear me! On the crown of the head
write the syllable NAN, which signifies being driven by the winds of karma; on
either shoulder write the syllable ’CHING, which betokens [fol. 3r] the binding of
the malefactors by the protectors of Bön. On each of the four limbs write the
syllable YAN, which refers to binding by the great kings of the four directions.
Therefore hear me, you evil-doers! You who do not belong to the noxious ene-
mies, you, the eight classes of demigods and all those in the six realms, you who
are disembodied – do not enter this effigy! Force the harmful enemies and the
’dre and gdon demons down into this effigy, and quickly summon them into this
lingga. Wherever in the ten directions of the world these ill-fortuned, noxious
hostile enemies may abide, summon them swiftly into this lingga, cast them
down forcibly into this effigy! Say these words and visualize the action intensely,
repeating and writing the mantra for summoning a great many times.

||
10 The three mental poisons are associated with different parts of the body: flesh (sha) corre-
sponds to stupidity (gti mug), blood (khrag) to desire (’dod chags), and bone (rus pa) to anger
(zhe sdang).
11 ‘Poison paper’ (dug shog) may refer to paper that has been treated with toxic substances
such as aconite or arsenic. According to Lama Sherab Tenzin of Samling, in Dolpo, it may also
refer to untreated paper that has been made from the root fibres of Stellera chamaejasme
(Tib. re lcag pa), which has toxic properties.
12 The Tibetan term for yeti, mi rgod, lit. ‘wild man’, may also denote a brown bear.
1038 | Charles Ramble

The chant for the writing is over. And now the chant for binding the daro.13
Ideally, it should be recited for five different parts: once for the head, a second
time for the two hands and a third time for the feet. Imagine this being diffused
from the five poisons, [fol. 3v] and recite as follows. Hey! I am Takla Membar. You,
ill-fortuned sinners in your misery, I summon you into the effigy of this daro
and take you at the same time as the five poisons: the head, which contains the
five poisons in full, and the four limbs that are the four door-guards – this daro
that has the five points representing the five poisons, I lift you with my five
fingers and bind the daro, the five poisons and the demons together. Tie down
the lingga, bind it crosswise: bind its body, bind its speech, bind its mind! (Man-
tras) Thus is the binding done. Do not let any of your own impurities be transferred
to the lingga. Fumigate the ritual items and the environs with frankincense and
say as follows. Swo! I am Takla Membar. With this dread substance, frankin-
cense, fumigate the hostile obstructors and the lingga; drive the dre demons, the
obstructor demons, and the jungpo demons to distraction! [fol. 4r] Do not fumi-
gate the awesome gods on high, but drive the vampires of males and the de-
mons of females to distraction; do not fumigate the serpent spirits below, but
drive the byad ma demons, the hostile enemies, mad! Here ends the fumigation
with frankincense. If you have a lingga for burning, cast it into the homa pit. Ac-
cording to the Rin chen ’phreng ba (text) this ritual should be performed six
times. If you are performing a vampire-subjugation rite, some sort of skull is ideal,
otherwise insert it into a yak horn and place it at the foot of the dö.14 I, Phungbön
[Gömar],15 have taken this excerpt from other sources. (Mantra) Here follows the
general lustration of the lingga. To perform the threefold ritual of distancing
[yourself from the enemy], offering it [to the meditational divinity] and crushing it
down, it is most important to perform the lustration of the lingga; then place it
between two lengths of barberry wood and brandish it. Holding it in your hand you
should rotate it around your head three times in alternating directions, and recite
the following mantra for releasing [yourself]. (Mantras) [fol. 4v] Recite this once.
Then rotate the lingga once around your waist and recite it once; and then rotate

||
13 The term daro (Tib. lda ro) is obscure, but seems to be a synonym for the lingga in an un-
known language. Khenpo Tenpa Yungdrung Rinpoche, the abbot of the Bön monastery of
Triten Norbutse in Kathmandu, has suggested to me that it may belong to the Tanggut lan-
guage (personal communication).
14 The dö (Tib. mdos) is a ritual construction, in this case comprising a shallow basket filled
with black sand and topped with a tripod of arrows, in which the homa pit and other items are
placed.
15 The name Phungbön Gömar (Tib. Phung bon rGod dmar), often appears in texts associated
with the tantric divinities Takla and Phurba, but his identity remains unknown.
 The Volvelle and the Lingga | 1039

it in front of you and behind you as above and recite it once. Perform this in your
imagination (?) three times and recite it three times, but if you have already per-
formed it [in the course of this ritual] you need not do so [again].16 This is how the
lustration of the lingga is performed. Visualize yourself as the meditational di-
vinity [Takla Membar], and collect pure water with milk in front of you in a ves-
sel. In your non-conceptual meditation, in that water, from the syllable PAM
there arises a lotus; from the syllable RAM arises the sun; and from the syllable
A there arises the disc of the moon. From the surface of this comes the white
goddess of water, with one head and two arms. With her right hand, she per-
forms the ritual gesture of offering and bestowing, and in her left hand [fol. 5r]
she holds a red lotus. She is seated in the full lotus posture, and her body is
bedecked with precious ornaments. Then from the heart of the meditational
divinity a beam of light shines forth, and imagine that the jñānasattva, which is
like that goddess, is one with [you], the samāyasattva.17 (Mantras) From the
palm of the hand with which she performs the gesture of offering and bestowal,
imagine that there issues forth the nectar of wisdom to lustrate whatever lingga
or sacred circle you may have. Imagine also that all that emanates from your
mouth, be it vapour or spittle, is thoroughly purified. Cause the sacred circle or
lingga or effigy to be reflected in a mirror and lustrate that mirror, reciting as
follows. (Mantras) [fol. 5v] May all impurities that emanate from me be cleansed!
With these words, perform the actions on the support, and thoroughly purify all
the impurities that you breathe out. Infuse the enemy into the lingga, and visualize
it as the actual enemy itself. Then imagine that the good fortune, influence, pros-
perity and vital radiance of the enemy are all purified by that water, and recite the
mantras repeatedly. [fol. 6r] Perform a lustration of that lingga as above. Imagine
that that water becomes a mass of wind, and that that enemy’s life is purified.
Then imagine that that goddess dissolves into light and is mingled with the
water. Drink it, and your own life and enjoyment will be endowed with radi-
ance. Sprinkle whatever is left of that water around the house, and imagine that
the place in which you are performing this ritual is blessed – then will you gen-
erate splendour and radiance for yourself. After this, fumigate the lingga with
barberry bark, frankincense, sulphur, the excrement of dogs and jackals, the fat of

||
16 In the course of the ritual, Lama Tshultrim did in fact perform these gestures with the lingga
exactly as prescribed.
17 The Sanskrit term jñānasattva refers to the wisdom deity that is being visualized (Tib. lha ye
shes sems dpa’). The samāyasattva denotes the meditator who identifies with the divinity
(Tib. bdag dam tshigs sems dpa’) but is impure, because the result is a mental production. Re-
peated and prolonged performance of this visualisation results in complete union known as the
‘non-dual being of activity’ (Tib. gnyis med las gyi sems dpa’).
1040 | Charles Ramble

a Chinese person, the boot of a leper, wolfsbane, and [the plants?] dranak, langru,
and ognyi,18 and recite these mantras. (Mantras) [fol. 6v] Separate [the enemy]
from his or her protective divinities. It is most important that you should be so
cautious and disciplined that other people do not know about this. The lustration
of the lingga is over. Virtue and blessings.

6.2 Translation of the ‘Little folio about the “liberation” ritual’

When striking with arrows and other missiles, recite as follows. Swo! I am Takla
Membar. Now that the time has come to ‘liberate’ the hostile obstructive ene-
mies, the messengers and agents should accomplish their tasks. To the great
bow that is the empty essential nature of being should be set the arrow of wis-
dom, and a wrathful thunderbolt affixed to it as an arrowhead. Strike the body
of the hostile obstructor with this magical missile of an arrow! Since it is the
heart that is the seat of black anger, plant the arrow in the middle of its heart!
Since it is the spleen that is the seat of stupidity, plant the arrow in the centre of
the spleen! Since it is the lungs that are the seat of pride, plant the arrow in the
middle of the lungs! Since the liver is the locus of lust, [fol. 1v] plant the arrow in
the heart of the body’s heat! As the kidneys are the seat of envy, plant an arrow
in the middle of its blood! Shoot these arrows, these magical missiles, into the
five elements of its body, and into its eight consciousnesses! The ‘Arrows as
Magical Missiles’ is over. Then strike it with a hammer. Swo! Among the attributes
held in the right hands of [Tsomchok] Khagying is a fearsome blazing hammer.
The material from which it is made is meteorite, and it has a socket of gold.
Agents and messengers, take it in your hands, and come and smash it into the
brain-blood of the oath-breakers, and reduce their bodies to dust! (Mantras)
Here ends the ‘Pounding with the Hammer’. May there be virtue.

||
18 Respectively, brag nag, glang ru, ’og nyid.
 The Volvelle and the Lingga | 1041

References
Cantwell, Cathy (2005), ‘The Earth Ritual: Subjugation and Transformation of the Environment’,
Revue d’Études Tibétaines, 7: 4–21.
Dalton, Jacob P. (2011), The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism,
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Davidson, Ronald (1991), ‘Reflections on the Maheśvara Subjugation Myth: Indic Materials,
Saskya-pa Apologetics, and the Birth of Heruka’, Journal of the International Association
of Buddhist Studies, 14/2: 197–235.
Kapstein, Matthew (ed.) (forthcoming), Tibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books: An Intro-
duction and Guide, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Link, David (2010), ‘Scrambling T-R-U-T-H: Rotating Letters as a Material Form of Thought’, in
Siegfried Zielinski and Eckhard Fürlus (eds), Variantology 4. On Deep Time Relations of
Arts, Sciences and Technologies in the Arabic-Islamic World and Beyond (Kunstwissen-
schaftliche Bibliothek, 45), Cologne: König, 215–266.
Ramble, Charles (2013), ‘The Assimilation of Astrology in the Tibetan Bon Religion’, Extrême-
Orient Extrême-Occident, 35: 199–232.
Stein, Rolf A. (1995), ‘La soumission de Rudra et autres contes tantriques’, Journal asiatique,
283/1: 121–160.
Urvoy, Dominique (1990), ‘La place de Ramon Llull dans la pensée arabe’, Catalan Review:
International Journal of Catalan Culture, 4/1–2: 201–222.
Martin Jörg Schäfer
‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in
Hamburg Prompt Books from the French
Period
Abstract: Among the c. 3,050 items, most of which are books in manuscript, that
comprise the collection known as the Theater-Bibliothek of Hamburg’s city and
university library, 136 items contain censorship entries from the years when
Hamburg was part of the Napoleonic Empire (1811–1814). Remarks in multiple
hands make suggestions and negotiate how to avoid referring to the occupying
forces, the English enemy, oppression, or upheaval. The prompt book for the
1812 revival of Hamburg’s famous 1770s production of King Lear is particularly
memorable in the ways a simplified adaptation (that was staged long after the
occupation ended) is produced by the complex interactions of various hands.

1 Censorship of the Hamburg stage: the stake of

handwriting
In European theatre, censorship of the stage lasted well into the twentieth cen-
tury in most countries.1 In the German-speaking areas of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century theatre companies that did not perform at court had to
obtain approval for their performances with the local authorities in the first
place.2 The content of the play itself was only one (albeit crucial) element of an
overall administrative process. Theatre was a commercial enterprise and relied
on pandering to the assumed prevalent taste. (Implicit) standards of offensive-
ness or objectionability were usually well known. Censorship of the printing
press (with regard to journalism and literature) as well as that of public utter-
ances in general provided a backdrop against which censorship of the stage was
often not a problem by itself as long as plays and performances remained within
an implicit framework of decorum.3

||
1 Cf. Goldstein 1989, 113–153; cf. Worrall 2017, 45–53.
2 Cf. Maurer-Schmoock 1982, 102–118.
3 Cf. Pieroth 2018, 18–22.

Open Access. © 2021 Martin Jörg Schäfer, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-051
1044 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

Potentially, theatre censorship can always go along with practices of hand-

writing: while the performance of a play is ephemeral the censor needs a tangi-
ble basis for his decision, e.g. the content of the play to be performed in a stable
container, i.e. manuscript or print. Writing tool in hand, the censor can then
cancel or ‘amend’ words as well as whole passages. However, it is safe to as-
sume (and in a lot of cases well known) that in practice plays were approved or
rejected altogether – at least plays by familiar authors.4 Either way, censorship
annotations would not necessarily make their way into the prompt books used
within the theatre to facilitate the actual performances: written artefact in hand,
prompters help out with lines that may have been forgotten or just poorly mem-
orised; stage managers see to the quiet operation of the performance. Around
1800, these two roles sometimes intermingled in European theatre. It is more
likely that these prompt books would take the approved play or version of it as a
starting point for producing a ‘clean copy’ manuscript that would then be put to
use in everyday practice.
Prompt books from the French occupation period in Hamburg (1806–1814)
prove to be a fascinating exception to this rule of thumb: after the introduction
of a due process of censorship in 1810/1811, the local censor, former Hamburg
journalist Johann Philipp Nick (1777–1815),5 would note pages in need of
change, suggest and insert amendments as well as sign the final version with a
‘vu et approuvé’ (‘seen and approved’) by ‘Nick censeur’ (‘censor Nick’) or simp-
ly ‘Nick’. The prompt book of Kotezbue’s popular melodrama Die Sonnen-
Jungfrau (about a fated transcultural love during the Spanish conquest of Peru)
has only very few censorship interventions (despite hints to a minor riot in the
subplot). Nick signed it on the date of the performance in question, ‘22 août
1813’ (see Fig. 1). Although Nick is the only censor in town, the respective writ-
ten artefacts put the interaction of several hands and writing tools on display. In
some cases, they replaced the prompt books that had already been in use for
several decades.6 Mostly, these written artefacts were already full of amendments
and additions that had been added (e.g. by the principal or the prompter him-
self) whenever a production was revived after a hiatus. While future enrichments

||
4 Cf. Hellmich 2014, 126.
5 Cf. Schröder and Klose 1870, 519; cf. Hellmich 2014, 30–31.
6 In some cases, such an original prompt book is part of the collection in addition to the cen-
sorship one. Cf. the 1777 manuscript based and the 1813 print based prompt books of local
adaptations of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbiblio-
thek ‘Carl von Ossietzky’ (Stabi), Theater-Bibliothek, 514 (Maaß für Maaß. Ein Schauspiel in fünf
Aufzügen); cf. Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 948b (Maaß für Maaß. Ein Schauspiel in fünf
Aufzügen).
 ‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books | 1045

were to be expected the original page layout hardly ever took them into account.
Only few interleaved written artefacts7 or prompt books with margins for
possible corrections8 are part of Theater-Bibliothek. These tended to be bulky
and would have impeded their side stage use during the performance by the
prompter or the inspector (a person of overall responsibility who was also the
predecessor of today’s stage manager). The manuscripts had been written (often
by the prompter himself) in German cursive (with rare interjections of Latin) on
low-price paper quires in whichever format and with whatever quill and ink
seem to have been at hand; they had then been bound into inexpensive card
board cover. They also include additional practical information for the
subsequent use for a performance: the prompter and the inspector would be in
need of cast, prop and set lists as well as cues for lighting, entrances and exits.
These lists were often glued in on extra sheets after the production of the clean
copy or added on folios that had been left blank (see Fig. 2). In the case of the
French period prompt books, most of them were used (often with only minor
changes) for a long time after Nick’s work as censor ended. The following con-
siderations examine Nick’s interventions with respect to a prominent example,
Friedrich Ludwig Schröder’s 1812 reprisal of his own 1778 adaptation of William
Shakespeare’s early seventeenth-century King Lear.

2 ‘Nick censeur’: Approval and rejection entries

The French army captured Hamburg in 1806. As the capital of the newly found-
ed department Bouches-de-l’Elbe, the city was a part of the Empire from late
1810 up to the expulsion of the occupying forces in 1814. Napoleon decreed the
reintroduction of censorship in France in 1810; the new laws were applied in the
new territories in the course of 1811.9 The central ‘Direction de l’imprimerie et de
la librairie’ in Paris had a Hamburg-based agency closely aligned with the local
police. Beside the control of printing and bookselling, the agency had its resi-
dent censor in Johann Philipp Nick who was responsible for the newspapers, for
all published literature and also for the stage. All playbills, which advertised the
venue, the date and the name of the play, needed to be bilingual. An overall list
of the plays to be performed had to be presented to Nick’s supervisor, Louis-

||
7 Cf. Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 1989b (Dom Karlos, Infant von Spanien).
8 Cf. Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 499b (Macbeth. Ein Trauerspiel in Fünf Aufzügen).
9 Cf. Hellmich 2014, 123–124.
1046 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

Philippe Brun d’Aubignosc, for approval. D’Aubignosc had the power to prohibit
the performance of a play and to close down a theatre if his orders met with
resistance. He could also interfere after the fact in case an approved play was
deemed to have an undesirable effect upon the public.10 In general, plays need-
ed to avoid utterances that could be construed as criticism of France and all
things French. The English enemy was not to be mentioned; words such as
‘homeland’, ‘patriotism’, ‘freedom’, ‘tyranny’, ‘oppression’ etc. were to be
avoided. As a matter of consequence, the agency tended to reject works by pop-
ular authors such as Friedrich Schiller wholesale.11 However, a lot of the plays
that did reach Nick’s desk give the impression to have been edited with a great
deal of good will and attention to detail. Others hardly show any interventions.12
More than half of the c. 3,050 mostly handwritten prompt books in the
Hamburg Theater-Bibliothek’s collection (ranging from 1750 up to 1880),13 date
from the 1770s to the 1810s. Written artefacts of plays that were never performed
can be found next to one hit wonders (i.e. plays that were performed once or
twice but never taken up again) and plays that became part of the repertory for
decades.14 Some of the books were in use for quite some time afterwards, some-
times until the 1840s. For some especially successful plays (that were performed
more than 50 times over a two or three decades) there is no written artefact pre-
served in the collection. These might have shown too many signs of wear to be
considered worth preserving for another future performance.
Before and after the time of French censorship, none of the many written ar-
tefacts in the collection bear witness to explicit censorship intervention (or, for
that matter, a due process of censorship). The 136 written artefacts that bear the
censor’s, i.e. Nick’s signature15 account for nearly all the plays known to have
been performed during Nick’s tenure from 1811 to 1814. The overwhelming bulk
is signed with the aforementioned ‘seen and approved’ in a dark ink which had
probably been black but faded into brown overtime. In various prompt books,

||
10 Cf. Hellmich 2014, 124–127.
11 Cf. Stoltz 2016. (Dominik Stoltz has been part of the team that has compiled the index of
Theater-Bibliothek but has only published this blogpost.)
12 Cf. Allgemeine Zeitung 1815, 1236.
13 Cf. Neubacher 2016.
14 Playbills from 1768 to 1850 can be accessed at <www.stadttheater.uni-hamburg.de>.
15 According to the index of Hamburg Staatsbibliothek ‘Handschriftenkatalog’ (<allegro.sub.
uni-hamburg.de/hans>); cf. Stoltz 2016. Stoltz counts 135 because he does not yet include the
King Lear-prompt book analysed below. The written artefact clearly belongs to Theater-
Bibliothek but was found by the author of this article in the general inventory of Hamburg
Staatstbibliothek in 2015. It has since been included in the special collection.
 ‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books | 1047

page numbers are listed in Nick’s hand on one of the last pages. These are the
pages with objectionable content; they contain Nick’s minor or major annota-
tions as well as edits by additional hands (and different writing tools) that react
to or anticipate Nick’s comments. Only in very few cases, prompt books include
rejection notices: the most explicit one is on display in Gustav Hagemann’s 1790
comedy Leichtsinn und Edelmuth was performed on a regular basis until 1798
but was deemed too critical of the military by Nick. His rather genial last page
commentary reads:

In einem monarchischen Staate kann und darf der Soldatenstand als kein Unglück be-
trachtet werden. Der 15. Auft[ritt] wirft auf jeden Fall ein ungünstiges Licht auf ihn. Die
anderen Scenen sind nicht gantz von diesem Vorwurfe frei. Sie werden es mir daher nicht
übelnehmen hochzuverehrender Herr Director! wenn ich dieses Lustspiel nicht genehmi-
gen kann.

In a monarchy, the military cannot and must not be regarded as a misfortune. In any case,
the 15th scene shows it in an unfavourable light. The other scenes are not entirely free of
this reproach. You will therefore not hold it against me, Honorable Director! If I cannot
approve this comedy (my translation). 16

As mentioned above, some written artefacts Nick received look like newly pro-
duced copies instead of the existing prompt books for productions that had
been part of the repertory for a longer period of time. They were possibly worn
out by their long-time use; the information stored in them might have been
deemed too valuable to be messed around with by a (hopefully) temporary
occupying power. An additional layer of writing by an outside hand was always
at risk of rendering the prompt book as a whole illegible and thus unsuitable for
practical use. In such a case, especially if a play was deemed problematic by the
theatre company, Nick received so-called clean copies, i.e. books that were
produced from scratch and then – as soon as they had Nick’s signature of
approval – amended e.g. with technical information.
In 15 instances, the company did not produce a new manuscript at all but
used an existing print version of the respective play as a basis. This was conven-
ient (and common practice) whenever the stage adaptation of a play would not
greatly differ from a published version of a text. Approximately 500 of the 3,050
prompt books in Theater-Bibliothek are based on available printed books and
then turned into a unique written artefact via enrichment by often multiple
hands. Most of the 15 print prompt books signed by Nick were commercially

||
16 Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 477 (Leichtsinn und Edelmuth. Lustspiel in einem
Aufzug), fol. 34v; cf. Stoltz 2016.
1048 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

successful (and politically non-threatening) comedies that had been part of the
Hamburg repertory for a great period of time. Handing in a print made addition-
al sense in cases in which the theatre company itself had published a particular-
ly successful stage adaptation, which had been the case for the Hamburg
productions of Shakespeare back in the 1770s. These adaptations were still the
ones performed at the time although they were outdated as far as the intellectu-
al discourse of the 1810s was concerned. Handing in a printed book also con-
veyed the not so subtle point that a work allowed in print could also be
performed on stage: out of the five Shakespeare plays performed under Nick’s
aegis, two were comedies and made use of the handwritten 1770s prompt book.
Three with a potentially problematic contents, however, were handed in as
print: the 1770s Hamburg adaptations of Measure for Measure, Hamlet and King
Lear had all privileged the family drama over the political dimension. But they
still included tales of revolutionary struggle that could be deemed problematic
by the French authorities. Handing them in as prints thus meant less work for
the scribe (usually the prompter himself) in case of a possible rejection. In case
of acceptance, the company would now take the print as a starting point for the
new prompt book. The resulting hybrid of print and the multilayered handwrit-
ing by multiple users made it easier to distinguish between the original point of
departure (i.e. the play presented to Nick), the interaction between the censor’s
notes and the respective reactions and counter-reactions. Additional technical
information could then be added without a problem at a later point in time.

3 The case of the Hamburg 1812 König Lear

Against the backdrop of French censorship, it seems rather curious at first that an
adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear was performed at
all five times during the course of 1812.17 The play by the British playwright is set
in a mythical (or early medieval) England and shows the disintegration of au-
thority, various instances of brutal upheaval as well as the invasion of a French
army.18 On the other hand, Shakespeare had been appropriated by the German
Romantics more than a decade ago at this point. He was widely considered to be
more at home in the German-speaking world than in the London theatre-

||
17 According to the playbills accessible at <www.stadttheater.uni-hamburg.de>, performances
took place on 13, 20, 22 and 25 March as well as on 11 May and 28 October.
18 Cf. Foakes 1993, 162–177, 295–303, 385–392.
 ‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books | 1049

districts.19 All the other Shakespeare-plays staged in Hamburg during the cen-
sorship period were either set in Italy or Denmark. But in the ascending roman-
tic imagination the England-based Lear-plot had more the making of a fairy-tale
than an analogy to current political events.20 Above all, the stage-adaptations
still performed in Hamburg had first been produced in the 1770s in order to
introduce the German-speaking audience to the author. In order to make the
plays more palatable, the then principal and lead-actor Friedrich Ludwig
Schröder (1744-1816) had equipped the tragedies with happy endings:21 Hamlet
survived and became king; Lear died more from exhaustion and old age than
grief; his daughter Cordelia fainted instead of perishing and could succeed him
on the throne. In 1778, Schröder’s Lear-performance had garnered so much
international praise that Mme de Staël included a description in her 1810 quasi-
ethnographic exploration of Germany De l’Allemagne.22 Despite the subsequent
ban of de Staël’s work, its stunning initial success would have contributed to
whatever standing Schröder’s Shakespeare-adaptations had with the Hamburg
censorship office. Above all, Schröder himself came out retirement for the 1811
to 1813 censorship period at Hamburg theatre to take over as principal, a posi-
tion he had already held for the overwhelming part of the last three decades of
the eighteenth century. (However, Schröder, although by now himself an older
man, did not take up the part of the aged King again.)
In order to promote his take on Shakespeare back in the 1770s, Schröder
had had his adaptations published as an octavo-print ‘nach Shakespeare’
(based on Shakespeare) but without referencing Schröder.23 Despite being out-
dated in light of the late eighteenth’s century romantic take on Shakespeare,
these books were still in circulation. (They were also still common as template
for King Lear performances in German speaking theatres.) A print copy of
Schröder’s 1778 King Lear-adaptation formed the basis of the prompt book pre-
sented to the censorship office in 1812. Next to the printed ‘based on
Shakespeare’, Schröder’s own hand has added ‘[von Schröder]’ (by Schröder) in
black ink on the title page: the famous principal does not so much ask to stage a
play by the English enemy but rather stresses the local aspect. The written arte-

||
19 Cf. Paulin 2003; cf. Blinn 1982. However, the Romantic translation of King Lear in what
would become the standard Schlegel/Tieck-edition would not appear until 1832. For Johann
Heinrich Voss’s 1806 King Lear-translation in the Romantic mould that was partly integrated
into the Hamburg Shakespeare cf. footnote 30 below.
20 Cf. Bate 1986, 1–20; cf. Paulin 2003, 283–295; cf. Moody 2002, 40.
21 Cf. Häublein 2007; cf. Hoffmeier 1964.
22 Cf. de Staël Holstein 1810, 293–296.
23 Cf. Schröder 1778.
1050 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

fact as a whole consists of 59 folios, 55 of which (4–58) are printed pages. Sheets
of the same paper are also glued inside the front and the back of the brownish
cover. In black ink, a faded sticker on the cover (that for most of the written
artefacts in the collection seems to be have added at a much later date) does not
only state the title ‘König Lear’ (King Lear) and numbers of an earlier index (47
29) but also clearly assigns the book to the ‘Soufleur [sic]’ (prompter).
A set and prop list is written down in black ink on both sides of the second
folio. A red pencil by a different hand adds some minor information (see Fig. 2).
On the recto of the third further prop information is inserted by different hands
in black ink and in a faded grey pencil that also cancels some of the black ink.
Presumably the same grey pencil is at work on the verso of the last folio and the
inside of the back cover. A list of eight or nine single words could possibly con-
sist of last names of the performers but is largely illegible. However, none of the
last names on the existing King Lear Hamburg playbills from the 1770 to the
1820s is an obvious match. On the 55 printed folios at least the same three writ-
ing tools leave their mark. But a grey pencil is clearly used by different hands at
different points in time; a hand that inserted technical remarks makes use of the
grey pencil as well as black ink. At least three different hands (including Nick’s)
use ink. One of them, which inserts textual additions, is clearly Schröder’s him-
self. Whether the different shades from black to brown indicate lessening of ink
in the quill, the process of yellowing or a different ink altogether has yet to be
determined by material analysis. Altogether, 82 of the 110 print pages are slight-
ly or heavily redacted by sometimes more than one hand. The modes of written
artefact enrichment range from technical information (cues for entrances, exits
or sounds) to textual change. The censorship interventions feature prominently
in the latter category.
The last page of the printed text is signed at the bottom by Nick’s hand in
the aforementioned brown, perhaps formerly black ink (see Fig. 3): ‘Vu et ap-
prouvé par ordre / du Mr le directeur général / de la haute police / Nick censeur’
(‘Seen and approved by the order of the general director of the state police cen-
sor Nick’).24 The next, empty end-page lists page numbers at the top, in all like-
lihood in Nick’s own hand. All pages listed seem to be considered in need of
amendment. Similar paratextual indices can be found in various of the written
artefacts submitted to Nick. In all likelihood they were produced when the ver-
sion of a play was not accepted or rejected wholesale. In this instance, each
referenced page number is divided from the next by a full stop: ‘S. 6. 7. 11. 13.

||
24 Similar approvals in other books include a date but often lack the reference to the ‘directeur
général’.
 ‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books | 1051

49. / 66. 67. 69. 74. 78. 85. 96. / 109.’25 The 6 in 96 in blotted out, but the page in
question has similar entries to the other ones. A blot next to the 96 looks like a
mistake or a correction. Most pages in question include references to the names
England and France: in Shakespeare’s play, Lear’s daughter is simultaneously
vowed by the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France – and after her ban
married by the latter without a dowry. In 1778, Schröder had cut Burgundy and
only made use of the King of France (to reduce the number of actors). 34 years
later, all respective references and salutations are changed into Duke of Bur-
gundy instead; as a matter of consequence Cordelia is addressed as Duchess
rather than Queen. These changes amount to eight of Nick’s list of thirteen
pages with deficiencies.
However, the reintroduction of a character taken from the original
Shakespeare-play likely is not to be the censor’s work but based on a proposal
by the theatre: while the respective deletions could very well be from the same
ink and hand as the final approval-note the corrections themselves are written
by a different hand, although most of the time with a similar ink. Moreover, the
changes don’t start on page six, as suggested by Nick’s list, but already in the
dramatis personae-register on page two where the name of France is changed
into Burgundy. The first time, the King of France is mentioned in the main text
of the play is on page four. Here, a fascinating back and forth between writing
tools and presumably different hands takes place (Fig. 4): the ‘König’ (‘King’) is
deleted with black ink twice; the ‘Duke of Burgundy’ is written on the blank
space on the left margin in what could be a different ink. A thick red pencil then
deletes the correction; red dots under the strikethrough nullify the former dele-
tion. Apparently, a grey pencil has the last word: grey dots under the red
strikethrough nullify the previous nullification of the correction. Grey vertical
lines through the deletion and its withdrawal in the main text reinstate the pri-
mary deletion.
The clear differentiation of editing-stages makes it much easier to identify
layers by writing tool in the written artefact as a whole. Nevertheless, it remains
unclear when the back and forth takes place. It could very well be the case that
the back and forth bears witness to a discussion within the theatre company
before the book is presented to the censor. After all, later mentions of France are
all duly deleted and corrected. It is more likely that the interaction between the
grey and red pencil takes place when performances of Schröder’s Lear-version
are revived years after the occupation: twelve additional performances between

||
25 Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 2029 (König Lear. Ein Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen.
Nach Shakespear), p. 110 (fols 58v and 59r).
1052 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

1816 and 1823 are known of.26 The red pencil suggests changing Burgundy back
to France; the grey pencil disagrees and looks to have gained the upper hand –
as it is then displayed in the rest of the prompt book.
Nevertheless, the initial change from France to Burgundy on pp. 2 and 4
might be an initial suggestion by the theatre for the censor. This suggestion
would then be taken up by him and continuously demanded for some of the
additional pages that are listed at the end of the book. After taking out the refer-
ences to France and England, most of the other numbers refer to pages contain-
ing passages of a seditious nature. On p. 11 old Gloster’s long monologue about
a perceived deterioration of politics and private morals is cut altogether, whether
by the hand of the censor or by a hand within the theatre company: ‘in Städten
Empörung, in Provinzen Zwietracht, in Pallästen Verrätherey’ (‘in cities, muti-
nies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason’).27 Traces of red varnish in the
middle of the page indicate that a piece of paper had been glued over parts of
the passage. Gluing pieces of paper over existing passages (and folding them in
in case they were bigger than the page) or sometimes attaching them with nee-
dles was a common amendment practice to offer an alternative, more adequate
text. It is found in a great number of books in the Theater-Bibliothek collection:
in the handwritten prompt book for Die Sonnen-Jungfrau (mentioned in the be-
ginning) nine pieces of extra paper (most of the same type and by the same
hand) are sometimes glued and sometimes pinned on and then folded into the
more than 90 folios.28 (After the print publication of Kotzebue’s play in 1791 the
earlier abridged 1790 stage adaptation is enriched with some of the very parts
that had been cut out in the first place.) In the case of the French period Lear the
addition was removed at some point, probably after the end of the occupation
(see Fig. 5). However, the deletion underneath stands; it still fitted in smoothly
with the deference to authority in the post-Napoleonic era.
Changes of a similar formal and content-related kind are added with a simi-
lar writing tool throughout the prompt book on pages not being singled out by
the censor. In his 1778 version, Schröder had already transferred the passage
deemed most scandalous in the eighteenth century backstage: this is where the
brutal blinding of old Gloster now takes place.29 The respective passages on pp. 70

||
26 <htttp:www.stadttheater.uni-hamburg.de> lists two in performances in 1816, five in 1817,
one in 1818, two in 1819 and one each in 1822 and 1823.
27 Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 2029, p. 11 (fol. 9v).
28 Cf. Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 1460 (Die Sonnen-Jungfrau), fols 31r, 48v, 65v, 66v,
69v, 74r, 79r, 92v, 93v.
29 Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 2029, p. 70–71 (fols 38v and 39r); cf. Wimsatt 1960, 98.
 ‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books | 1053

and 71 are surrounded by a box drawn in the same ink as the other corrections.
There is a strikethrough from top left to bottom right indicating a complete
deletion of the respective scene. Here, the treason in palaces lamented earlier is
in full bloom: not only is the character of Gloster brutalized by a fellow noble-
man in his own home, in turn, the perpetrator is then attacked by a defiant
subordinate. Either the theatre company already presented a domesticated ver-
sion to the censor – in that case, there would have been no need to reference the
pages – or the censor himself provided the deletion of that which is clearly un-
acceptable. The brown ink makes both possibilities valid. Notably, the deletion
was not reversed after the occupation except for one minor sentence. On the
contrary, the aforementioned red and grey pencils are also at work on these
pages with the latter tending to affirm and add deletions.
In the case of the Hamburg King Lear, a restriction of individual and artistic
freedom seems to have started not with the reconstruction of the old European
order after 1815 but with Napoleon’s reintroduction of censorship. The various
hands that interact within the promptbook in a multilayered fashion all work
together towards the same goal: an even less brutal and inflammatory version
than the already rather tame one staged in Hamburg since 1778. The hand that
changes the name of France into that of Burgundy also accounts for an artistic
choice that is in no way related to the necessities of censorship: the parts of the
spouses Goneril, Lear’s power-hungry daughter, and the Duke of Albany, her
well-meaning husband, are heavily reworked (by Schröder’s own hand).
Goneril’s part is trimmed down in size. Albany’s lines that, like the adaptation
as a whole, are based on the prose translations prevalent in the 1770s are now
interjected with parts of the new early nineteenth-century romantic metric
translations.30 As a result, Shakespeare’s complex full-fledged characters, which
Schröder’s version at least partially captured, are reduced to clear-cut types of
evil (woman) and good (man). But while the content of the King Lear-play was
simplified in the process of censorship and beyond, the process itself puts a
complex scene of multiple hands on display: these interfere into a print as well
as interact within this print which the dynamics of the censorship procedure
have unintentionally turned into a unique written artefact.

||
30 Added and changed passages in Albany’s parts are taken from the younger Voss metric
translation in Shakespeare 1806. Voss makes use of the new metric approach to translating
Shakespeare as established by August Wilhelm Schlegel in the 1790s. A King Lear-translation
in what would later become the standard Schlegel and Tieck-edition was not published until
the late 1830s.
1054 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

Acknowledgements
The research for this article was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein-
schaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence
Strategy – EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and
Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796. The research was
conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
(CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.

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Joachim Jakob (eds), Theatergeschichte als Disziplinierungsgeschichte? Zur Theorie und
Geschichte der Theatergesetze im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, Heidelberg: Winter, 15–30.
Schröder, Hans and C. R. W. Klose (1870), Lexikon der hamburgischen Schriftsteller bis zur
Gegenwart, vol. 5, Hamburg: W. Maukes Söhne.
[Schröder, Friedrich Ludwig] (1778), König Lear. Ein Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen. Nach
Shakespear, Hamburg: J. M. Michaelsen.
 ‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books | 1055

Stoltz, Dominik (2016), ‘Theaterzensur in der Franzosenzeit (1806 – 1814)’, <blog.sub.uni-

hamburg.de/?p=20422> (accessed on 8 Oct. 2020).
Voß, Johann Heinrich (tr.) (1806), Shakespeare’s König Lear, mit zwei Compositionen von
Zelter, Jena: Friedrich Frommann.
Wimsatt, W. K. (ed.) (1960), Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare, London: Hill and Wang.
Worrall, David (2017), ‘Social Functions: Audiences and Authority’, in Michele Leon (ed.), A
Cultural History of Theatre, Volume 4, The Age of Enlightenment, London; New York:
Bloomsbury, 33–54.

Fig. 1: Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 1460 (Die Sonnen-Jungfrau. Schauspiel in fünf

Aufzügen), fol. 98r. Censorship notes at the end of prompt book of August von Kotzbue Die
Sonnen Jungfrau (first performed in Hamburg in 1790, censorship note from 1813). © Staats-
und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg.
1056 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

Fig. 2: Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 2029, fol. 2r–v. Set and cast list in prompt book of
William Shakespeare’s König Lear based on a print of Friedrich Ludwig Schröder’s 1778 adap-
tation (censorship note presumably from 1812). © Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg.
Fig. 2a: fol. 2r.
 ‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books | 1057

Fig. 2b: fol. 2v.

1058 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

Fig. 3: Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 2029, p. 110 (fols 58v and 59r). Censorship note and
reference to pages with objectionable content. © Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg.
Fig. 3a: fol. 58v.
 ‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books | 1059

Fig. 3b: fol. 59r.

1060 | Martin Jörg Schäfer

Fig. 4: Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 2029, p. 4 (fol. 5v). Corrections and retractions by
multiple hands/writing tools. © Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg.

Fig. 5: Hamburg, Stabi, Theater-Bibliothek, 2029, p. 11 (fol. 9v). Corrections and traces of red
varnish. © Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg.
Paola Buzi
The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book and
its Physical Metamorphosis
Abstract: Manuscripts are movable objects and colophons normally represent
the most efficient means of tracing the paths taken by a book during its (some-
times) extended life. This short article deals with an unusual case of a manu-
script and of the work it contains, whose itinerant life is narrated by a long and
extraordinary title that provides surprising technical details about the book
form, the writing material, and the historical events surrounding it.

About twenty years ago, I came across a title attributed to a homily – the Sa-
hidic version of the Life of Maximus and Domitius (CC 0323) –, which was unu-
sual in respect of its length and content.1 At that time, I was greatly interested in
the cultural phenomenon of the creation of new long (sometimes extremely
long) titles attributed to old works, in order to actualize literary creations that
had been written centuries before. Such a phenomenon led the Copts, between
the eighth and the ninth centuries, to re-think their entire literary production,
discarding what had become old-fashioned and re-shaping, also by means of
titles, what was perceived to be still useful. My interest was so focused on that
aspect and on the consequent classification of titles in categories,2 according to
their length and combination of formulae, that I noticed only superficially the
other elements of interest of that exceptional title.
Thus, I believe that it is useful to briefly go back to the content of that title,
which tells of the itinerant life of a manuscript (and the work it contains), with a
series of unusual technical details – at least for the Coptic tradition – related to
its tradition.3

||
1 Buzi 2001.
2 Buzi 2004; Buzi 2005.
3 If today I am able to see beyond, this is also due to Michael Friedrich and the stimulating
series of cultural initiatives that he has organized and promoted within the activities of the
Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, having at its core the manuscript, in all its possible
forms and in its indivisible dual nature of physical object and intellectual product. The first
time that I was invited at to CSMC as a speaker was at the conference One-Volume Libraries:
Composite Manuscripts and Multiple Text Manuscripts (October 2010), whose results were later
published in Friedrich and Schwarke 2016. At that time, I had little experience with the material

Open Access. © 2021 Paola Buzi, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-052
1064 | Paola Buzi

1 The Sahidic title of the Life of Maximus and

Domitius
As is well known, books are movable objects. They may change their owner or
simply can be produced in a place, to be later given or, as a result of a purchase,
transferred to another place.4 Colophons can often help to follow the itinerant
life of books, also by virtue of their documentary nature, providing a series of
sociological, devotional and historical data. Titles, on the other hand, do not do
this, despite the fact that Coptic titles are sometimes extremely long and, com-
pared to other Christian oriental manuscript cultures, unusually rich in infor-
mation.
The title attributed to the Sahidic version of the Life of Maximus and Domitius
is an exception. This work is preserved by two semi-complete codices, one in Sa-
hidic,5 from the Fayyūm, and one in Bohairic,6 from Scetis (Wādī el-Naṭrūn), and
two very fragmentary manuscripts, both in Sahidic and from the White Monas-
tery.7 It is the title of the Sahidic semi-complete codex that is of interest to us
here.8
Found in 1910 in the archaeological remains of the Monastery of the Arch-
angel Michael, near present-day Hamūli, the original codex, datable between

||
aspects of Coptic books, since my main research interests ranged from Coptic literature to late
antique Egyptian archaeology. I can honestly say that that experience, together with the par-
ticipation in the networking project Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies, opened up a new
world to me.
4 If one does not want to mention here the well-known phenomenon of the codices that were
produced at Touton (Fayyūm) for the White Monastery (Emmel 2005, 63–70: 66; Nakano 2006,
147–159), a remarkable example of the itinerant life of a manuscript is represented by CLM 1
= CMCL.AA, a Bohairic-Arabic manuscript, which was manufactured in the Wādī el-Naṭrūn, but
stored in Babylon (Cairo), from 1398, as the Arabic note (not a real colophon in fact) of
Matthew, patriarch of Alexandria, attests (Vat. copt. 2, fol. vr). The original codicological unit is
now divided into three shelf marks: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. copt. 2,
3, and 4; <https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/manuscripts/1>. All websites quoted in this article were
accessed on 19 May 2021.
5 CLM 240 = MICH.BO.
6 Vatican City, BAV, Vat. copt. 67.2, fols 34–68 = CLM 143 = MACA.DH, second half of the tenth
century.
7 London, British Library, Or. 3581B, fols 55–56 = CLM 1855 and London, British Library, Or. 6954,
fol. 52 = CLM 1856.
8 Depuydt 1993, 332-335 (no. 165), 627-628 (no. 412).
 The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book | 1065

the ninth and the first half of the following century, is now dismembered in five
shelf marks, and preserved in four different institutions:9
– New York, Morgan Library and Museum, M.584: 20 leaves.10
– Cairo, Coptic Museum, MS 3818: 4 leaves (hereafter CCa).
– Cairo, Coptic Museum, MS 3814: 23 leaves (hereafter CCb).
– Cairo, Coptic Museum, MS 3817 (lower cover).11
– Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, MS 583 (a single leaf).

While the Bohairic title consists of a simple, though long summary of the plot of
the homily,12 the Sahidic one13 contains several intriguing additions that do not
have anything to do with the content of the work, but rather with its daring
tradition:14

Subject (ϩⲩⲡⲟⲑⲉⲥⲓⲥ)15 of the life of the Roman saints Maximus and Domitius, sons of
Valentinus, emperor of the Romans, who completed a good life full of all virtues and who
also fulfilled at all the commands of the Gospels. The one died on the 14th of the month
Tōbe, the other on the 17th of the same month. It was recounted by Apa Pshoi of

||
9 For more details about the codicological description of this codex, see the record compiled
by Francesco Valerio and Eliana Dal Sasso for the Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature:
<https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/manuscripts/240>.
10 It was purchased in Paris in 1911 for Pierpont Morgan from Arthur Sambon, a dealer acting
on behalf of a consortium of owners including a certain J. Kalebdian, and later restored and
rebound in the Apostolic Vatican Library in the early 1920s.
11 CCa, CCb and MS 3817 were acquired by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where they were
given the inventory numbers of the Journal d’Entrée in 1923, and transferred to the Coptic
Museum in 1939. In the CMCL database, CCb is dealt with as a separate codicological unit, not
as a part of MICH.BO = CLM 240, while MS 3817 is not included. CCb fol. 1 was eventually trans-
ferred to the Museum in Port Said (Egypt), where it bears the call number 3957A.
12 ‘The life of the Roman saints Maximus and Domitius, sons of Valentinus, emperor of the
Romans, who completed a good life full of all virtues and who, during it, also fulfilled all the
commands of the Gospels. One, Maximus, died on the 14th of the month Tōbe, the other,
Domitius, on the 17th of the same month. It was recounted by Apa Pshoi of Constantinople, the
first deacon who lived in Shiet (Scetis) with Apa Macarius, man of God, and Apa Isidoros who
died a deacon. Apa Moses the Ethiopian was appointed in his place. Apa Pshoi wrote the life of
the saints as a memorial and he left it in the church as a benefit for all those who wanted to live
in accordance with God. Amen’.
13 <https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/titles/287>.
14 In italics, the passages that are analysed more in detail in these pages. On the relation of
paratext/paracontent see Ciotti et al. 2018, <https://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-hamburg.de/
papers/CSMC_Occasional_Paper_6_TNT.pdf>. On the concept of paratext see also Andrist 2018.
15 For a reflection on the meaning of this unusual term that is used to define the literary genre
the work belongs to, see Buzi 2001, 525–526.
1066 | Paola Buzi

Constantinople, the first deacon who lived with Apa Macarius, a man of God, and Apa
Isidorus. He died as a deacon. Apa Moses the Ethiopian was appointed in his place. Pshoi
wrote the life of the saints on a papyrus roll (ⲉⲩⲇⲟⲙⲟⲥ ⲛⲭⲁⲣⲧⲏⲥ). He left it in the
church as a benefit and a memorial, for all readers, of a beautiful way of life in accordance
with God and with virtue, for he met with them for some days while they were still alive
when he came to Scetis. When Scetis had been laid waste by the Mastikoi, Apa Isidorus
took it with him to Alexandria to the Xenon. He spoke about the life of those saints and
about his great zeal for them. It then remained there until the time of Apa Khael, the most
holy archbishop of Alexandria. It was brought to light by a deacon named Eustatios, who
had found it in a large storage box of parchment books written in quaternions (ⲟⲩⲛⲟϭ
ⲛⲑⲏⲕⲉ ⲛϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ ⲛⲁⲡⲁⲥ ⲉϥⲥⲏϩ ⲉϩⲉⲛⲧⲉⲧⲣⲁⲥ ⲛϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ ⲙⲙⲉⲙⲃⲣⲁⲛⲟⲛ),16 when
he was looking among books that might have deteriorated over time ( ⲛϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ ⲛⲧⲁⲩⲣ
ϩⲟⲟⲗⲉ ⲉⲧⲃⲉ ⲡⲉⲭⲣⲟⲛⲟⲥ), for he was a servant of God. He then met a monk living in the
Ennaton, who was from Scetis, and gave it to him. This is the way in which the life of
those perfect saints of God was revealed. For the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. In God’s
peace. Amen.

If the mention of the act of leaving a work ‘in the church as a benefit and a me-
morial’, a model for a correct and pious life, is a recurring element in Coptic
literature,17 all the other technical and bibliological details represent an unicum,
not only in titles but also in other paratexts, such as colophons.
One may think that these details are completely fictional, a pure exercise of
fantasy to make the reading of the work more appealing, but this is not the type
of narrative feature that the authors of titles normally used to attract readers’ or
listeners’ attention. In those cases, they rather made use of additional – compared
to the content of the work – biographical details, reports of long series of

||
16 Depuydt renders the term ⲧⲉⲧⲣⲁⲥ with ‘in quarto’: ‘in a large storage box of old parchment
books written in quarto’, or alternatively ‘in a large storage box of old books, written on
parchment quires in fours’. I am inclined to exclude the first translation. The Greek lemmata
τετράδες/τετράδα are also generically used for quires. See, purely by way of example, the colo-
phon of the parchment codex Athena, EBE, 56 (GA 773), fol. 1r, which contains a Tetraevangelium:
‘[…] This venerable and divine book of the Gospels contains thirty-six quaternions in all, with
the exception of the guard leaves and those glued to the plates’ (von Dobschütz 1925, 280–284;
Marava-Chatzinicolaou and Toufexi-Paschou 1978, 17–26, no. 1; this colophon is being studied
by Francesco Valerio within the article for the proceedings of the fourth PAThs conference,
‘Christian Oriental Colophons: A Structural Analysis’: <http://paths.uniroma1.it/i-colofoni-
cristiani-orientali-per-un-analisi-strutturale>). For the meaning of ‘quaternion’ see Lampe 1916,
1391. In fact, a quaternion is the quire par excellence. It should be stressed that the Coptic
sentence is redundant, the term ⲛϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ (‘books’) being repeated twice, in relation to the
storage box (‘a storage box of old books’) and the writing support (‘parchment books written in
quires’). What is proposed here is a simplified translation, respectful of the general sense.
17 It appears, for instance, in the Life of Onophrius (CC 0254).
 The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book | 1067

miraculous events, or, above all in martyrdoms, even lurid details about the
death of the protagonists.18
Moreover, it appears very clear that this initial title is composed of an origi-
nal narrative nucleus – that is almost identical in the Bohairic version –19 plus
an additamentum that the author of the Sahidic title considered relevant for the
appreciation, not only of the content of work, but also of the efforts spent to
preserve it.
It is important to stress that the characters (Apa Pshoi,20 Apa Macarius of
Scetis, Apa Isidorus the deacon, Apa Moses the Ethiopian,21 the emperor
‘Valentinus’, in fact Valentinianus I [364–375]) and the historical events (the
sack of the barbarian people named Mastikoi/Mazikoi/Mastiques, the presence
of welfare structures in Alexandria)22 mentioned in the title, are real and

||
18 A different textual phenomenon is the topos of the finding of an ancient venerable book,
related to the apostolic tradition. Coptic literature preserves several examples of this phenom-
enon, such as the so-called Institutio Abbaton (CC 0405), whose title reads: ‘An encomium
which Apa Timothy, archbishop of Rakote (Alexandria), our holy father, who was glorious in
all ways, delivered on the making of Abbaton, the angel of death. Our holy fathers the Apostles
asked the Saviour about the (Abbaton), so that they might be able to preach about him to
mankind, for they knew that men would ask them questions about everything. And the
Saviour, who did not wish to disappoint them about any matter concerning which they asked
questions, informed them, saying “the day on which my father created Abbaton was the 14th
day of the month Hathōr, and he made him king over all creations, which he had made, be-
cause of the transgression of Adam and Eve”. And the archbishop wishing to learn about this
fearful and terrifying being whom God made, and who pursuits every soul until it yields up its
spirit in misery, when he went into Jerusalem to worship the Cross of our Saviour and his life-
giving tomb, on the 17th day of the month Thoout, searched through the books which were in
the library of Jerusalem, and which had been made by our holy fathers the Apostles, and de-
posited by them therein, until he discovered (the account of) the creation of Abbaton, with an
aged elder, who was a native of Jerusalem. When one asked him what was the occasion for the
discourse he had forgotten what it was. And he spoke also on the holy apostle Saint John, theo-
logian and virgin, who is not to taste death until the thrones are set in the valley of Josaphat,
which is the place wherein the last strife of the world shall take place. In God’s peace. Amen’.
See also Piovanelli 1993, 25–64 and above all Piovanelli 2000, 265–282, on the case of the pro-
logue of the Apocalypse of Paul.
19 See above n. 12.
20 In fact, if Apa Pshoi of Scetis is easily identifiable, more complex is the problem of identifi-
cation of Pshoi of Constantinople, who as such is probably a fictional character, inspired by a
real person. For these aspects see Buzi 2001, 527–535. See also Coquin 1991, VI, 2028–2030.
21 Apa Moses is said to have fallen victim to the Mazikoi in 407. Palladius, Historia Lausiaca,
19.1.
22 On this Libyan tribe, which periodically was responsible for attacks and sacks, above all in
the Western oases, killing and enslaving the Egyptian inhabitants of both villages and
1068 | Paola Buzi

undoubtedly refer to the second half of the fourth century or to the beginning of
the fifth. More ephemeral are of course the protagonists, Maximus and Domitius
– on whose tomb would have been built a little church, first nucleus of the
Monastery of the Romans,23 one of the monastic communities of the Wādī el-
Naṭrūn, where most of the narrative is set – but this is part of the fiction of the
literary genre of bioi.

2 The account of the itinerant life of the work and

its value
One of the most striking passages of the second part of our title is the clarifica-
tion that Pshoi wrote the Life of the saints on a papyrus roll (ⲇⲟⲙⲟⲥ
ⲛⲭⲁⲣⲧⲏⲥ),24 a book form that might appear surprising for a manuscript culture
whose main bibliological product is the codex, but that now – in the light of a
systematic census of the book forms of Coptic literary tradition – sounds per-
fectly credible. Thirteen horizontal rolls25 and twelve vertical rolls (or rotuli)26 are
currently known, without taking into consideration those used for documentary
texts, which are much more numerous.
All the extant literary rolls are datable between the fourth and the begin-
ning of the sixth centuries, therefore the information provided by the title is
certainly credible. It is not specified whether or not the Life of Maximus and
Domitius was the only work contained in the roll, but this is very likely.
According to the title, when the Wādī el-Naṭrūn was looted and devastated
by the Mazikoi, during one of their periodical incursions, Apa Isidorus would
have brought the book to the ‘Xenon’.
The term surely refers to a xeneôn or xenodokheion, an institution used for
the purposes of accommodating and giving assistance to disadvantaged people,

||
monasteries, see Modéran 2003, 88, 89, 93, 99, 102, 119, 154, 162 (n.), 167, 168 (the map ‘La
migration vers l’Orient des Maziques et des Ausuriens entre 398 et 412–413 selon D. Roques’),
170, 172, 187 (n.), 192 (n.), 218, 266–267, 340 (n.), 454, 467 (n.), 468, 482, 579, 649–650, 729,
778 (n.). See also Boozer 2013, 275–292.
23 Toward the end of the Life of Maximus and Domitius, we read: ‘After that Macarius the Great
spoke in the church, saying: “Call this place quarter (ⲣⲁⲩⲏ) of the Romans”’.
24 For the meaning of ⲇⲟⲙⲟⲥ as ‘roll’ see Lampe 1961, 1396 and Liddell and Scott 1968. See
also, for example among the several cases, PSI 10.1146.1 (second century CE).
25 <https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/search/manuscripts/saved?q=horizontal_rolls>.
26 <https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/search/manuscripts/saved?q=vertical_rolls>.
 The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book | 1069

mainly foreign, as the etymology suggests (cf. hospitium). Xenodokheia (‘places

where foreigners are assisted’) and ptôkeia/ptôkhotropheia (‘places where the
poor are fed’) were already present in all the metropoleis of the Christian East in
the first half of the fourth century. From a juridical point of view, they were
private foundations directly controlled by the bishop, and therefore they repre-
sented his ability to be effective in managing philanthropic and charitable
works, constituting a direct reflection of his power. Such organization of the
assistance activities is a direct legacy of the practices and values of the ruling
class of Roman and Byzantine societies, echoing the forma mentis of the tradi-
tional elite, which expressed its prestige also by means of leitourgiai, more or
less mandatory.27
We know with certainty that Alexandria at the time of archbishop Teophilus
(384–412) already had a ptôkheion and a xenodokheion, and also that Isidoros
– very likely the same Isidorus mentioned in our title – was ‘xenochos, and a
close collaborator of Theophilus. After using him on various occasions, Theophilus
condemned him to leave Egypt (in 402)’.28
This means that the transfer of the manuscript from Scetis to Alexandria
must have happened before the conflict between Isidorus and Theophilus and
his subsequent exile. What is more interesting, however, is that our title seems
to suggest that these types of institution have also had a (sort of) library, a fact
that, as far as I know, was not otherwise known. Since this detail – the transfer
of a book to a xenodokheion – is not at all obvious – on the contrary it is very
surprising –, I would be inclined to take it seriously into account.
We then learn that the manuscript ‘remained there until the time of Apa
Khael’, very likely to be identified with Michael I (743–767), who was from the
Monastery of St Macarius (Scetis). During his long patriarchate, while stemming
the harassment of the Islamic governor, he was able to keep control over the
shrine of St Menas (against the Chalcedonians) and to restore the church of
St Mark in Alexandria. He was thrown into prison by ʿAbd al-Mālik ibn Marwān,
when he discovered that Michael had contacts with the new king of Dongola,

||
27 Fatti 2003a, 257-296: 260–261. See also the unpublished PhD dissertation, Fatti 2001,
Calderini 1935, I, 138 (‘Alessandria’); Martin 1996, 728; Hass 1997, 253 and 393 (n. 72); Wipszycka
2016, 248–250. Still valid, although not recent, is Constantelos 1968.
28 Wipszycka 2016, 248, who also discusses his relationship with Palladius. See also Sozomen,
HE 8.12. For the reconstruction of the life of Isidorus see Fatti 2003b, 283–435 and Fatti 2006,
105–139.
1070 | Paola Buzi

Cyriacus, a fact that might lie behind the epithet of ‘the most holy archbishop’
used in the title.29
Later – but it is not specified when – a deacon named Eustatios found it in

‘a large storage box of old parchment books written in quaternions (ⲟⲩⲛⲟϭ ⲛⲑⲏⲕⲉ
ⲛϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ ⲛⲁⲡⲁⲥ ⲉϥⲥⲏϩ ⲉϩⲉⲛⲧⲉⲧⲣⲁⲥ ⲛϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ ⲙⲙⲉⲙⲃⲣⲁⲛⲟⲛ), when he was
looking among books that might have deteriorated over time (ⲛϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ ⲛⲧⲁⲩⲣ ϩⲟⲟⲗⲉ
ⲉⲧⲃⲉ ⲡⲉⲭⲣⲟⲛⲟⲥ)’.

On the basis of this sentence it seems safe to deduce that our manuscript would
have remained for some time in a sort of limbo, with other books, old parch-
ment codices, which had probably deteriorated due to the prolonged use.
Eustatios seems to be in charge of the restoration of old books. It is not speci-
fied, however, if between the moment in which the Life of Maximus and
Domitius reached the ‘Xenon’ and its discovery – certainly post mid-eighth cen-
tury –, its book form changed, moving from a papyrus roll to a parchment co-
dex, although it is plausible.
Restoration activities are never mentioned in other titles and also seem to
be extremely rare in Coptic colophons. The only colophon that I know which
mentions a restoration is that of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Clarendon Press,
B40.1-2,30 which reads:

[…] this restoration Basil(ios) a Scriptures (ⲅⲣⲁⲫⲏ/γραφή)-lover, which wants that every-
one could dedicate himself (to it), for this reason he restored (ⲥⲩⲛϩⲓⲥⲧⲁ/συνιστᾶν) this
book after that it deteriorated.31

Eustatios later met ‘a monk living in the Ennaton, who was from Scetis, and
gave it to him. This is the way in which the life of those perfect saints of God was
revealed’.
The Enaton/Ennaton is the famous monastery – or better, ensemble of mo-
nastic establishments, which however constituted a unique complex –, located
on the strip separating the Mediterranean coast and the lake Mareotis, nine
miles west of Alexandria, according to its etymology, on the way to the sanctuary

||
29 Swanson 2010, 19–21; Elli 2003, II, 31–39. The identification of Khael with Michael II (849–
851), who occupied the patriarchal seat for sixteen months is less probable because of the
ephemeral nature of the historical figure and, above all, due to the fact that, in the opinion of
the author of these pages, our title is older than the mid-ninth century.
30 CLM 4196.
31 Edition and translation by Agostino Soldati. See also van Lantschoot 1929, 126–127, no. lxxvi.
 The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book | 1071

of St Menas.32 Also known in Arabic as ‘Monastery of the glass’ or ‘Monastery of

the glass maker’, the Ennaton was certainly a rich community, since it could
take advantage of the economic activities taking place on both the sea and the
lagoon.33
It is not clear from the title if the book was moved to the Ennaton or if it is in
Alexandria that Eustatios met the monk who lived in the Ennaton. The impor-
tant fact, however, is that Eustatios is from Scetis and therefore thanks to this
circumstance the circle closes: the Life of Maximus and Domitius – and the book
that bears it – could go back to the place where it had been written by Pshoi.
The title which we are discussing and the related codex, however, are not
from Scetis, but from the Fayyūm, and in particular from the Monastery of the
Archangel Michael at Phantoou, as we said. Moreover, the codex also contains
another work, that is the Martyrdom of Theodore the Anatolian (CC 0437), which
means that, admitting that our title tells a true story – as I am inclined to think,
because of the richness of historical and bibliological details that are not in the
least obvious and appear to be based to a great extent on reality –, what we
have is a codex derived from an antigraphon, very likely written in Scetis or
making use of documents related to that milieu. The copyist operating in the
Fayyūm must have found it so interesting that he decided to keep it, although
all its unusual elements refer to another monastic context, that of the Wādī
el-Naṭrūn. Does this mean that the Fayyūmic Monastery of the Archangel
Michael used book models from Scetis? We cannot say it with certainty. If this
hypothesis were correct, it would remain to be explained, however, why the
Bohairic title, contained in a codex from the Monastery of St Macarius, in the
Wādī el-Naṭrūn itself, does not include these narrative elements. It is possible to
surmise that the title of the Bohairic version is an older product, but this is not a
very convincing hypothesis.
Yet, there is another possibility: the copyist operating in the Fayyūm could
be the creator of the title – a fact that would be corroborated by the style and
structure of several other long titles found in the codices from the Monastery of
the Archangel Michael.34 In this case the author would have been interested not
so much in the events related to Scetis – in fact already contained in the original

||
32 Other famous monastic centres of the Mediterranean coast were the Pempton, the Oktokai-
dekaton and the Metanoia.
33 Gascou 1991, 954–958; Goehring 2018, 538. On the problem of the location of the monastery
and for a rich bibliography related to its history and socio-political role, see Ghattas 2017, 37–
47. See also <https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/places/118>.
34 Titles belonging to the categories named ‘complex structure titles’ and ‘extended complex
structure titles’.
1072 | Paola Buzi

nucleus of the title – as in those relating to Alexandria and its surroundings,

events that he may have reconstructed on the basis of official or semi-official
documentation, as the mention of Isidorus, the ‘Xenon’ of Alexandria and bish-
op Khael seem to demonstrate.
To conclude this brief reflection on an unusual story of a wandering book
(Fig. 1) narrated by an exceptional title, it is important to stress that, even if the
second part of the title was the fruit of a vivid imagination or a fictional con-
struction, the historical knowledge of the author – because, of course, the crea-
tor of the title is an author himself – and his consciousness of the technological
aspects of books and their metamorphoses over the centuries remain significant
facts.

Acknowledgements
The present article is one of the scientific outcomes of the ERC Advanced project
PAThs – ‘Tracking Papyrus and Parchment Paths: An Archaeological Atlas of
Coptic Literature. Literary Texts in their Geographical Context: Production,
Copying, Usage, Dissemination and Storage’, funded by the European Research
Council, Horizon 2020 programme, project no. 687567, hosted by Sapienza Uni-
versità di Roma, <http://paths.uniroma1.it>.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations and IDs are used in this article:

CC Clavis Coptica or Clavis Patrum Copticorum (the complete census of all Coptic
literary works available online at <www.cmcl.it/~cmcl/chiam_clavis.html>,
and <https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/works>)
CLM Coptic Literary Manuscript (unique identifier of Coptic literary manuscripts
attributed within the framework of the PAThs project and freely available
online at <https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/manuscripts>).

It is important to stress that, although other IDs were available for Coptic manu-
scripts, the introduction and systematic use of a CLM ID has become necessary
because PAThs is currently the most exhaustive database of literary codicologi-
cal units (<https://atlas.paths-erc.eu/manuscripts>). All the other existing ones,
including CMCL, Trismegistos, LDAB and the List of Coptic Biblical Manuscripts,
are of course extremely useful, but they refer to a more limited time span or
focus on specific categories of manuscripts. In any case, they are always men-
tioned in the PAThs database, when available.
 The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book | 1073

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 The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book | 1075

Fig. 1: The stages of the original manuscript of the Life of Maximus and Domitius according to
the Sahidic title. Map elaborated by Paolo Rosati, PAThs Team (October 2020).
Uta Lauer
Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu
and Guan Daosheng
Abstract: The scroll opens with undated paintings of orchid, rock and bamboo
by Guan Daosheng (1262–1319) and her husband Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322), fol-
lowed by seventeen colophons by eminent men of letters of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. A particularly noteworthy point is, that two of the colophon
authors wrote in place of each other, in their respective calligraphy styles. The
joints of the individual sheets of paper bear the seals of the art collector An Qi
(1683 – c. 1745). The handscroll is recorded in two eighteenth-century cata-
logues. The scroll invites questions as to authorship, different hands, dating,
format, collecting, recording, copying, mounting and archiving – all research
areas which lie at the heart of the study of manuscripts.

1 Introduction
This paper is a case study of a handscroll composed of two paintings, one by the
Yuan period (1279–1368) painter Zhao Mengfu 趙孟頫 (1254–1322) of an orchid
and rock (Fig. 1), one by his wife Guan Daosheng 管道昇 (1262–1319) of bamboo
(Fig. 2), followed by seventeen colophons and imprinted with sixty-seven seals.
The format is a handscroll with ink on paper, 35.5 × 238.6 cm, belonging to a
private collection, and goes by the title Orchid, Rock and Bamboo. Questions
pertaining to this scroll include the different titles under which it is recorded,
the joining of two separate paintings into one single handscroll, the history of
the scroll according to the colophons and seals, the unsettling claim by one
collector that some colophon authors wrote in place of each other and in the
handwriting of each other, annotation marks in colophons, the placement of
seal impressions at the joint of two sheets of paper and at the beginning and
end of the handscroll, and finally the description of the scroll in secondary
texts.

Open Access. © 2021 Uta Lauer, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-053
1078 | Uta Lauer

2 Material description
The outer wrapping consists of a slightly damaged piece of decorated brocade1
on which a paper title slip2 is pasted. A jade fastener with engraved clouds is
attached to the burgundy and beige cord3 at the beginning of the handscroll.
Inside, the scroll opens with a blank sheet of paper as a frontispiece, followed
by a panel of mounting silk.4 Pasted on this mounting silk is a paper label slip.5
The ink painting of an orchid and rock is signed to the middle right by the artist
and bears one of his seals.6 There are several collector’s seals7 imprinted at the
beginning of the painting. Painted on a separate sheet of paper follows a picture
of a bamboo branch in ink, signed by the artist and impressed with one of her
seals8 at the lower left of the painting, followed by several collector’s seals after
the painting. At the joint of the two sheets of paper with the paintings are two
seals.9 After the paintings, there is another panel of mounting silk of the same
type as the one before the paintings. Five sheets of a similar, slightly yellowish
paper bearing the colophons make up the remainder of this scroll, concluding
with a final sixth sheet of white paper with no colophons, only seals.

3 Different titles
There are no titles given on the two paintings proper, only signature and seal of
the artists. The outer label slip by an unknown collector reads:

||
1 The motives on the brocade are butterfly, flowers, bamboo leaves and possibly pine against
an abstract wave pattern.
2 Twelve characters in standard script (kaishu 楷書) reading: Zhao Mengfu, Guan Daosheng,
lan zhu hebi, yi bu 趙孟頫管道昇蘭竹合壁 乙部.
3 The motives on the cord are a pattern made up of lozenges and another of a swastika and a
square.
4 The motif on the mounting silk is a phoenix-and-cloud pattern.
5 Sixteen characters in semi cursive/standard (xingkaishu 行楷書) script reading: Yuan, Zhao
Wenming gong, Weiguo furen, hui zhu hezuo, Erya cang 元趙文敏公魏國夫人 惠竹合作 爾雅藏.
6 Signature Zi’ang 子昻; seal Zhao shi Zi’ang 趙氏子昻, square relief.
7 The majority of the seals will be discussed in detail later in this paper.
8 Signature Zhongji xi bi 仲姬戲筆; seal Guan shi Zhongji 管氏仲姬, square intaglio.
9 Top seal Ke shi Jing’an 柯氏敬仲, square relief; bottom seal Jing’an 敬菴, square relief.
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1079

趙孟頫管道昇蘭竹合璧乙部

Zhao Mengfu, Guan Daosheng, Orchid and Bamboo, joint [halves of a] Bi-disc,10 yi section.11

A second label strip mounted on the silk panel provides a slightly different title:

元趙文敏公魏國夫人蕙竹合作 爾雅藏

Yuan [period], duke Zhao Wenmin (Zhao Mengfu), lady Weiguo (Guan Daosheng), Orchid
and Bamboo jointly made, Erya (Deng Erya) collection.

Deng Erya 鄧爾雅 (1884–1954) came from a Cantonese scholar family. He had a
keen interest in etymology, poetry, calligraphy, seal-carving and painting. As a
young man, he studied art in Japan, working as a teacher upon his return to
China. Eventually he settled down in Hong Kong. As a leading figure of the
Hong Kong branch of the Chinese Painting Research Society (Zhongguo huaxue
yanjiuhui 中國畫學研究會) he saw, handled and studied a great number of clas-
sical paintings and calligraphies. Deng Erya’s connoisseurship was highly
appreciated and his inscriptions much sought after. A title slip written by Deng
certainly augmented a work’s chances of being considered authentic. The label
now mounted on the inside of the scroll for this reason is very precious and
therefore was not discarded when the unknown collector replaced Deng Erya’s
title slip with his or her own. Deng Erya left no other traces on this scroll.
Only two of the colophon writers, the poet and calligrapher Lu You 陸友
(early fourteenth century)12 and the plum-blossom painter, poet and recluse
Wang Mian 王冕 (1287–1359) refer to the title of the paintings. Lu You writes:

||
10 The phrase he bi 合璧 means to unite or to re-unite two things which belong together. It is
sometimes used in colophons, describing the assembly of two paintings into one scroll, as in
this case, or of a painting and a matching piece of calligraphy, as recorded in Wang Shimou’s
王世懋 (1536–1588) colophon dated 1584 after Qiu Ying’s 仇英 (1494–1552) painting Zhao
Mengfu Writing the Heart Sutra in Exchange for Tea 趙孟頫寫經換茶圖 Zhao Mengfu xiejing
huancha tu, which Wang had mounted together with a transcription of the Heart Sutra by Wen
Zhengming 文徵明 (1470–1559), handscroll, ink and colour on paper, 21.1 × 553.6 cm, The
Cleveland Museum of Art.
11 Yi bu 乙部 might refer to the classification system the unknown collector employed.
12 Lu You 陸友 (early fourteenth century) is mainly remembered as the author of a monograph
on the history of ink, the Mo shi 墨史. He entertained close ties with Ke Jiusi 柯九思 (1272–
1348), who wrote the first colophon on this scroll, and the scholar and high-ranking court
official Yu Ji 虞集 (1272–1368). Lu You’s colophon is the third on the scroll, right after Ke Jiusi’s
and before Wang Mian’s.
1080 | Uta Lauer

魏國趙公魏國夫人 蘭竹圖

Duke Zhao of Weiguo, lady Weiguo, Picture of Orchid and Bamboo.

And Wang Mian:

趙文敏公魏國夫人蕙竹圖

Duke Zhao Wenming, lady Weiguo, Picture of Orchid and Bamboo. 13

The handscroll is recorded in two secondary texts. The first is the catalogue of
An Qi’s 安岐 (1683 – c. 1745) collection of paintings and calligraphies, the
Moyuan huiguan 墨緣匯觀 (preface dated 1742), juan (scroll) four:

題孟頫管道昇蕙竹合作卷

Inscribing Mengfu, Guan Daosheng, Orchid and Bamboo jointly made, handscroll.

An Qi was a wealthy salt merchant of Korean descent and an art collector with a
most discerning eye for quality. Eventually, the majority of the paintings and
calligraphies from his collection entered the palace collection of emperor
Qianlong 乾隆 (r. 1735–1796). There are no traces of imperial ownership on this
scroll but An Qi’s seals are numerous and imprinted in significant places such
as on the joint of two sheets of paper, the beginning and the end of the scroll.
The second text mentioning the handscroll is an entry in Wu Sheng’s 吳昇
(active 1662–1722) record of paintings and calligraphies he had seen in other
collections as well of as his own collection, the Daguanlu 大觀錄, juan sixteen:

趙文敏蘭管夫人竹合作卷

Zhao Wenming, Orchid, madame Guan, Bamboo, jointly made, handscroll.

Although Wu Sheng left no traces on the scroll, he must have seen it in someone
else’s collection and taken detailed notes. In Daguanlu, Wu not only transcribes
the legends of the seals impressed on the scroll but actually prints the shape of
each seal correctly, including a gourd-shaped seal by Ke Jiusi 柯九思 (1290–1343)
after the latter’s colophon.
Despite the differences in the wording of the title it seems safe to assume
that they all describe the same set of paintings. Other than on the motif of or-
chid and bamboo, additional information can be gleaned on Zhao Mengfu and

||
13 Fourth colophon on the scroll.
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1081

Guan Daosheng’s official titles and the format of the handscroll. The terms he
zuo 合作 ‘jointly make’ and he bi 合璧 ‘joint [halves of a] Bi-disc’ denote slightly
different things. He zuo means ‘to make together’ as if Zhao and Guan had joint
their forces to produce one single painting. This is not the case. Although the
two pictures complement each other nicely as to composition, placing of
signatures and seals and contrasting styles (rough and sketchy versus elegant
and refined),14 they were done on two separate sheets of paper which only later
were mounted together on a single scroll. He bi on the other hand points to the
conscious act of putting together the two formerly separate paintings into one.
This is precisely what happened as one can learn from the contents of the
colophons and the placing of the seals, discussed below.

4 The paintings
Orchid and Rock by Zhao Mengfu is an ink monochrome painting on paper in
which the artist displayed his mastery of the so-called flying-white technique
(feibai 飛白), of controlling the subtlety of ink-washes and of rough, quick
brushstrokes. Especially the long blades of the orchid leaves twist and turn in
such a lively manner as if swaying in a gentle breeze. The painting is signed,
followed by a seal to the middle right of the composition. There are a number of
similar paintings by Zhao Mengfu of this genre, close in composition and
brushwork.15
Stalk of Bamboo by Guan Daosheng too is an ink monochrome painting on
paper. The curving arc of the main stalk attests to the artist’s mastery of con-
trolled yet natural brushwork. Despite the knots at the joints of the bamboo, the
energy of the brush runs uninterruptedly to the very tip of the stroke in one
sweeping movement. The leaves show great variety. The painting is signed to
the lower left, followed by a seal. Guan Daosheng is famous for her bamboo

||
14 Li 2011, 631–636 reads the contrast between the two paintings as a reflection of the differ-
ences between the two individuals. Li’s 1965 seminal work made him a proven connoisseur of
Zhao Mengfu.
15 To name just a few: Bamboo, Rocks and Lonely Orchids 竹石幽蘭圖, handscroll, ink on
paper, 50.9 × 147.8 cm (painting only), The Cleveland Museum of Art; Orchid, Bamboo and Rock
蘭竹石圖, handscroll, ink on paper, 25.2 × 98.2 cm, Shanghai Museum; and finally Elegant
Rocks and Sparse Trees 秀石疏林, handscroll, ink on paper, 27.5 × 62.8 cm, Palace Museum,
Beijing (although Orchid and Rock does not quite reach the bravura of the brushwork of the
latter).
1082 | Uta Lauer

paintings.16 She is credited with having re-integrated bamboo into landscape

painting, especially bamboo groves along a river. Despite, or perhaps because
of the fact that quite a number of paintings are attributed to her it is extremely
difficult to establish beyond doubt even a handful of authentic original works.17
To make matters worse, Guan Daosheng and her husband frequently
worked as each other’s daibi 代筆, that is substitute brush or ghost-writer. They
were so well-versed in each other’s handwriting that they occasionally forgot
their assumed persona until it was almost too late. A brilliant example thereof is
a letter which supposedly Guan Daosheng had written to a relative but which in
fact was penned by Zhao Mengfu.18 At the end of the letter, Zhao, oblivious of
his role as substitute brush, signed as usual, Zi’ang 子昻. Having realized his
mistake, rather than re-writing the whole letter, he pretty clumsily corrected
Zi’ang to Daosheng 道昇. There is only one piece of writing by Guan Daosheng
which is undisputed, a letter she wrote to the Chan abbot Zhongfeng Mingben
中峰明本 (1263–1323).19 Other than this, there are only secondary texts which
praise her mastery of the three arts of calligraphy, painting and poetry. The
most important of these textual sources is Zhao Mengfu’s funerary inscription.20
Already by the beginning of the eighteenth century, specimens of Guan
Daosheng’s calligraphy as well as painting were considered ‘extremely rare’.21
Probably inspired by an anecdote in Guan Daosheng’s funerary inscription
which recounts how the emperor had ordered her, her husband and their son to
write a piece of calligraphy which was then mounted into one scroll, complete
with a precious polished jade roller and included in the imperial art collection,
later collectors followed this precedent by mounting works by members of the
Zhao family together. Today there are very few examples of this practice, among

||
16 The ultimate book on the subject of bamboo with an emphasis on bamboo painting is Fan
Jingzhong 2011: Guan Daosheng’s bamboo painting is discussed in context on pp. 447–478.
17 See Ch’en Pao-chen 1977.
18 Guan Daosheng, Qiu shen tie 秋深貼, album leaf, ink on paper, 26.9 × 53.3 cm, semi cursive
script (xingshu 行書), 18 columns, Palace Museum, Beijing.
19 Guan Daosheng, Guan Daosheng zhe Zhongfeng heshang chidu 管道昇致中峰和尚尺牘
(‘Letter to Monk Zhongfeng’), album leaf, ink on paper, 31.7 × 72.9 cm, part of the album Yuan
Zhao Mengfu Zhao shi yimen fashu 元趙孟頫趙氏一門法書 (‘Calligraphy of the Yuan Dynasty
Zhao Clan’), National Palace Museum, Taipei.
20 Zhao Mengfu, Weiguo furen Guan shi muzhiming 魏國夫人管氏墓誌銘 (‘Funerary Inscrip-
tion, Lady Weiguo of the Guan Family’), in: Zhao Mengfu’s collected writings, section 松雪齋詩
文外集, 碑銘.
21 Zhen ji chuanshi jue shao 眞蹟傳世絶少 (‘genuine traces handed down are extremely few’),
quoted from Wu Sheng 1712, juan 16, 趙文敏蘭管夫人竹合作卷.
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1083

them the disputed Ink Bamboo by the Zhao Family22 and the scroll of Orchid,
Rock and Bamboo under consideration in this paper.

5 Colophons and seals

There are seventeen colophons appended to the scroll and altogether sixty-
seven seal impressions. Based on the contents of the seals, their placing, the
contents of the colophons and descriptions of the scroll in secondary texts it can
be established that the first owner of the scroll was Wang Lingxian 王令顯 (four-
teenth century). There are four or possibly five of his seals on the scroll. The first
is impressed in the bottom right hand corner of Zhao Mengfu’s Orchid and Rock
painting. This is the standard place for first seals (different rules apply for impe-
rial seals). The legend of this square relief seal Wang shi zhen mi 王氏珍祕 (‘Rare
Treasure of the Wang Family’) may indicate that this painting had been in the
Wang family collection already before Wang Lingxian’s time. Two more square
intaglio seals with his personal names appear also to the lower right of Zhao
Mengfu’s painting, Wang Guangda yin 王光大印 below and Wang Lingxian 王令
顯 above. In the left bottom corner next to Guan Daosheng’s Bamboo is another
of his square intaglio seals reading Wang shi Chengzhi 王氏成之. Right above
that is a square relief seal with the legend Wang Xun yin 王勲印. The identity of
the owner of this seal could not be established with absolute certainty but it
would make sense if this seal belonged to Wang Lingxian because usually, two
complementary seals, one intaglio and one relief are impressed one above the
other. Guangda and Chengzhi are both sobriquets of Wang Lingxian. From the
contents and the placing of Wang’s seals on the two paintings it is evident, that
he was the one who joined the two paintings into one handscroll.
The wealthy Wang family had assembled a collection of paintings, calligra-
phies, bronzes and other artefacts. They entertained close ties, sometimes life-
long friendship, with prominent literati such as Ke Jiusi, Ni Zan 倪瓚 (1301–
1374), Wang Meng 王蒙 (1308–1385; the grandson of Zhao Mengfu and Guan
Daosheng) and Wang Mian 王冕 (1287–1359). In the 1350s when the turmoil
surrounding rebel fighting and natural disasters in the Jiangnan region reached
a peak, the Wang family had to flee their home. Killing, looting and the destruc-
tion of estates were rampant. The Wangs found refuge in Suzhou where they

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22 Zhao Mengfu, Guan Daosheng, Zhao Yong 趙雍 (1289 – c. 1369), Zhao shi yimen san zhu tu
趙氏一門三竹圗 handscroll, ink on paper, 34 × 108 cm, Palace Museum, Beijing.
1084 | Uta Lauer

stayed for ten years before returning to their ancestral land in Jingxi 荊溪. Dur-
ing their time in quasi exile, the family patriarch Wang Yuntong 王允同 asked
the Suzhou painter Chen Ruyan 陳汝言 (c. 1331 – before 1371) for a landscape
painting depicting the area where they had lived for generations. The inscriptions
on The Jing River painting23 are testimony to a network of loyal friends surround-
ing the Wang family. Wang Lingxian and Ni Zan, both also present on the
handscroll under investigation here, wrote colophons. The painter Wang Meng
left an inscription as did Zhang Jian 張監, the private tutor of the Wang clan and
his son Zhang Jing 張經 (for both of them the date is unknown). Zhang Wei 張
緯, the younger brother of Zhang Jing, followed in his father’s footsteps as tutor
for the Wangs. His colophon too is among those gracing the Zhao/Guan hand-
scroll. A profound friendship connected the Zhang family to Ni Zan. A signifi-
cant number of poems in Ni Zan’s collected writings were dedicated to these
close friends and companions.24
After Wang Lingxian had the two paintings mounted together on one hand-
scroll, he proceeded to procure colophons from his friends. The first person with
whom he shared his latest treasure was the bamboo painter, calligrapher and
poet Ke Jiusi. As director of painting and calligraphy in the Kuizhangge Acade-
my where he served as a court connoisseur and curator of the imperial collec-
tion, Ke had seen and handled artworks of the highest quality. This put him in a
position to evaluate and judge paintings presented to him by private collectors
such as Wang Lingxian. Ke Jiusi wrote the first colophon on the scroll, praising
the paintings as worthy of admiration.25 More important even than his colophon
are Ke’s seals. He imprinted two of his personal, square relief seals26 on the joint
of the two paintings, thus approving of the union of the Orchid and Bamboo
paintings. Furthermore, he impressed his official square relief seal reading Ke
Jiusi jianding zhenji 柯九思鍳定眞蹟 examined and declared a genuine (brush)
trace, in the bottom left hand corner of Guan Daosheng’s Bamboo painting. The

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23 Chen Ruyan 陳汝言 (c. 1331 – before 1371), Jingxi tu 荆溪圖 (‘The Jing River’), hanging
scroll, ink on silk, 129 × 52.7 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei.
24 It would certainly be a fruitful undertaking to document and cross-reference the connec-
tions between all the colophon writers on the Zhao/Guan scroll to obtain a larger picture of
how this scroll ‘functioned’, but this is beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it here to caution
against looking at this scroll as an isolated object in the void.
25 This colophon is not included in Ke Jiusi’s collected writings, Danqiusheng ji 丹邱生集.
However, in juan five, which records the paintings to which Ke Jiusi appended colophons, sev-
en paintings by Zhao Mengfu are listed, attesting to Ke’s familiarity with Zhao Mengfu’s paint-
ing. The text of Ke Jiusi’s colophon is translated into English in Li 2011, 635.
26 Ke shi Jingzhong 柯氏敬仲 (upper part of the joint) and Jing’an 敬 .
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1085

paintings are framed by two strips of mounting silk. After the mounting silk the
colophons begin. There are two seals by Ke Jiusi, one in the bottom righthand
corner and one in the top right, crucial positions at the very beginning of the
first sheet of paper. The rectangular relief seal impression at the bottom right is
very faint and it is not for certain that this is Ke Jiusi’s seal. The square intaglio
seal at the top right though is beyond doubt one used by Ke Jiusi, reading
Kuizhangge jianshu boshi 奎章閣鑒書博士 examined by the Kuizhangge erudite.
This official seal bestowed the highest orders onto the newly mounted scroll as
genuine works by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng. Ke Jiusi’s colophon is
signed and followed by three more of his personal relief seals.27 Ke Jiusi’s in-
scription and seals truly opened the ensuing parade of colophons with great
fanfare.
The second colophon on the same sheet of paper is by Lu Youren 陸友仁, a
contemporary and friend of Ke Jiusi. Perhaps because of his social status as a
descendant of a textile trader’s family, Lu never held any office. Nevertheless,
he was greatly appreciated as a calligrapher. He was especially proficient in the
ancient clerical script (lishu 隸書). Lu was not only a practitioner of calligraphy
but also a scholar of epigraphy with a keen interest in inscriptions on bronzes,
tombstone inscriptions, stelae and rubbings.28 Thus it comes to no surprise that
Lu Youren wrote his colophon in clerical script in a grid, a form, not commonly
seen in colophons. Lu praises Guan Daosheng’s bamboo painting as not like
something from the women’s quarters but as in the same class as her male con-
temporary Li Kan 李衎 (1244–1320). The colophon is ‘signed’ with a personal
square intaglio seal.29
The writer of the third colophon, Wang Mian 王冕 (1287–1359), also from
Zhejiang province, was best known for his paintings of flowering plum.30 His
aspirations for an official career had come to naught so Wang earned his living
from selling his paintings. Despite this stigma running counter to the literati
ideal that scholars pursue the art of painting only as a noble pastime,31 he was
well accepted into polite society and regarded as a scholar recluse. His colo-
phon is full of praise for the paintings by Zhao and Guan, expressed in rather

||
27 Xixun 錫訓, gourd shape, relief; Ke shi Jingzhong 柯氏敬仲, square relief; Yunzhen zhai 緼眞齋,
rectangular relief.
28 Notably his Yanbei zazhi 研北雜志, a kind of brushnotes in two juan, attests to his scholar-
ship in epigraphy. Other than that, Lu Youren is best known for his book on the history of ink
makers, Moshi 墨史 (‘History of ink’).
29 Lu Youren yin 陸友仁印.
30 The best book in English to date on the genre of flowering plum painting is Bickford 1996.
31 This carefully constructed self-image of literati artists was finally unmasked by Cahill 1994.
1086 | Uta Lauer

conventional words. Wang Mian’s colophon is signed and impressed with two
of his own square intaglio seals.32 It should be noted that he was a pioneer seal
carver, one of the first who not only designed his seals but carved them him-
self.33
Precious little is known about the author and calligrapher of the fourth col-
ophon, Bian Wu 邊武 (middle fourteenth century). He hailed from Zhejiang
province, occasionally did paintings in the bird-and-flower genre (huaniao 花
鳥), to which the two paintings by Zhao and Guan also belong. Bian Wu was
primarily appreciated for his calligraphy.34 He was especially versatile in the
calligraphic style of Xianyu Shu 鮮于樞 (1246–1302, a close friend of Zhao
Mengfu)35 to such an extent, that the works of the two were sometimes confused.
His colophon is signed, followed by two square intaglio seals.36
The colophon penned by the Confucian scholar, poet and minor official
Wang Zhonglu 汪仲鲁 (1323–1401)37 was written when he was well advanced in
years. This is apparent in the somewhat shaky and yet controlled characters as
well as based on the fact that Wang Zhonglu signed his colophon with his so-
briquet Zhenyi bingsou 貞一病叟 (‘sick old man’), one which he had adopted
only late in life. He imprinted four square intaglio seals after his signature.38
The second sheet of paper bears only one colophon by the daoist priest, cal-
ligrapher and painter Zhang Yu 張雨 (1277–1348)39 who was one of the younger
members of the coterie surrounding Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng. When
Guan Daosheng passed away in 1319, her husband asked Zhang Yu to compose
a funeral ode in her honor. Two points in Zhang Yu’s colophon are of particular
importance. One is that he quotes from a poem Guan Daosheng had written in
1313, the Yufu ci 漁父詞 (‘Old Fisherman poem’), while residing in the capital
Beijing, expressing her longing for returning home south. He also mentions that

||
32 Wang Yuanzhang 王元章 and Wen Wang sun 文王孫.
33 See Sha Menghai 1987, 98–99.
34 There is a Qianzi wen 千字文 (Thousand Character Text) by Bian Wu in the National Palace
Museum, Taipei, dated 1341, album of 69 leaves, ink on paper, 34.4 × 23.5 cm (each leaf). From
secondary texts which record two of Bian Wu’s dated paintings in the bird-and-flower genre,
one dated 1338 and the other 1347, it can be confirmed that he was active in the middle of the
fourteenth century.
35 On Xianyu Shu’s calligraphy see Wong Fu 1981, 371–433.
36 Bo Jing fu (?) yin 伯京父印 and Bian Wu yin 邊武印.
37 Wang Zhonglu’s biography is recorded in Ming shi 明史, 178.
38 Chunfang si zhi 春坊私直; Yueguo shijia 越國世家; Wang shi Zhonglu 汪氏仲魯 and Xue gu
shanfang 學古山房.
39 His biography in Xin Yuan shi 新元史 238. For a translation of this colophon into English
see Li 2011, 636.
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1087

Guan had died on her way south which means that this colophon was written
after 1319. Zhang Yu furthermore comments on the rarity of genuine paintings
by Guan Daosheng:

夫人所畫絶少予識其眞

Madame Zhao’s paintings are quite rare, but I recognize their authentic value.40

In other words, Zhang Yu considers the bamboo painting by Guan Daosheng

mounted on this handscroll genuine. Otherwise, he would not have contributed
this colophon full of praise. Zhang’s colophon is signed and impressed with one
rectangular relief seal.41
The next sheet of paper opens with a colophon by a certain Gao Yu 高玉 (ac-
tive in the second half of the fourteenth century) about whom nothing is known.
Except the contents of his colophon is extremely interesting, providing a vivid
glimpse at the further fate of this scroll. There are some names and most im-
portantly, a date, 1359.42 In the first month of that year, Gao Yu traveled in the
Jiangnan area and visited the Wang family (the original owners of the scroll) in
exile in Suzhou at the time. Wang Lingxian’s son, Wang Yuntong, the very one
who had earlier requested a landscape painting of their ancestral home in Jingxi
from Chen Ruyan, now asked his guest Gao Yu to provide a colophon for the
Orchid, Rock and Bamboo scroll. First, Gao refused because he thought it most
disrespectful to write before the already existing colophons by his peers, Ni Zan
and Zhang Wei. He further remarks, that Yunlin 雲林 (sobriquet of Ni Zan) solic-
ited the colophon from Dechang 德常 (sobriquet of Zhang Wei). What he does
not say because he takes it for granted that this is obvious to anyone familiar
with Ni Zan’s calligraphic style is, that Ni Zan, after he had obtained the text
from his friend Zhang Wei then wrote his text and signed it with Zhang Wei’s
name on his behalf. Zhang Wei later returned the favour and wrote Ni Zan’s
colophon on the scroll, signing it with Ni Zan’s name. Ni Zan’s text of his colo-
phon is duly recorded in his collected works.43

||
40 Translation by Li 2011, 636.
41 Juqu waishi Zhang Tianyu yin 句曲外史張天羽印.
42 The important part of the colophon reads: […] 至正己亥正月僕過彝齋 (sobriquet of Wang
Lingxian) 值公子允同出此卷謾爲寫詩如右前有雲林雅製聞德常徵君亦時相與何獨無題也允同
歸幸俱道問訊句吳生高玉頓首.
43 Text contained in Ni Zan (s.a.), juan 6, 七言絶句.
1088 | Uta Lauer

In the sixteenth century, the calligrapher, painter and art collector Zhan
Jingfeng 詹景鳳 (1532–1602) appended a colophon (Fig. 3) in which he remarks
quite casually:

前張緯詩却是倪迂墨蹟此豈張又代倪交易各得其所者耶元人多有此戲 景鳳題

Zhang Wei’s poem at the beginning is a brush trace by Ni; Zhang then wrote instead of Ni,
swapping names and places. People of the Yuan [period] often engaged in this kind of
game.

True enough in this particular case. But, if Zhan Jingfeng’s generalisation that
Yuan artists often enjoyed this kind of play were correct, this would thoroughly
shake the foundations of trusting and relying on texts and signatures! In each
case, a detailed comparative analysis of the handwriting would be necessary to
determine the identity of the writer. With Chinese calligraphy, this presents
quite a challenge since calligraphers took pride in being able to write in some-
one else’s style to a point where the original and the copy become almost inter-
changeable. About Zhan Jingfeng it is said that he had studied Zhao Mengfu’s
calligraphy and painting so well that his works were often taken for genuine
brush traces of the master.44 Zhan Jingfeng’s comment is placed across the joint
of two sheets of paper, right after the Ni Zan text, actually written by Zhang Wei.
Zhan’s signature is followed by two personal square intaglio seals.45 Neither Ni
Zan’s nor Zhang Wei’s colophon bear a seal.
The beautifully written colophon by Ni Zan (Fig. 4) on behalf of Zhang Wei
features on the same sheet of paper as the preceding one by Gao Yu plus three
more by Zhou Zhu 周翥, Li Ziduan 李子端 and Wei Kui 魏奎 (all three active in
the fourteenth century). The next, narrower, sheet of paper bears a colophon by
a certain Qian Yuanti 銭原悌 (fourteenth century) and the afore-mentioned text
by Ni Zan actually written by Zhang Wei.
The last sheet of paper with colophons opens with a lengthy inscription by
Tao Zhen 陶振 (fourteenth century) in semi cursive script (xingshu). This is
worth mentioning, since one textual source claims that he is a grandson of the
painter Wang Meng on the mother’s side of the family.46 As Wang Meng was the

||
44 Wang Lianqi 王连起 from the Palace Museum, Beijing, an eminent scholar and connoisseur
of the work of Zhao Mengfu has occasionally cast doubt on the role of Zhan Jingfeng as a copy-
ist and collector of Zhao’s painting and calligraphy, down to the outright production of forger-
ies. See Wang Lianqi 2017, 198–200.
45 Jingfeng 景鳳 and Bie zi wen 別字文.
46 Xinchou xiaoxia ji 辛丑銷夏記, juan 4.
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1089

grandson of Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng, this would place the scroll not
only in the Jiangnan region but also in a way in the family line. Tao Zhen’s
colophon is preceded by one square intaglio seal.47 Three more square intaglio
seals48 are impressed after his signature.
The last two colophons are by Wang Jing’an 汪敬庵 and Wang Zongyi 汪宗
儀. Both colophons are signed, the first followed by two square relief seals, the
second by one intaglio seal.49 Nothing is known about these two people. Yet,
from the point of view of manuscript studies, it is noteworthy to take a closer
look at the diacritical marks present in both colophons. The first character in the
second column of Wang Jing’an’s colophon is marked with a circle to its right.
At the end of this column, written somewhat apart from the flow of the main
text, the small character huang 荒 was inserted. The circle means to delete the
character and the small character at the end of the column is the correct re-
placement of it. This was one of the standard ways to correct mistakes. The sec-
ond occurrence of a diacritical mark in Wang Zongyi’s colophon (Fig. 5) is less
straightforward. In this case, the last character in column two lü 菉 has a verti-
cal line plus three dots next to it. At the end of the colophon, visually clearly set
apart, is the small character lü 綠 with a circle next to it. That means that Wang
Zongyi first marked the character 菉 in his text with three dots, indicating it
should be deleted. He then wrote the correct character 綠 after the colophon.
Having second thoughts, Wang then put a circle next to the corrected character,
deleting it. Reversing his former correction, he then drew a vertical stroke next
to the three dots to cross them out.
For the next almost four hundred years a strange silence surrounds the Or-
chid, Rock and Bamboo scroll. Issues of loyalty and fear of punishment for being
associated with the people involved with the creation of this scroll50 and not
least the symbolism of orchid (a worthy noble, living and acting in seclusion,
unnoticed and un-recognized by those in power) and bamboo (upright official,
adhering to Confucian moral values, not daunted by adverse conditions, stead-
fast) may have been the reasons behind the scrolls temporary disappearance
from the public eye.

||
47 Baiyun shanfang 碧雲山房.
48 Tao Zhen 陶振, Diaoao haike 釣鰲海客 and Huayin zhenyi houren 花隱真逸後人.
49 Jingan 敬菴, Yin qing shijia 銀青世家 and Wang Zongyi shi 汪宗儀氏.
50 It is beyond the scope of this paper to delve into biographical details of those involved in
the creation of the scroll. Suffice it to say that the first Ming Emperor Hongwu (r. 1368–1398)
did not take matters of perceived disloyalty kindly.
1090 | Uta Lauer

The next sign of life on the scroll are seal impressions by the well-known
book and art collector An Qi, who at that time resided in Yangzhou. By far the
largest number of seals on the scroll, altogether thirteen, are by An Qi, all
strategically placed. The first, a rectangular relief seal reading An Yizhou jia
zhencang 安儀周家珍藏, is impressed in the bottom right hand corner of Zhao
Mengfu’s Orchid and Rock painting right next to those by Wang Lingxian, the
original owner of the scroll. Framing the two paintings, An Qi put his second
seal, rectangular intaglio, saying An shi Yizhou shuhua zhi zhang 安氏儀周書畫
之章, to the lower left of Guan Daosheng’s Bamboo. Next there are two personal
seals51 by An Qi right after the first colophon by Ke Jiusi and before the colophon
by Lu Youren. Right in the middle of the joint of the first and the second sheet of
paper, is An Qi’s collector’s seal, rectangular relief, Yizhou zhencang 儀周珍藏.
This is a pattern he followed, impressing his seal on the joint of two sheets of
paper to confirm, that they had been mounted in this order when the scroll was
in his possession. So the same seal is found on the joint before and after Zhang
Yu’s colophon and again on the joint of the third and the fourth sheet of paper,
always in the same prominent position in the middle. The one deviation from
this pattern is the joint of the papers four and five. There is no seal of An Qi. This
is the place on the scroll with Ni Zan’s colophon (written by Zhang Wei), where
Zhan Jingfeng wrote his comment across both sheets of paper. Why this omis-
sion? Perhaps simply for aesthetic reasons since the Ni Zan signature is so close
to the joint that there would have been not enough space for An Qi’s seal in that
exact middle position he chose for his seal on the other joints? An Qi’s seal are
again present at the end of the last colophon paper, precisely on the joint. At the
top is his gourd shaped relief seal, Xin shang 心賞, and further down a rectangu-
lar relief seal with the same legend as the first seal before Zhao Mengfu’s paint-
ing but this is a different seal, 安氏儀周書畫之章. Half of a rectangular relief
seal impression visible on the bottom left of the last colophon paper has been
pasted over with the last sheet of paper. It is not clear whether this is An Qi’s
seal or not. The final two personal seals, one square intaglio Siyuan tang 思原堂
and one square relief Lu cun 麓邨 follow the by then well-established conven-
tion of signing with two seals, one intaglio and one relief. An Qi recorded this
scroll in his catalogue Moyuan huiguan lu 墨緣彙觀錄 (Viewing Records of Works
in Ink). Most of the artworks in An Qi’s possession later entered Emperor
Qianlong’s collection.52 The scroll does not bear any imperial traces but that

||
51 Chaoxian ren 朝鮮人, rectangular intaglio, and An Qi yin 安岐之印, square intaglio.
52 On the latest research defining imperial collection see Chiang 2019.
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1091

does not entirely exclude the possibility that it might have been stored at the
palace nevertheless.
After An Qi’s engagement with the Orchid, Rock and Bamboo scroll there is
again a period of discreet silence until the dawn of the twentieth century, a
period which saw the end of imperial rule, the establishment of a republic and
regional warlords fighting for power. This highly volatile situation also had an
effect on the art market.
Again it is the seals and their position on the scroll which reveal something
of its later fate. There are no less than six seal impressions on this scroll by the
illustrious painter and art connoisseur Jin Cheng 金城 (1878–1926)53. He was a
legal expert who had studied law in London between 1902 and 1905. After the
founding of the Republic he held various official positions. Above all Jin Cheng
considered himself a painter and he was heavily involved in a number of art
related issues. Most importantly, he served as a member of the Preparatory
Council for the Display of Artefacts (Guwu chenliesuo 古物陳列所) from the Impe-
rial Collection. This gave him unlimited access to the former imperial art collec-
tion. He concentrated his research on traditional Chinese painting also
frequently evaluating and certifying the authenticity of paintings from private
collections. Jin Cheng hailed from a wealthy family of officials in Wuxing, the
same town where Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng had originated from. Al-
though Jin spent most of his life in Beijing, his cultural roots lay in Jiangnan. His
first rectangular relief seal on the Orchid, Rock and Bamboo scroll is prominent-
ly and proudly placed above that of An Qi to the left of Guan Daosheng’s paint-
ing. The legend of the seal says Wuxing Jin Cheng jianding Song Yuan zhenji zhi
yin 吳興金城鑑定宋元真蹟之印, thus authenticating the paintings as genuine
Yuan period. This is an official judgement pronouncing this scroll an original.
Jin Cheng impressed his personal seal, Jin Cheng siyin 金城私印, on the first
sheet of paper before Ke Jiusi’s colophon in the bottom right hand corner right
above that of Ke Jiusi. In placing his small square intaglio seal Gong Bei 鞏北
(one of Jin Cheng’s sobriquets) on all the joints of the paper sheets below the
seal of An Qi, he declared the order of papers mounted together as one hand
scroll as chronologically correct. At the end of the scroll on the joint of the last
colophon paper and the ensuing sheet with seals only, there is again Jin
Cheng’s same seal Jin Cheng siyin 金城私印 as on the first colophon paper.
Another contemporary of Jin Cheng, the famous art collector Wanyan
Jingxian 完顏景賢 (1876–1926)54, also made his presence felt on the scroll

||
53 Cf. Siu Wai-man 2001.
54 On the art collection of Wanyan Jingxian see Li Chong 2015.
1092 | Uta Lauer

through his seals. A square relief seal, Renzhai mingxin zhi pin 任齋銘心之品, is
impressed to the right of Zhao Mengfu’s Orchid and Rock, directly above the seal
of Wang Lingxian. A second square relief seal is placed to the left of Guan
Daosheng’s Bamboo, Wanyan Jingxianjing jian 完顏景賢精鑒, to the bottom left,
next to Guan’s seal. Thus, like An Qi before him, Wanyan Jingxian framed the
two paintings with his seals. Two more square relief seals are in the empty space
on the first colophon paper between the colophons of Lu Youren and Wang
Mian, seeking the company of these two Yuan artists. The seal legends read
Jiuwan baqian Songxue shuwu 九萬八千松雪書屋 (it is certainly no coincidence
that Songxue was also the sobriquet of Zhao Mengfu and that Wanyan chose this
for his library’s name) and Xiaoru’an moyuan 小如菴墨緣. These were seals
which Wanyan Jingxian frequently imprinted on the pages of rare old books in
his collection. His next rectangular intaglio seal occupies the wide empty space
between the colophons of Gao Yu and Ni Zan (written on behalf of Zhang Wei),
reading Jin zhang shixi Jing xing wei xian 金章世系景行維賢. It was not just the
available space which made Wanyan place his seal there but also the close
proximity to Ni Zan’s calligraphy. His final two square seals55 on the last sheet of
paper (the one with seals only, no colophons) are beautifully balanced with An
Qi’s seals to the left. An Qi’s top seal is cut in intaglio. Wanyan Jingxian’s seal
next to it is the reverse, relief. The same counter balance can be seen in An Qi’s
relief seal at the bottom and next to it Wanyan’s intaglio seal. It is probably not
too much to say that Wanyan Jingxian conciously sought a visual dialogue with
earlier owners of this scroll. Wanyan entertained close ties with the major art
collectors and dealers of the time. He was a good friend of Viceroy Duanfang 端
方 (1861–1911) and had dealings with the Japanese art collector Abe Fusajirô 阿
部房次郎 (1868–1937) and the Canadian-American John C. Ferguson (1866–
1945).56 The Wanyan family were Manchu bannerman, their fate intertwined
with that of the Qing emperors. When imperial rule ended in 1911, the fortune of
the Wanyan family declined and they were forced to sell artworks to survive.
The final seal on the scroll on the last sheet of white paper, a beautifully
carved rectangular relief seal, Song Ziwen jianding shuhua jingpin 宋子文鑒定書
畫精品, belonged to the businessman and politician Song Ziwen 宋子文 (1894–
1971), better known as T. V. Soong. His parents Charlie Soong 宋嘉樹 (1863–
1918) and Ni Guizhen 倪桂珍 (1869–1931) had bought paintings as an invest-
ment for all of their six children. Only very rarely, a painting from the family

||
55 Xianxi tang jianding 咸熙堂鑑定, square relief, and Wanyan Jingxian zi Xiangfu hao Pusun yi
zi Renzhai biehao Xiaoruan yin 完顏景賢字享父號樸孫一字任齋別號小如盦印, square intaglio.
56 Netting 2013.
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1093

collection has re-entered the market, as earlier this year a hanging scroll by the
Italian Jesuit court painter Guiseppe Castiglione (1688–1766), sold at an auction
in Taipei.

6 The scroll in secondary texts

As mentioned before, Orchid, Rock and Bamboo by Zhao Mengfu and Guan
Daosheng is recorded in two texts, in An Qi’s Moyuan huiguan and in Wu
Sheng’s Daguanlu. Both begin with giving the title of the painting, although
each gives a slightly different title, followed by a material description of the
scroll, saying that this is a work on paper and providing the measurements in
cun 尺, although they differ on the size. Both authors agree that these are mono-
chrome ink paintings, two separate paintings mounted together on one hand-
scroll. An Qi then lists the names of the colophon authors, plus a transcription
and the placement of their seals. Finally, he transcribes Zhan Jingfeng’s colo-
phon in full and points out that indeed it is very special, that Ni Zan and Zhang
Wei wrote their respective colophons on each other’s behalf.
Wu Sheng, after his short introduction of the paintings, transcribes the full
text of each colophon in the correct order as present on the scroll. As for the
seals, he prints the legend of the seals in regular script (kaishu) inside a line
drawing of the shape of each seal. This may be hard to read in the small print
but it is an added piece of information, to know the shape of the seals, to be able
to identify them correctly.
Taken together the catalogue entries of both authors provide extremely use-
ful and factual information for the study of this scroll. They are a sound starting
point, leaving it to later researchers, connoisseurs and art lovers to ask fresh
questions, further revealing the complex history of Orchid, Rock and Bamboo by
two of the most eminent painters of the Yuan period.

Acknowledgements
For their help and support I would like to thank the following people (in alpha-
betical order): Fan Jingzhong, Elisabeth Jung Lu, Lu Dadong, Hui-Ping Pang,
Kathleen Ryor, Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, Yen Ion, Zhou Xiaoying, Zhou Yiqing.
1094 | Uta Lauer

References
An Qi 安岐 (preface 1742), Moyuan huiguan 墨緣匯觀, reprint 1956, Taibei: Taiwan shang wu
yin shu guan.
Bickford, Maggie (1996), Ink Plum: The Making of a Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre, Cam-
bridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Cahill, James (1994), The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China,
New York: Columbia University Press.
Ch’en Pao-chen 陳葆真 (1977),‘Kuan Tao-sheng ho t’a te chu-shih t’u 管道昇和她的竹石圖
(Kuan Tao-sheng and her painting of bamboo and rock)’, National Palace Museum Quar-
terly 11.4: 51–84.
Chiang, Nicole T. C. (2019), Emperor Qianlong’s Hidden Treasures. Reconsidering the Collection
of the Qing Imperial Household, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Fan Jingzhong 范景中 (2011), The Book of Bamboo, Zhonghua zhu yun – Zhongguo gudian
zhuantong zhong de yixie pinwei 中华竹韵 – 中国古典传统中的⼀些品味, 2 vols,
Hangzhou: Zhongguo Meishuxueyuan Chubanshe.
Ke Jiusi 柯九思, Danqiusheng ji 丹邱生集, block print 1908, 3 vols, zhuan Miao Quansun ji bian
撰 繆荃孫輯編.
Li Chong 李冲 (2015), Wanyan Jingxian ji qi shuhuashoucang 完颜景贤及其书画收藏, Master
thesis, Tianjin Meishu Xueyuan.
Li, Chu-Tsing (1965), The Autumn Colors on the Ch'iao and Hua Mountains: A Landscape by
Chao Meng-fu (Artibus Asiae, Supplementum, 21), Ascona: Artibus Asiae.
Li, Chu-Tsing (2011), ‘A Handscroll of Orchid and Bamboo by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng’,
in Jerome Silbergeld, Dora C. Y. Ching, Judith G. Smith and Alfreda Murck (eds), Bridges to
Heaven. Essays on East Asian Art in Honor of Professor Wen C. Fong, Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University, vol. 2, 631–636.
Netting, Lara Jaishree (2013), Perpetual Fire: John C. Ferguson and His Quest for Chinese Art
and Culture, New York: Columbia University Press.
Ni Zan 倪瓚 (s.a.), Ni Yünlin xian sheng shi ji 倪雲林先生詩集, reprint 1967 (Sibu congkanchu
bian suo ben 四部叢刊初編縮本 254), Taibei: Taiwan shang wu yin shu guan.
Sha Menghai 沙孟海 (1987), Yin xue shi 印學史, Hangzhou: Xiling yinshe.
Siu Wai-man 蕭瑋文 (2001), Jin Cheng (1878–1926) yanjiu 金城 (1878–1926) 研究, PhD thesis,
Hongkong: Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Wang Lianqi 王连起 (2017), Zhao Mengfu shuhua lungao 赵孟頫书画论稿, Beijing: Gugong
Chubanshe.
Wong Fu, Marilyn (1981), ‘The Impact of Re-Unification: Northern Elements in the Life and Art of
Hsien-yü Shu (1257?–1302) and their Relation to Early Yüan Culture’, in John D. Langlois,
Jr. (ed.), China under Mongol Rule, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 371–433.
Wu Sheng 吳昇 (1712), Daguanlu 大觀錄, Reprint 1920 [1970], 4 vols, Taipei: Guoli zhongyang
tushuguan.
Zhao Mengfu 趙孟頫 (s.a.), Songxue zhai ji 松雪齋集, Reprint 1983, 10 vols, Taipei: Taiwan
shang wu yin shu guan.
 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1095

Fig. 1: Zhao Mengfu, Guan Daosheng. Orchid, Rock and Bamboo, handscroll, ink on paper,
35.5 × 238.6 cm, Private collection. Detail: Zhao Mengfu, Orchid and Rock, signature, seals.
Images reproduced with the kind permission of the private owner.

Fig. 2: Detail: Guan Daosheng, Bamboo, signature, seals.

1096 | Uta Lauer

Fig. 3: Detail: Zhan Jingfeng colophon, seals.

Fig. 4: Detail: Ni Zan colophon written on behalf of Zhang Wei.

 Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng | 1097

Fig. 5: Detail: Wang Congyi colophon, diacritical marks, seals on last sheet of paper.
Zhenzhen Lu
Touched by a Tale of Friendship: An Early
Nineteenth-Century Zidishu Manuscript
Abstract: Zidishu is a genre of sung verse narrative that flourished in northern
China between the mid-eighteenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries. This
article examines the earliest dated manuscript containing a text in this genre,
copied in 1815 in Beijing, titled Yu Boya shuaiqin xie zhiyin zidishu 俞伯牙摔琴謝
知音子弟書 (Yu Boya smashes his zither to mourn a friend, a youth book). The
preface, appendix, marginal and chapter comments added to the main text by
the copyist reveal him to have been a fashionable and erudite reader, whose
diverse literary interests offer insights into zidishu’s early audience and the
ways in which elite readers engaged with popular texts.

1 Introduction
The manuscript of Yu Boya shuaiqin xie zhiyin zidishu 俞伯牙摔琴謝知音子弟書
(Yu Boya smashes his zither to mourn a friend, a youth book), copied in 1815 in
Beijing, is the earliest dated manuscript containing a text in the lyrical genre of
zidishu 子弟書.1 As both a literature and a performing art, zidishu flourished in
the urban centers of northern China from roughly the mid-eighteenth century to
the end of the nineteenth century.2 Sung in slow beats to the accompaniment of
the three-stringed lute and drawing on a rich repertoire of stories, whose
sources range from contemporary events to the existing literary tradition,
zidishu comprised a genuinely popular literature of entertainment that appealed
to both discerning audiences and common ears. Our manuscript reveals that

||
1 Capital Library of China (CLC), ji 己 401. The exact meaning of zidi in zidishu is a subject of
debate (shu denotes ‘book’ or ‘story’). Literally ‘sons and younger brothers’, zidi has been
interpreted to denote amateur performers, young men in general, and youths who belonged to
the Qing dynasty’s (1644–1911) military and administrative system of the Eight Banners.
Zidishu has been translated into English as ‘youth book’ (Elliott 2001a), ‘scion’s tale’ (Goldman
2001) and ‘bannermen tale’ (Chiu 2018).
2 Idema 2010, 370. Guan and Zhou 1984, vol. 1, 1, gives the period between the Qianlong
(1736–1795) and Guangxu (1875–1908) eras.

Open Access. © 2021 Zhenzhen Lu, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-054
1100 | Zhenzhen Lu

they were once also the object of serious reading, and provides important in-
sights into their early readers.3
The murky origins of zidishu come to us through anecdotal accounts and
representations in the texts themselves. In various sources, zidishu is associated
with the capital’s bannermen, the privileged affiliates of the Manchu ruling
dynasty who comprised a sizeable resident population in Qing (1644–1911) Bei-
jing.4 While we do not know much about the early authors of zidishu, we do
know that these poetic narratives came to flourish in the Qing capital sometime
during the mid to late eighteenth century, including among men of wealth and
leisure who took to singing in private gatherings for each other.5 These coteries
continued to exist at the same time that zidishu came to acquire widespread
popularity in the capital: the songs were performed by professional musicians

||
3 See Chen 1977 for a comprehensive overview of the sources of zidishu. On this particular
manuscript, see Lu 2017 and Chiu 2018, 195–210. The main text, preface and commentary have
been collated with other versions of the zidishu text and published in Huang 2012b, vol. 1, 200–
220 (the appendix is, however, not included).
4 See Chiu 2018, 38–56, and Cui 2005, 7–14, for varying hypotheses on zidishu’s origins. On the
history of the banners, see Elliott 2001b, 39–88. Qing Beijing was spatially segregated, with
bannermen residing in the Inner City and non-banner populations in the Outer City. Banner-
men possessed legal and economic privileges (such as pensions and allotments of land), and as
such were seen as a population possessed of wealth and leisure; by the late Qing, however,
their social experiences varied widely, which one finds reflected in the zidishu literature (see
Guan and Zhou 1984, vol. 1, 1–4, Huang-Deiwiks 2000, and Zheng 2020, 103–109).
5 On these gatherings, which existed through the end of the Qing, see Cui 2017, 243–248, and
Liang 2018. The earliest source which documents these gatherings is the 1797 Shuci xulun 書詞
緒論 (Treatise on the lyrical art) by Gu Lin 顾琳, who mentions the widespread popularity of
zidishu music in the ‘last ten or so years’ (Gu [1797], 821; more on this text in Section 4). While
this would imply that zidishu rose to popularity in the 1780s, the earliest dated imprint of zidi-
shu, printed in 1756 in Beijing, suggests that the texts already had a significant reading audi-
ence in the mid-eighteenth century (on this imprint, titled Zhuang shi jiangxiang 莊氏降香
[Lady Zhuang burns incense], see Huang, Li and Guan 2012a, 121–122).
For an overview of zidishu authors, see Huang 2012, who estimates that names of authors
are identifiable for no more than one hundred of the over five hundred extant texts of zidishu
(Huang 2012, 4461). In many instances the only information we know about these authors is
the aliases that they have left in the texts; their dates and backgrounds (especially of the early
authors) are often difficult to ascertain. Figures with known biographical details include one
Aisin Gioro Yigeng 奕賡 (1809–1848), twelfth son of Prince Zhuang 莊親王 (Mianke 綿課, 1763‒
1826), known in zidishu texts as ‘Helü shi’ 鶴侶氏 (‘Companion of the cranes’; see Chiu 2018,
236‒257, and Huang-Deiwiks 2000, 65–66); another ‘Chunshuzhai’ 春澍齋 (‘Studio of the
spring rain’; b. c.1800), also affiliated with the imperial clan (Qi 1983, 319–210); and Golmin果
勒敏 (1834–1900), a Mongolian general, known by the alias ‘Xisuzhai’ 洗俗齋 (‘Studio of the
cleansing of worldliness’) (Li 2009).
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1101

at public venues such as teahouses, and reproduced by commercial print shops

and scribal publishers. Perhaps sometime during the nineteenth century,
zidishu’s popularity spread from Beijing to other northern locales.6
In the extant corpus of zidishu, our manuscript stands out not only for its
early date but importantly for the commentary which it contains from one read-
er (see Fig. 1). The vast majority of zidishu manuscripts extant today do not con-
tain commentary, which is traditionally associated with the classical exegetical
tradition and, in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, also
came to be applied to vernacular fiction and drama.7 The commentary in our
manuscript reveals the work of a reader well versed in these traditions, who saw
the minor genre of zidishu as worthy of literary attention. His preface, appendix,
and chapter and marginal comments together frame the text within a larger
realm of elite discourses on friendship – a subject befitting the social world of a
fashionable, educated young man living in early nineteenth-century Beijing.
Below, I introduce the manuscript, its background, and its physical charac-
teristics, followed by a discussion of its rich commentarial matter with view to
understanding the person who wrote them. It is hoped that this modest intro-
duction to one manuscript will broaden our perspective on how elite readers
engaged with popular texts, and shed light on the important role played by
personal copies in the transmission of zidishu.8

2 The manuscript
The manuscript is presently held at the Capital Library of China and belongs to
the former collection of Wu Xiaoling 吳曉玲 (1914–1995), a major scholar and

||
6 On the dissemination of zidishu, see Cui 2005, 134–147, and Chiu 2018, 259–304. Besides
Beijing, Shenyang (Mukden) was another major site of production of zidishu in the Qing, and
debate exists as to which city was the predecessor. Among extant zidishu imprints with identi-
fiable dates and places of origin, the earliest come from Beijing; one finds imprints from a
range of other northern locations including Shenyang beginning in the late nineteenth century
(Lu 2018, 106–112).
7 For an overview of the commentarial tradition surrounding fiction, see Huang 2021, Rolston
1990, 3–34, and Rolston 1997, 1–21. I have benefited greatly from the terminology used by
David Rolston to describe various kinds of commentarial matter (Rolston 1990, 52–57). On
drama commentaries, see He 2021.
8 For a brief overview of these kinds of manuscripts, see Lu 2018, 112–116.
1102 | Zhenzhen Lu

collector of Chinese vernacular literature.9 Among Wu’s notable personal collec-

tion, amassed from his decades of residence in Beijing, are seventy-three titles
of zidishu in eighty-four volumes. The texts reflect zidishu’s wide-ranging sub-
ject matter, from contemporary city life in the capital to the celebrated stories of
drama and fiction. The books also represent the varied channels of zidishu’s
transmission: there are manuscripts from scribal publishers who specialized in
copying entertainment literature for sale, woodblock imprints from commercial
print shops, and personal manuscripts copied by Wu and his father. The manu-
script presently under scrutiny came to Wu from his middle school teacher
Zheng Qian 鄭騫 (1906–1991), also an important scholar of Chinese literature.10
The slim volume of forty-three folios, measuring 12.6 cm × 26.9 cm, has un-
dergone substantial preservation treatment, with backing applied to the original
folios and rebound with four-hole sewing. While the original cover is lost, the
content appears to be intact. The neatly prepared manuscript presents the full
text of Yu Boya shuaiqin xie zhiyin zidishu 俞伯牙摔琴謝知音子弟書 (Yu Boya
smashes his zither to mourn a friend, a youth book; hereafter Smashing the zither)
along with a preface and table of contents at the beginning of the book. The
zidishu is divided into five chapters (hui 回), each five folios long; each chapter
is followed by a prose essay (ping 評, literally ‘comment’) in one or two folios,
while comments in smaller characters also appear in the spacious top margins
of pages, above the main text (see Fig. 1). The manuscript concludes with a sixth
‘chapter’, which is actually not part of the zidishu text but rather an appended
collection of maxims on the subject of friendship.11
We know the name of the commentator because he recorded his name,
date, and location in detail at the end of the preface: 嘉慶二十年歲在乙亥小陽
月既望北平王錦雯雨帆氏題於京師之一石山房 ‘Signed by Wang Jinwen, courte-
sy name Yufan, of Beiping, at the Rustic Hut of the Single Picul in the capital, on
the 16th day of the tenth month of 1815’ (see Fig. 2).12 That Wang gave his true
name, followed by his seals, suggests that the preparation of manuscript was a
serious endeavor. Given that the entire manuscript is written in the same hand,

||
9 The information on the collection below comes from Wu Xiaoling 1982; see also Wu Shuyin
2004.
10 On Zheng, see He [2021]. Zheng was a native of Tieling 鐵嶺, Liaoning, but grew up in Bei-
jing. He was a professor at National Taiwan University 1948–1981.
11 The typical unit of textual division in zidishu, hui 回, shares the same character as the
‘chapter’ in the vernacular short story and novel, but is much more brief, perhaps to accommo-
date singing. Hui can also refer to a ‘session’ of storytelling performance.
12 CLC, ji 401, fol. 4r. While here translated as a unit of weight (‘picul’), shi 石 can also be
interpreted as ‘stone’.
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1103

including the marginal and chapter comments, we have good reason to believe
that it was copied by Wang – a personal commentarial ‘edition’ – although his
exact intentions for it are unclear.13 The orderly appearance of the writing sug-
gests that it was most likely not a first draft, but rather intended for perusal,
whether by Wang himself or by his friends; as we will see later, the comments
reveal a curious awareness of a reading audience, drawing the reader into con-
versation through the evocative subject of friendship.
Being dressed in commentary, our manuscript differs markedly in ap-
pearance from many extant manuscripts which, copied with a standard layout,
originated from scribal publishers in Qing Beijing that specialized in the hand-
written production of zidishu. These shops, which produced and sold man-
uscripts of a variety of entertainment literature, dominated the book market of
zidishu in the Qing dynasty.14 Manuscripts which originated from these shops
have a long, vertical format, with verses written in four columns to a page.
Chapters are labeled on the first folio, typically above the first line, while the
character wan 完 (‘complete’) often appears at the end of the book. Typically,
these manuscripts also feature L-shaped marks throughout the text, possibly to
assist reading or singing (see Fig. 3).15 Being the product of professional scribes,
the manuscripts are copied in practiced hands. That they are products intended
for sale is indicated by seals of scribal publishers and prices labeled on the title
pages.16
It is certainly possible that Wang Jinwen’s personal manuscript is based on
such a copy – in his preface, Wang divulges that he had made his annotated
copy based on an existing book he bought, although he does not give any other

||
13 It is possible that the copyist is not the author of the preface, though the presence of the
seals would suggest otherwise. The characters that are occasionally skipped and inserted on
the side by the copyist in his marginal comments suggest that, though neatly prepared, the
manuscript is a not pre-print copy (nor does Wang mention any intentions to print it in his
preface).
14 See Lu 2018, 104–109; on one prolific scribal publisher and that publisher’s manuscript
products, see Lu, forthcoming. It is not clear when these shops initially came into being, but
extant sales catalogs from them can be dated to the nineteenth century on the basis of stories
they contain which refer to contemporary events.
15 The L-shaped marks appear at the bottom of pages every 8–10 lines, marking subdivisions
within each chapter. Their actual function in the context of singing and reading zidishu is
subject to investigation. Of note is that the L-shaped marks are not exclusive to manuscripts of
zidishu from scribal publishers, but also appear in some personal manuscripts, although not
CLC, ji 401.
16 For images of such title pages, as well as pages inside zidishu manuscripts from scribal
publishers, see Lu, forthcoming.
1104 | Zhenzhen Lu

information about his source.17 Indeed, Smashing the zither appears to have
been one of the most beloved stories of the zidishu genre, attested by no less
than nineteen extant copies from varying sources, including at least two from
scribal publishers.18 Comparison between Wang Jinwen’s manuscript and one
likely from a scribal publisher reveals a number of similarities in the visual
organization of the zidishu text, with four columns to a page, corresponding
page breaks, and similar, if not completely identical texts (Fig. 3).19 Yet Wang’s
manuscript is also noticeably different: there is copious space in the top mar-
gins for marginalia; section titles and pagination appear in tiny characters on
the side margins of pages; the verse is uninterrupted by L-shaped marks; and
there is no ‘wan’ 完 character to mark the end of the zidishu text. Tellingly, the
paper used as writing support also differs from the thin variety one commonly
finds in manuscripts from scribal publishers.
Whatever the basis of Wang’s manuscript was, he transformed it in the pro-
cess of copying, presenting the zidishu text anew as an object of literary scrutiny
and dressed in the trappings of a fine book. The verses making up the main text
are presented almost in the manner of calligraphic art, in vivid contrast to the
neatly punctuated preface, marginalia and chapter comments.20 The beginning
of each chapter, too, is uninterrupted by the usual chapter title, leaving only the

||
17 CLC, ji 401, fol. 3v.
18 Judging by its large number of extant copies, Smashing the zither makes it into the top ten
titles of the zidishu literature. A survey of extant zidishu (587 titles in total) reveals between one
and thirty-five extant copies for each title, with the average being 5.24 copies (Lu 2018, 103).
See Huang, Li and Guan 2012a, 25–28, for a list of the extant copies of Smashing the zither. The
majority are manuscripts, but there are four woodblock imprints representing two editions (a
1907 edition from Tongletang 同樂堂 and an undated edition from Beijing’s Jingyitang 經義堂).
Of the two copies from scribal publishers, one comes from Baiben Zhang 百本張 (‘Hundred
volumes Zhang’) and one from Jujuantang 聚卷堂 (‘House of accumulated scrolls’). Both are in
the collection of the Chinese National Academy of Arts 中國藝術研究院, which is not presently
accessible to the public. I have thus based the following comparison on a published facsimile
of a manuscript in the collection of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, which, while missing its
original title page, shares the features of manuscripts from scribal publishers (Fu Sinian Li-
brary, T10-123; the facsimile is published under the title ‘Shuaiqin’ 摔琴 in Suwenxue congkan
俗文學叢刊 (500 vols), Taipei: Xinwenfeng, 2001‒2004, vol. 384, 373–422).
19 Compare with Fig. 1. Many (but not all) of the breaks within lines (when some characters
are written in smaller size to fit into the seven-character line) are the same in the two manu-
scripts. Some character variants are present.
20 Works of calligraphy are typically not punctuated, while reading matter often is. Of course,
the verse here is intended to be read (and verse is usually unpunctuated in books of zidishu).
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1105

spacious margins to announce the flowing lines of verse and a dramatic reading
experience about to unfold.21

3 The story, preface, and commentary

The story from which the manuscript takes its title, Yu Boya smashes his zither to
mourn a friend, centers on the friendship between two men of Chinese antiquity,
Zhong Ziqi 鍾子期 and Yu Boya 俞伯牙, the latter of whom was a master of the
qin.22 According to legend, Ziqi understood Boya like no other, perceiving Boya’s
every intention with his music. It is in association with this story that the Chi-
nese term zhiyin 知音 – roughly translatable as ‘one who understands the
tones’ – comes to stand for the best of friends, while yin in its full range of con-
notations includes not only musical sound but also the deep resonances of the
heart-mind.23

||
21 In a rare manner for zidishu, the chapter titles are listed together in a table of contents at
the beginning of the book (Fig. 4). The two-character titles capture the plot with great poetic
economy and echo the ways that dramatic scenes are often named: ‘Meeting over the zither’ 琴
遇 (The first chapter); ‘Sealing the bond’ 敘盟 (The second chapter); ‘Woeful parting’ 情別 (The
third chapter); ‘Fulfilling the promise’ 踐約 (The fourth chapter); and ‘Smashing the zither’ 摔
琴 (The fifth chapter). In manuscripts from scribal publishers, one typically does not find such
poetic titles but simply numbered chapters.
22 The qin is an instrument with usually seven (occasionally five or nine) strings strung over a
long wooden sound box, played by plucking the strings using the right hand while fingering is
applied with the left hand. Here I have employed the common, if somewhat liberal translation
of qin as ‘zither’; alternative translations (‘lute’ and ‘psaltery’) are discussed in van Gulik 1969,
viii–ix, n. 4–5. While in the zidishu (and the early seventeenth-century short story described in
the following paragraph) the protagonists are known as Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi, in earlier
texts the former is known simply as Bo Ya, and the latter sometimes as Zhong Qi. For the sake
of consistency, I refer to the two henceforth as ‘Boya’ and ‘Ziqi’.
23 On this story and early Chinese music theory, see Berthel 2016. Versions of the story appear
in the Liezi 列子 (date uncertain), Lü shi Chunqiu 吕氏春秋 (The annals of Lü Buwei; c. 239 BCE),
and Han shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳 (The Han commentary on the Book of Odes, c. 150 BCE), the last
two of which describe Boya to have broken his qin upon Ziqi’s death, though none of these
accounts mention the term zhiyin. The earliest source which employs the term in connection to
the story may be Cao Pi 曹丕 (187–226)’s ‘Yu Wu Zhi shu’ 與吳質書 (‘Letter to Wu Zhi’), collect-
ed in the influential sixth-century compilation Wen xuan 文選 (Anthology of fine writing), which
comments on Boya’s renunciation of music-making as an act of grief for the loss of a rare, true
friend (‘zhiyin’). On these early sources, see Nylan 2001, 106–107, and Shields 2015, 47–48. In
texts from before the Han dynasty (202 BCE –220 CE), the term zhiyin referred primarily to the
understanding of music, a meaning which it retained through the Tang dynasty (618–907),
1106 | Zhenzhen Lu

The story comes to us in various forms, but the probable direct source for
the zidishu is the version contained in the early seventeenth-century short-story
collection Jingshi tongyan 警世通言 (Words to admonish the world), compiled by
Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574–1646), from which at least three other works of
zidishu have been adapted.24 In this regard, our zidishu text resembles many
other works of the same genre in deriving from vernacular fiction, while the
verse form itself also draws on a long poetic tradition.25 While we do not know
when this particular text was written or by whom, it exhibits the skillful blend
of colloquial expressions and classical cadences which one finds in the finest
works of the zidishu literature. Dramatized into scenes (Fig. 4), and teeming
with the sounds and images of classical poetry, the lyrical narrative brings to
new emotional heights a celebrated story of friendship found and lost.
As the story goes in the zidishu, Boya was a minister in the ancient kingdom
of Jin, and Ziqi was a rustic woodcutter in the kingdom of Chu. One autumn
night, while traveling by boat through the Chu countryside, Boya took out his
qin to play under the moon, only to be overheard by Ziqi on the shore. Sum-
moned to the minister’s boat, Ziqi revealed himself to be wonderfully versed in
the art of the qin, and was able to perceive from Boya’s music what he had on
his mind – first the towering mountains, then the flowing river. Barring worldly
formalities, the two became the best of friends. They made a vow to meet again
at the same place a year later, but Boya would return to find himself alone un-
der the moon. Meditating on his boat deep in the night, Boya is visited briefly by

||
even as it came to be used increasingly in the sense of ‘close friend’ as seen through poetry (see
Shields 2015, 47, n. 51).
24 See Chen 1977, 27–30, and Yin 2017. Compared to the classical texts cited in the previous
note, Feng’s vernacular short story is a much more elaborate version, and may itself have
drawn on earlier sources from the Ming dynasty, including a vernacular story and a qin song
(see Hanan 1981, 229, n. 15, and Wu Zeyuan 2020, 53, n. 16; in the latter, pp. 51–88 contain a
detailed reading of the story alongside late imperial Chinese discourses on qin music). See Wu
Shuyin 1994, 1–13, for an annotated version of this story. For a list of translations into Europe-
an languages, see Bishop 1956, 129–130; see also the translation in Yang and Yang 2005, 7–20.
25 See Qi 1983, 321–323. Qi points out zidishu’s affinities with a variety of verse genres, from
narrative ballads to classical poetry, and makes note of zidishu’s tremendous formal flexibility
through the use of a basic seven syllable line padded with any number of additional syllables
(a technique known to the writing of drama and ci poetry). Notably, Qi also observes zidishu’s
affinities with classical prose writing in the form of the ‘eight-legged prose essay’ (baguwen
八股文) (323–325).
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1107

the ghost of Ziqi, who comes to bid him a final farewell.26 In the last scene, a
devastated Boya meets Ziqi’s aged father onshore, who leads him to visit Ziqi’s
grave. After playing his qin one last time, Boya smashes it against the stone
terrace – upon the loss of one who truly understood him, he would never play
again.
The bond of music, the poignant turn of events, the idealized image of a
friendship formed on intuitive understanding – these have all contributed to the
enduring legacy of the story of Boya and Ziqi in literati culture.27 In traditional
Chinese literary criticism, the deep, intuitive understanding of another’s mind is
often extended to the experience of reading itself, where many a commentator
has sought to authorize his own readings of a text with the claim of true under-
standing.28 In our manuscript, Wang Jinwen applies serious reading to an unu-
sual genre, drawing inspiration from the commentarial tradition as well as from
a range of anecdotal literature on friendship. Combining literary criticism, phil-
osophical contemplation, and personal reflections, the preface and comments
interspersed throughout the manuscript fashion an image of Wang as a reader
both erudite and full of feeling.
Wang’s preface begins with expounding the importance of friendship
among the five relationships (wu lun 五倫) of Confucian ethics. These are the
relationships between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife,
elder and younger brother, and that between friends; Wang observes that, while
friendship feels out of place among them, it is actually crucial, for each of the
pairs in the preceding relationships can in fact be friends. Wang goes on to cite
the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) on a friend being a second self – this
would have come from Jiaoyou lun 交友論 (De Amicitia), the missionary’s famed
treatise on friendship, first printed in 1595 in Chinese and widely influential in
elite circles in succeeding centuries – and notes appreciatively that Ricci ‘un-
derstood deeply the meaning of ‘one who knows the self”’ (shen ming zhiji zhi
jiezhe ye 深明知己之解者也).29 Then, citing ‘a person of former times’ (xiren 昔人),

||
26 This scene does not appear in the short story. There is another scene unique to the zidishu,
which depicts Ziqi’s conversation with his parents after his initial encounter with Boya; there
his filiality is emphasized.
27 Lam 2007, 70–73, discusses the story in connection to music and male friendship in the
Ming. Also see Wu Zeyuan 2020, 42–74. The tradition of qin-playing itself has a long history of
associations with literati culture; on this topic, see van Gulik 1969, Watt 1981, and Yung 2017,
among others.
28 Huang 1994, 53–55; 61–66.
29 The term ‘zhiji’ 知己 (‘one who knows the self’), like ‘zhiyin’, denotes the best of friends.
Wang does not explicitly cite the Jiaoyou lun in his preface, but may take the source to be
1108 | Zhenzhen Lu

Wang proceeds to elaborate on how quick friendships often turn out to be

disastrous, as the joys of initial association become replaced by doubt and ha-
tred, and intimate friends end up as foes. Here Wang has in fact borrowed half
the preface of a late Ming collection of erotic short stories, Huanxi yuanjia 歡喜
冤家 (Lovers and foes).30 He deftly weaves the impassioned exposition on the
fickleness of romantic relationships into his remarks on the decline of ‘the Way
of Friendship’ (you dao 友道) in the present world, where relationships are gov-
erned by the desire for profit and by self-interest. In the face of easy friendships,
laments Wang, one hardly comprehends the rarity of encountering one who
genuinely understands the self – a truth attested by the tale of Yu Boya smashes
his zither to mourn a friend. He concludes the preface with a personal touch:

予幼而失學。於一切深文奧旨。不能明悉。嘗自撰一聯云。詩書門外漢。市井箇中人。
雖自賦庸愚。然每於稗官野史。凡無違於名教者。必細心玩味。偶購得此書。見其事可
傷心。文堪寓目。[…] 閱之使人感慨難釋。故不嫌鄙陋。謬加評點。貽笑大方。諧鐸有云
。非敢放顛。亦非作達。然凡我同心。見此書者。幸憐[予]之苦心。諒予之痴態可也。

I did not complete my schooling in my youth, and am thus unable to comprehend pro-
found essays and abstruse treatises. I have once composed a couplet [to describe myself]:
‘An outsider to the world of letters / I’m an insider of the markets’. Though I claim to be
vulgar and ignorant, I would time and again [come across] the wild histories of storytell-
ers, and so long as they do not betray the Confucian teachings, I would linger over them
with care. 31 By chance I purchased this book; I saw that its story is capable of moving the
heart to sorrow, and that its writing is worthy of perusal. […] Reading it, one is full of un-
easy feelings that do not give way to sighs. Thus I didn’t care for my own humble station
and presumed to add commentary to the text, all the while making a fool of myself. As The

||
obvious to the reader. On the reception of this work in China, see the introduction in Billings
2009; Hosne 2014; Vitiello 2011, 85–89. Ricci’s first and most popular work in Chinese, it
comprises a diverse collection of sayings on the subject of friendship. The quote on a friend
being one’s second self is part of the first maxim, and comes from Aristotle (see Billings 2009,
158; introduction, 26–28).
30 See Hanan 1981, 161 and 235, n. 62, and Lévy 1998 on this collection, whose preface is dated
1640 and signed with the name ‘The Reclusive Fisher of West Lake’ (Xihu yuyin 西湖漁隐). The
collection has over a dozen extant editions from the Ming and Qing, printed under various
titles; a facsimile reprint of the 1640 edition can be found in the Guben xiaoshuo jicheng 古本小
說集成 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990), vols 62–63. Hanan speculates that its
author was a Gao Yiwei 高一葦 of Hangzhou. That Wang deliberately avoided citing his source
may be due to its erotic content.
31 ‘The wild histories of storytellers’ refers to the trivial literature of fiction and its milieu. In
the Chinese term baiguan yeshi 稗官野史, baiguan (‘storyteller’) refers literally to minor offi-
cials in early dynastic times who purportedly collected stories from the streets. He 2013, 3,
translates the term bai as ‘huckster’ in reference to its root meaning as rice-like weeds.
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1109

Joke Bell has said: ‘it is not that I dare to be so audacious; nor am I feigning my disre-
gard’.32 To everyone who is of the same mind as myself and reads this book, please pity
the pains that [I] have taken, and forgive me for my mad act. 33

In this preface, Wang emerges as both worldly and sentimental, self-professedly

ignorant yet surprisingly well-read. In spite of his apologies for his humble edu-
cational background, his apparent learning emerges through the fluent writing
in classical Chinese, while the texts quoted betray an intimate familiarity with
the literature of the late Ming, a time when friendship came to the forefront of
both socio-political discourse and literary representation.34 In many ways, the
seventeenth-century short story on which the zidishu is based exemplifies the
ideas of egalitarian friendship and authenticity of feeling which informed philo-
sophical discussions of its time. Wang’s familiarity with this earlier literature
emerges through the texts he quotes in his preface and commentary; employing
the rhetoric of qing 情 (‘feeling’) and li 理 (‘principle’), and fashioning himself as
a reader of feeling, he emerges at once as a connoisseur of late Ming literature
and a nostalgic reader of his own times.35
The wide range of texts Wang quotes reveals his familiarity with the spectrum
of anecdotal literature that informed the cultivated intellectual life. These include
the works of some of the most prominent men of the Ming and Qing; in their
informal writings, they displayed their knowledge of diverse subjects, from his-
tory to hearsay, and led the way in literary fashion and debate. Besides the late
eighteenth-century Joke Bell cited by Wang in his preface, Wang cites two other
contemporary anecdotal collections, the Xianqingtang ji 閒青堂集 (Recollections
from the Leisurely Blue Hall) of Zhu Lunhan 朱倫瀚 (1680–1760) and the Yuewei
caotang biji 閱微草堂筆記 (Random jottings at the Cottage of Close Scrutiny) of

||
32 This is a 1791 collection of humorous anecdotes by the dramatist Shen Qifeng 沈起鳳
(b. 1741).
33 CLC, ji 401, fol. 3r–v. I inserted the character in brackets, which would have appeared on a
missing part of the page.
34 See McDermott 1992; Huang 2007; Billings 2009, 22–39; Vitiello 2011, 83–92. In the re-
evaluation of Confucian ideas by scholars of this time, some highlighted friendship’s founda-
tional place in the five cardinal relations, while others argued for friendship founded on shared
ideals. Qing scholars continued to wrestle with the tensions between equality and utility, and
between friendship and kinship and other social relations (Kutcher 2000, 1622–1625); this later
intellectual context remains to be more fully explored.
35 For example, see CLC, ji 401, 3 hui, fol. 1v, marginal comments. In 5 hui, fol. 6v, chapter com-
ment, Wang quotes four lines of verse from the short story, uttered by Boya upon smashing the
zither; he does not refer explicitly to the story as his source, but rather describes it as ‘the qin
song of Boya’ (Boya qin ge 伯牙琴歌).
1110 | Zhenzhen Lu

Ji Yun 紀昀 (1724–1805).36 The appendix at the end of the manuscript, titled

‘Axioms on making friends discreetly, compiled by The Banal One’ (Yongxing
bian shenjiao geyan 庸行編慎交格言), itself employs the anecdotal form of max-
ims (Fig. 5). In five folios, it contains a feast of quotations gathered loosely
around the theme of friendship, drawn from a range of sources including Matteo
Ricci’s Jiaoyou lun and the anecdotal writings of prominent Ming scholars such
as Xue Xuan 薛瑄 (1389–1464) and Chen Jiru 陳繼儒 (1558–1639).37
The collage of voices that can be found in Wang’s commentary includes not
only anecdotal literature, but also songs, proverbs, colloquial sayings, and
contemporary zidishu.38 It appears that Wang was not lying when he reveals his
keen interest in the ‘wild histories of storytellers’, which alludes to fiction and
other minor genres. His undertaking of writing commentary on a work of zidishu

||
36 Zhu Lunhan served as a lieutenant general in the banner system during the Qianlong era
(1736–1795) and was an accomplished painter, calligrapher, and poet. Ji Yun, prominent schol-
ar-official, is best known as the chief editor of the imperially commissioned Siku quanshu 四庫
全書 (The complete library of the four treasuries) in the 1770s. In a chapter comment (5 hui,
fol. 6r), Wang cites ‘poems mourning friends’ (wanyou shi 挽友詩) from each of the two above-
mentioned collections. He appears to have confused Ru shi wo wen 如是我聞 (Thus have I
heard), the second compendium of anecdotes in Ji’s voluminous Random jottings, with a differ-
ent compendium in the same collection, the Luanyang xiaoxia lu 灤陽消夏錄 (Record of spend-
ing the summer at Luanyang) (Wang cites the former as his source but the verse actually comes
from the latter). The translations of the titles of Ji’s works here are borrowed from Chan 1998,
12–13.
37 For the most part, Wang does not identify the sources he quotes, though in two instances
he does name Chen Meigong 陳眉公 (Chen Jiru) and a Tiansui xiansheng 天隨先生. Through
searching the Scripta Sinica database (<http://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/>, accessed on 15 Nov.
2020), I found that some of the quoted ‘axioms’ correspond with texts in various Ming editions
– Xinke housheng xunzuan 新刻厚生訓纂 (The newly carved compendium of advice for preserv-
ing longevity); Xue Wenqing gong dushu lu 薛文清公讀書錄 (Reading diaries of Mr. Xue Wenqing
[Xue Xuan]); Ricci’s You lun 友論 (Treatise on friendship); and the Ande zhangzhe yan 安得長者
言 (The elder’s words) attributed to Chen Jiru. Whether Wang gathered these passages from an
intermediate source is subject to investigation. I suspect that a number of other ‘axioms’ allud-
ing to romantic relationships come from fiction commentaries; this is a topic for further inves-
tigation.
38 Often Wang does not cite the sources of his quotations, but rather leads them with an in-
troductory phrase such as ‘the ancients have said’ (guren yun 古人云), ‘a former person has
said’ (xiren yun 昔人云), ‘someone has said’ (huo yue 或曰), ‘as the common saying goes’ (suyu
yun 俗語云), ‘as the ancient saying goes’ (guyu yun 古語云), or ‘an ancient song has said’ (guqu
yun 古曲云). Twice in his comments, Wang cites lines from Qiao dongfeng 俏東風 (The fair east
wind), a romantic story that was among the earliest works of zidishu to have become popular in
the capital (4 hui, fol. 3r, marginal comment, and 5 hui, fols 6v–7r, chapter comment; in these
instances he does cite the source). On this zidishu text, see Huang, Li and Guan 2012a, 348.
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1111

may well have been inspired by this literature, which by the nineteenth century
had a well-developed tradition of being read alongside commentary. In many a
printed work of fiction and drama from the Ming and Qing, comments may be
found interspersed throughout the pages, where commentators asserted their
own voices through remarks on the skillfulness of the writing, the plot and
characters, or even other literary works and topics of intellectual debate.39
Wang’s familiarity with this tradition of literary criticism can be seen in a num-
ber of examples, such as in a chapter comment which likens lines from the
zidishu to those from Xixiang ji 西廂記 (The story of the western wing), a classic
work of drama from the Yuan dynasty popularized as a kind of lovers’ bible in
succeeding centuries:40

不如不見。免得牽連。二句真乃絕世妙文。記得西廂記有云。你也掉下半天風韻。我也
拋卻萬種思量。此皆一樣筆法。[…]

‘It would have been better had we not met at all; that saves one from [a certain] painful
longing.’ These are truly marvelous lines without equal! I remember that The story of the
western wing has said: ‘You’ve thrown down half a heaven of beauty, / And I’ve tossed
away a thousand kinds of worry.’ The method of writing [bifa] is the same […]. 41

What stands out about the commentary in the manuscript, aside from remarks on
the literary aspects of the zidishu text, are the personal responses and rumina-
tions which Wang records as a reader. Sympathizing with the fate of the charac-
ters in the story, Wang frequently reveals himself to be ‘shedding tears’ (luo lei
落淚); from time to time, he also expresses his personal yearning for friends of
true understanding. In these moments he appears charmingly personal while

||
39 David Rolston traces three stages in the development of fiction commentaries, including an
influential final stage taking place in the last two-thirds of the seventeenth century, when
commentators not only wrote commentaries but also took editorial control of the texts they
commented on (Rolston 1997, 1–10). Yuming He 2021 discusses the commentarial culture
around drama, whose commercially printed editions proliferated in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries; she notes how, in this publishing context, ‘the provision of commentar-
ial notes became part and parcel of making a book’ (180).
40 These lines come from a moment in the play when the male protagonist, Scholar Zhang,
longingly recalls his first encounter with the female protagonist, Yingying, at the temple; her
glance at him upon her departure threw him head over heels.
41 CLC, ji 401, 3 hui, fol. 6r–v, chapter comment. The lines quoted from The story of the western
wing seem to be a variant of the received text; possibly, Wang is citing them from memory. The
translation in West and Idema 1991, 199, is: ‘You’ve thrown down half a heaven of beauty, |
And I’ve picked up a thousand kinds of worry’ (In the translation above, I have changed the
verb in the second line according to the text given in the manuscript).
1112 | Zhenzhen Lu

curiously attentive to potential readers. In the scene ‘The bond’, just before
Boya and Ziqi seal their friendship, Boya asks Ziqi his age, and Ziqi says that he
is twenty-seven. Wang divulges in his marginal comment above the main text:

看此書時。予年正二十有七。因思子期為古之名賢。予乃今之俗子。固不能如古人之奇
遇。然亦有好俗之友。故每逢會及。雖不能言古人之同調。亦能有心心相照。語語投机
之樂。即有依依不忍暫離之意。恐過此情緣。難期再會。人生壽夭。寔難預料。因自警
之餘。願告普天下之好友者。如遇其人。不可捨之而去。務須以伯牙為前車之鑑。

As I am reading this book, I am exactly twenty-seven years old.42 I’ve been thinking, Ziqi
was a man of virtue famed in antiquity, while I am merely a crude man of the present, so
naturally I can’t have the marvelous encounters of the ancients. But I, too, have friends
who are fond of my crudeness, so that every time we meet, though we can’t speak of hav-
ing the same sentiments as the ancients, we can still share the joys of heartfelt under-
standing and the happy meeting of words. It follows that there arises the feeling of not
bearing to part, for fear that when the present gathering is dispersed, it shall be hard to
meet again. Life and death are truly hard to predict. And so, besides cautioning myself,
here is to all who are fond of friends: if you encounter the person, do not leave him be-
hind; you must take Boya’s case to be a lesson. 43

In spite of the distinct voice which emerges through comments such as this one,
we do not know anything about Wang besides what he divulges in the manu-
script – that he was a resident of the capital in the Jiaqing era (1796–1820) and a
native of Beiping 北平.44 Were he indeed twenty-seven at the time of copying the
book, he would have been born around 1790, in the last years of the Qianlong
era (1736–1795) during the high Qing and the advent of zidishu’s heyday in the
city. We might ponder Wang’s curious couplet in the preface describing himself
as being ‘an insider of the markets’ while an ‘outsider to the world of letters’. Is
it simply part of the humble self-image he affects, just as he speaks elsewhere of
his own ‘worldliness’? Could this couplet allude to his involvement in the book
trade, playing on the image of bookdealers as merchants of culture who are
themselves uncultured? If so, this may explain his appetite for ‘the wild histo-
ries of storytellers’ – popular sellers of the book market – and may even suggest
a motive behind the manuscript he prepared.

||
42 By our count he would be twenty-six years old; the age given in premodern Chinese texts
typically includes an extra year from when a person is born, to account for time in the mother’s
womb.
43 CLC, ji 401, 2 hui, fol. 5v, marginal comment.
44 It is not clear to me whether this ‘Beiping’ in fact refers to Beijing. Beiping was the name of
the capital during the fourteenth century and in the Republican era (1911–1949), but it can also
refer to places in Hebei and Liaoning provinces.
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1113

We have nevertheless no direct information on Wang’s livelihood, the book

he had bought and copied from, or his exact intentions for the finely prepared
manuscript. But surely he was aware of a community of readers who, like him-
self, enjoyed reading, writing, and pondering, who sought sympathetic compa-
ny in reading as in life, and who were ‘fond of friends.’

4 For further study

While Wang Jinwen presents a fully guided reading of Yu Boya smashes his
zither to mourn a friend, it is notable that his comments do not refer to the sing-
ing of zidishu, which had come into vogue in Beijing’s elite circles during the
late eighteenth century. A contemporary native of the capital, Gu Lin 顧琳, men-
tions Smashing the zither in his Shuci xulun 書詞緒論 (Treatise on the lyrical art)
of 1797, a sophisticated text in classical Chinese presenting zidishu as an elegant
art of performance.45 In a series of essays, drawing on an earlier tradition of
informal prose writing, Gu applies the language of drama criticism to zidishu,
touching on aspects from taste and aesthetics to instrumental accompaniment
and the articulation of the voice. The final section is devoted to ‘establishing
clubs’ (li she 立社) – elegant gatherings of small groups of friends who would
sing for each other.46

||
45 Gu [1797], 831. Like Wang Jinwen, Gu presents his text in a carefully copied manuscript,
accompanied by a preface and commentary – in this case penned by a friend of Gu’s who simi-
larly dabbled in fashionable literary circles, one Li Yong 李鏞 of Tieling 鐵嶺, Liaoning. By Li’s
description, ‘Sir Gu is a fashionable gentleman, who pursued the miscellaneous arts in his
youth and dropped his studies; when he grew old, he regretted it greatly, and resolvedly
pushed aside all worldly distractions to focus on writing, and has since obtained many results
[…].’ 顧子，倜儻士也，幼騖雜技，廢讀，長頗悔，力摒一切煩囂，矢志筆墨，邇來多所獲。 […]
(Gu [1797], 818). Li’s preface is followed by Gu’s own, signed with Gu’s seals (facsimile in Guan
and Zhou 1984, vol. 1); there Gu divulges that storytelling is a great hobby of his, and that,
while he hardly aspired to officialdom, he found his monthly stipend to be sufficient to support
his family. This suggests that he was a bannerman of at least middling rank. Guan and Zhou
1984 contains a typeset version of the entire text of Shuci xulun with its prefaces and
commentary, along with facsimiles of two folios from the beginning of the manuscript, but
does not give further information as to the whereabouts of the book.
46 See Gu [1797], 829–830. In Gu’s vision, such clubs should not be raucous gatherings, but
rather serious, elegant events, made up of a small core group of close friends and with the
singing of zidishu at the center. Gu suggests that these groups be held every month or eight
times a year, with a rotating leader who is in charge of collecting money from group members
to cover the costs of wine and food.
1114 | Zhenzhen Lu

Whether these clubs had also facilitated the reading of zidishu – and just
how the social worlds around zidishu changed over time – are questions that
remain to be explored. Wang Jinwen’s manuscript draws our attention to a large
and lasting realm of private reading and writing, through which zidishu texts
continued to be transmitted alongside their lives in performance. In the early
decades of the twentieth century, as the songs faded from the capital’s ears,
readers continued to copy, compile, and comment on the texts, which may ac-
count for the substantial numbers of extant manuscripts from this time.47
Smashing the zither appears in the Republican-era (1911–1949) collection of
another Beijing resident, a Sanwei shi 三畏氏 (‘Thrice-reverent one’) of Jintai 金
臺, who took great pains to assemble the scattered texts with the help of a friend
and fellow collector.48 The visible original bindings of the manuscript indicate
its probable origin among Beijing’s scribal publishers of an earlier era.49 By their
time, the two collectors tell us, the elegant songs had long fallen out of fashion,
and the once ubiquitous books were hard to find. Yet their prefaces reveal their
solace in having found each other; in his preface, Sanwei shi further expressed
his wish to print the collection, so as to make it known to others who shared his
love.50 While zidishu belonged to a bygone era, then, the hope for friendship did
not fade. In reading and collecting, one finds a community of like-minded
others, and continued hope for true understanding.

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47 Much remains to be understood about the decline of zidishu, commonly thought to have
taken place at the end of the Qing dynasty, when it came to be replaced by other popular
genres of performance (see Cui 2005, 31–34). The large numbers of extant books of zidishu that
date to this time and beyond call for further study. For a preliminary discussion, see Lu 2018,
112–116.
48 See the preface by Sanwei shi, dated 1922, in Lütang yinguan zidishu xuan 綠棠吟舘子弟書
選 (A selection of youth books compiled by the Poetry Studio of the Green Pear Trees), Capital
Library of China, ji 己 486, fols 2r–3v, which appears among nine folios of prefatory writings
bound together with a motley mix of six zidishu in a composite volume (the prefatory writings
are reproduced in Huang, Li, and Guan 2012b, vol. 10, 4455–4460). ‘Sanwei’ was an alias of
Yunhe 蘊和 (b. 1868), a Manchu writer and collector who served in the mansion of Prince Gong
恭 during the Qing dynasty; on his life and works, see Li 2020. ‘Jintai’ as a place name com-
monly refers to Beijing; the aforementioned Gu Lin also signs himself as a native of Jintai.
49 The manuscript appears as part of a composite book, along with five other items which
would have originally been separate books; the original binding in green and red threads
resembles that of manuscripts from the scribal publisher Jujuantang, and reveals that the text
was originally copied into two volumes. It is not clear to me whether Sanwei shi decided to
bind all these items together or whether this took place at a later time. His preface indicates
that he had at one time assembled one hundred zidishu, but these appear to be the only ones
extant.
50 CLC, ji 486, fol. 3v.
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1115

Acknowledgements
This article is dedicated to Michael Friedrich, whose encouragement and sup-
port emboldened me in numerous ways on my ventures into the vast world of
Chinese popular literature and manuscript culture.
I would like to express my thanks to Joseph P. McDermott and Darya
Ogorodnikova for their kind help with obtaining research materials during the
pandemic. I am also grateful to Rainier Lanselle and Barbara Bisetto for the
opportunity to present this paper at the workshop ‘Dynamics of knowledge
transmission and linguistic transformation in Chinese textual cultures’, hosted
online in June 2021 by the University of Verona and the Research Center on East
Asian Civilizations (CRCAO) in Paris. I would finally like to thank the editors,
Jörg Quenzer and Caroline Macé, for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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1118 | Zhenzhen Lu

Fig. 1: Capital Library of China, ji 己 401, fols 18v and 19r (right: end of chapter comment to
Chapter 2; left: beginning verses of Chapter 3, with marginal comments at the top). Courtesy of
the Capital Library of China, Beijing.
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1119

Fig. 2: Capital Library of China, ji 己 401, fols 3v and 4r (right to left). From the preface signed by
Wang Jinwen, with his seals. Courtesy of the Capital Library of China, Beijing.
1120 | Zhenzhen Lu

Fig. 3: Fu Sinian Library, A T10－123, fols 9v and 10r (right: end of Chapter 2 verses; left: begin-
ning verses of Chapter 3; note L-shaped mark near the bottom left corner). Courtesy of the
Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica.
 Touched by a Tale of Friendship | 1121

Fig. 4: Capital Library of China, ji 己 401, fols 4v and 5r (right to left; left: table of contents).
Courtesy of the Capital Library of China, Beijing.
1122 | Zhenzhen Lu

Fig. 5: Capital Library of China, ji 己 401, fols 39v–40r (right to left), from the appendix, ‘Axioms
on making friends discreetly, compiled by The Banal One’. Courtesy of the Capital Library of
China, Beijing.
Charles Melville
On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama
Abstract: The versified ‘history’ of Timur (Tamerlane) by the Persian poet ‘Abd-
Allah Hatifi (d. 1521) achieved considerable success in his lifetime, which
spanned the turn of the fifteenth – sixteenth centuries and also the eclipse of
the Timurid dynasty and its replacement in eastern Iran by the Safavid dynasty
(1501–1722) and in Transoxiana by the Uzbeks. This popularity is reflected in the
large number of surviving manuscripts, both in Iran and in Ottoman, Indian and
Central Asian collections, many of which are illustrated. This paper describes a
number of illustrated manuscripts along with their paracontents, with the aim
of drawing connections between them and comparing the milieux in which they
were commissioned and received.

1 Introduction
The author of the Timurnama (Book of Timur), ‘Abd-Allah Hatifi (c. 1454–1521),
was the nephew of the famous Persian mystic and poet ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami
(d. 1492) and came from Khargird, near Jam, in eastern Khurasan. He served at
the shrine of another celebrated ‘saint’, Qasim Anvar (d. 1434), the mausoleum
at Khargird erected by ‘Ali-Shir Nava’i (d. 1501), the outstanding politician,
patron and man of letters at the brilliant court of the last effective Timurid ruler,
Shah Sultan-Husain Bayqara (r. 1469–1506). Hatifi was thus closely connected
with a network of the literary elite of the epoch, invited at a young age to attend
the poetic sessions (majlis) at the court in Herat (now western Afghanistan).
Hatifi himself, however, preferred a life away from high society and spent his
time mainly at Khargird, emulating not only the secluded lifestyle but also the
work of the great epic poet, Firdausi of Tus (d. 1025), whose Shahnama (Book of
Kings) inspired his own Timurnama, completed between 1492 and 1498. A dec-
ade later, after the collapse of the Timurids, he met the young Shah Isma‘il,
founder of the new Safavid dynasty (1501–1722), who commissioned Hatifi to
write a verse epic about his exploits too (which he did not finish).1

||
1 See Bernardini 2008, 127–146, for the fullest treatment of Hatifi’s life and work, incorporat-
ing his own earlier publications.

Open Access. © 2021 Charles Melville, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-055
1124 | Charles Melville

Shah Isma‘il had come to Herat to meet the threat of the new power in the
east, Muhammad Shibani Khan, a descendant of Chinggis Khan, who shortly
after Sultan-Husain’s death captured Herat (1507) having, more significantly,
already seized Samarqand, Timur’s capital (1501), initiating Uzbek rule in
Transoxania. Among the losers in this contest for control of the eastern portion
of Timur’s former empire was Babur (d. 1530) – descended from both Chinggis
Khan and Timur – who fled to Kabul and later founded the Mughal Empire. In
short, Hatifi’s literary milieu and the context in space and time in which he lived
thus combined to explain not only the nature of his work – a heroic epic poem
in celebration of the legendary exploits of Timur (d. 1405), the Chaghatay
Mongol conqueror and founder of the now dying empire of his successors – but
also its appeal to audiences and patrons appropriating or contesting his legacy,
whether in Iran (the Safavids), Central Asia (the Uzbeks) or India (the
Mughals).2
Hatifi wrote a Khamsa (‘Quintet’) in emulation of the Khamsas of Nizami
Ganjavi and Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, but replaced the earlier poets’ romances of
Alexander/Iskandar with an epic about Timur, thus implicitly identifying Timur
as another Alexander. While Hatifi acknowledged Nizami, he modelled his work
on the Shahnama of Firdausi. Hatifi’s poem, like Firdausi’s, lies on the cusp of
‘history’ and ‘epic’ in the treatment of historical themes and subjects in distinct
but clearly related and avowedly literary genres. Hatifi’s main source of histori-
cal information about Timur was the Zafarnama (‘Book of Victory’) by ‘Ali Yazdi
(d. 1455) and illustrated manuscripts of ‘Ali Yazdi’s history (itself a sophisticated
literary production with prose passages liberally interspersed with poetry),
certainly provided models for the illustration of Hatifi’s work.3 The Timurnama
is found both as a separate volume, and sometimes copied together with other
poems of his Khamsa.
In a recent publication I described several copies of Hatifi’s Timurnama
(‘Book of Timur’) found in Cambridge University Library and compared them, at
certain points, with some splendid manuscripts kept in the National Library of
Russia (St Petersburg).4 Since then, I have had the opportunity to examine some
more illustrated copies of the Timurnama and add them to the ongoing

||
2 Subtelny 2010, 187–196, condenses a lifetime’s research into a succinct account of the cul-
tural splendour of late Timurid Khurasan.
3 See Melville 2019, 100–104.
4 Melville 2018.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1125

discussion here.5 The study has been undertaken in the context of my project on
the illustration of history in Persian manuscripts,6 but in the following I aim to
focus on these artifacts as books and draw attention chiefly to their codicologi-
cal features and paracontents, such as seals and colophons, rather than on their
visual programmes, although these too were not part of the author’s original
concept of this work – as indeed was rarely the case.7 Since none of these copies
has been described previously, this brief analysis adds to our knowledge of the
production, reception and dissemination of the work, so widely sought after by
contemporary audiences.8 We shall arrange the six codices under discussion
according to their main geographical associations.

2 A Timurnama in Walters Art Museum, W. 648

The first copy is in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and is available in its
entirety on the ‘Digital Walters’ website, W. 648.9 It measures 236 × 138 mm
(page) and 160 × 72 mm (written surface), with 166 folios. Margins are ruled in
blue, gold and black and the headings framed in gold and black rulings; rubrics
are written in gold. The text is transcribed in 15 verses in two columns per page.
It is undated but evidently of the sixteenth century. The colophon (fol. 166r),
mentions the scribe, Pir ‘Ali al-Jami, who also transcribed the illustrated copy of
the Timurnama in St. Petersburg (Dorn 447) from the Ardabil shrine, similarly
undated (colophon, fol. 176r), the five illustrations in which, however, are in a
completely different style and of immaculate quality. Pir ‘Ali al-Katib made an-
other copy of the Timurnama, dated the end of Rajab 940 AH / February 1534 CE;10

||
5 A first presentation of some of these codices was given at a workshop in Leiden on 29 No-
vember 2019. I have since continued to note other copies, but here I will focus mainly on man-
uscripts I have seen in person.
6 Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship, EM-2018-033\5.
7 One might think of Matthew Paris’s illustrations to his Chronica Majora as an obvious excep-
tion and possibly Rashid al-Din’s production of illustrated manuscripts of his Jami‘ al-tavarikh;
see Lewis 1987; Blair 1995.
8 For a ‘provisional’ but thorough list of manuscripts, see Bernardini 2003, 10–17.
9 <thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/html/W648/> (accessed on 16 March 2021).
10 Sofia, SS Cyril and Methodius National Library, OP 994, fol. 153r. The manuscript has two
miniatures of indifferent quality: fols 19r (accession of Timur at Balkh) and 68r (battle against
Toqtamish Khan).
1126 | Charles Melville

it is not clear if other scribes with a similar name are the same person, but a
certain Ghiyath al-Din ‘Ali Jami also made a copy of the Timurnama.11
The Walters manuscript contains two full-page paintings without text, rec-
orded as being ‘Safavid’ but not showing many elements of Safavid painting of
the early sixteenth century and perhaps more likely of Central Asian origin.12
They illustrate two of the most commonly depicted scenes – the wedding of
Timur’s son Jahangir (fol. 37r) and Timur’s battle against Toqtamish, Khan of the
Golden Horde (fol. 75v).13 They have suffered from the trimming of the text block
when the manuscript was rebound as a small and attractive volume, possibly in
Rajab 1269 AH / April 1853 CE.14
Paracontents include a list of the section headings (fols 1v–2r) and two earli-
er ‘Hindu-Arabic’ pagination systems, one in red, starting from fol. 4r – i.e. after
the list of headings, which was a later addition to the volume and one in black,
starting on fol. 8r as fol. 5r; the two systems then run in parallel to fol. 64r, num-
bered 62r in red and 61r, correctly, in black. The Index corresponds with the red
foliation (rubrics on a verso side are given the number of the facing recto page).
An ownership seal of al-‘Abd Yar Beg ibn Aq Muhammad is dated 1019 AH /
1610 CE (fol. 166r);15 the name, currently unidentified, is also suggestive of a Cen-
tral Asian owner.
This copy, therefore, was probably produced in Herat in eastern Iran in the
first half of the sixteenth century, or Transoxiana (? Bukhara), where it quickly
ended up and perhaps was completed with the pictures. It therefore invites
comparison with the next manuscript, which, however, can more certainly be
associated with Central Asia.

||
11 Tehran, University Library, MS no. 6035, dated 950 AH / 1543 CE. Grateful thanks to Majid
Saeli and to Karin Ruehrdanz (pers. comm.), who has also noted a Divan of Jami by ‘Mir’ ‘Ali
possibly in place of ‘Pir’ in Tashkent, MS no. 2205 dated 933 AH / 1527 CE. Maulana Mir ‘Ali Jami
was a celebrated pupil of Sultan-‘Ali Mashhadi and Mir ‘Ali (without the Jami), if not the same
person, even more so, Minorsky 1959, 106, 126–131; a mistake over spelling is rather unlikely.
The Pir ‘Ali b. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jami, who made a copy of Yusuf & Zulaikha in 893 AH /
1488 CE, in Vienna, ÖNB, Mixt. 1480, was the son of the poet.
12 Barbara Brend kindly endorsed this suggestion.
13 The appearance of elephants in the battle, however, suggests the iconography of the Indian
campaign. The picture is set in the text at exactly the same verse as the Sofia manuscript,
fol. 68r and Dorn 447, fol. 77v, i.e. the two copies associated with the same scribe.
14 The trimming has nevertheless preserved most of the catchwords. The date is found on
fol. 4r, originally fol. 1r; the binding with its Ikat-fabric doublures is clearly of nineteenth-
century Central Asian origin, supporting the suggested place of production (or repair) of the
manuscript.
15 The full name was supplied by John Seyller.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1127

3 Harvard Art Museums 1957.140

This manuscript was copied by Sultan Mas‘ud b. Sultan Mahmud in 959 AH /
1552 CE (colophon, fol. 175r).16 Page measurements are given as 244 × 156 mm and
the text is transcribed in 14 verses per page, in two columns; margins are ruled
in blue, gold and black and columns and headings in gold and black; rubrics
are written in gold. Other evidence that the scribe was working in Bukhara at
this date confirms the Central Asian production of the manuscript,17 which con-
tains four miniatures in typical Bukhara style, two of them in a double-page
illustration of the wedding of Jahangir (fols 34v–35r), the others depicting the
defeat of Shah Mansur the Muzaffarid ruler of Fars (fol. 83r) and the defeat of the
Mamluks at Aleppo (fol. 137v).
The manuscript has an elaborate colophon, identifying the dedicatee as al-
Sultan b. al-Khaqan b. al-Khaqan Muzaffar al-Din Muhammad Darvish Bahadur
Sultan, who can be identified as Darwish Khan, son of Baraq Khan son of
Suyunjuk Khan, a line of the Shibanids. At the date given (959 AH / 1552 CE) he
seems to have been governing Tashkent on behalf of his father, Baraq Khan,
who had taken up control of Samarqand two years earlier; soon after the latter’s
death in 963 AH / 1556 CE he was acknowledged as Khan of Tashkent.18 He
appears to have been a benevolent figure, unlike his father, and responsible for
various benefactions in Tashkent.19 The timing of the scribe’s prayers for his
long reign, from distant Bukhara, may be explained by Darwish Khan’s presence

||
16 <harvardartmuseums.org/collections?q=1957.140> (accessed on 31 March 2021). At the time
of writing it has still been impossible to inspect the Harvard manuscripts in person; both in
2019 and previously for the whole duration of my three-month fellowship at the Aga Khan
Program for Islamic Architecture (Harvard University) in 2014, when the museum was closed
for renovation and the collection stored in sealed crates. I am grateful to Mary McWilliams for
supplying a little extra information to what is available online.
17 The fine copy of ‘Ali-Shir Nava’i’s Sab‘a sayyara (‘Seven journeys’) in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, Elliott 318, was copied in Bukhara by Sultan Mas‘ud b. Sultan Mahmud in 960 AH / 1553
CE, see fol. 71r; thanks to Karin Ruehrdanz for once more pointing me in this direction. As noted
on several dated architectural inscriptions (e.g. fols 30r, 47r), this manuscript was made for the
library of Sultan Abu’l-Fath Muhammad-Yar Bahadur Khan, i.e. the appanage ruler of Bukhara
who was killed the following year, see Muhammad Yar 2006, 231, 235–236. It is wrongly cata-
logued as the work of the calligrapher Muhammad ‘Ali.
18 Muhammad Yar 2006, 160–161. Thanks to Robert McChesney and Uktambek Sultanov for
their help with this identification. Baraq Khan, also known as Nauruz Ahmad, called upon
Sultan Muhammad-Yar’s help in his efforts to win Bukhara in 958 AH / 1551 CE, Muhammad Yar
2006, 230.
19 Sultanov 2012, 327–330.
1128 | Charles Melville

in the west of the realm in the company of his father while Baraq Khan was
striving for supreme power in the Khanate, but the dedication to the son rather
than the father seems rather striking.20 Not enough is known about either man
to be sure how they might have interacted. There are two seals, on fols 2v (‘Abd-
Allah Muhammad Ibrahim) and 175r (Husain Muhammad), both unidentified,
but possibly from India.21

4 Harvard Art Museums 2014.392

The earliest copy to be discussed here is perhaps the most interesting, not only
for its date almost within the lifetime of the poet, but also for its journey, which
linked Iran, Central Asia and India most clearly. It was completed in 927 AH /
1521 CE by the scribe Mahmud ibn Ishaq Siyavushani.22 The calligrapher is well
known: his father, Khwaja Ishaq al-Shihabi, was taken together with his family
to Bukhara after the Shibanid ruler ‘Ubaid Khan captured Herat in 935 AH /
1529 CE. While in Bukhara, Khwaja Mahmud became the pupil of the celebrated
calligrapher Khwaja Mir ‘Ali.23 The same scribe, under the name Mahmud ibn
Ishaq al-Shihabi, also copied the Timurnama in St. Petersburg, Dorn 446 (un-
dated, sixteenth century).
The margins are elaborately ruled in blue, white, black, gold and green and
the headings and columns in gold and black; rubrics are written in red.24 The
manuscript is of interest for various reasons. In the first place, it has been foliat-
ed in reverse order, as though it were a European book, with pages numbered
from left to right, as is clear from the neat numerals seen on the top right-hand
corner of what would be the verso side of an Arabographic volume. Secondly,

||
20 Muhammad Yar 2006, 230, states that Nauruz Ahmad went from Tashkent with all his sons
to capture Bukhara.
21 Thanks again to John Seyller for deciphering them. The seal on fol. 2v is dated regnal year
25, suggesting an Indian owner.
22 This is listed as no. 279 in the exhibition catalogue of Kevorkian Collection, 1914, under the
title Zafarnama (Karin Ruehrdanz, pers. comm.); the flyleaves contain other numbers relating
to Kevorkian. There are c. 151 folios. The online record gives dimensions 250 × 155 mm (page),
180 × 85 mm (written area). My further comments are derived from analysing the images placed
on <harvardartmuseums.org/collections?q=2014.392> (accessed on 31 March 2021).
23 Minorsky 1959, 131–132. The calligrapher is not realistically to be confused with Pir ‘Ali, see
above, n. 11. See also Richard 1989, 147.
24 On folios with a painting that extends beyond the standard written area, the text is within
an inner margin ruled in blue, red, gold and black.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1129

although it was evidently copied in Herat before Khwaja Mahmud was taken to
Bukhara, it was very probably not completed by that time – at least, not the
ornamentation. The evidence of this is the fact that the ten paintings were all
produced in Mughal India, c. 1600, in spaces left blank for illustrations, and
perhaps also the decorated margins. The seals on the final folio, together with
an inscription at the bottom of the page that might have provided some clues as
to the history of the book have been erased.25 It is possible that Khwaja Mahmud
took the manuscript with him to Bukhara and from there it found its way to
India (though it would be surprising that the missing paintings were not pro-
duced in Bukhara first); perhaps more probably, it remained in Herat and was
brought to India later, as happened to so many Persian manuscripts. Apart from
the paintings, the provenance of the manuscript via a sojourn in India is clear
from the worm holes in the paper margins and the eighteenth/nineteenth-
century lacquered covers.
As for the illustrations, it is noticeable that they all occur in the later por-
tions of the text, the first being a scene of Timur hunting in the region round
Shiraz.26 The subjects chosen for depiction are quite standard, including seven
battle scenes and two feasts, although in two cases they illustrate events not so
far noted elsewhere (see below, Table 1).
The next copy demonstrates a more direct link between Iran and India.

5 A Timurnama from Sotheby’s 2019 auction

This copy was offered at Sotheby’s London auction of 23 October 2019, undated
but estimated to be from c. 1570–1580; it is bound together with Hatifi’s Khusrau
& Shirin (fols 1v–75r).27 It measures 232 × 143 mm (page) and 150 × 78 mm (written
surface), with elaborately ruled margins and columns and headings ruled in
gold and black; rubrics are written in gold.28 There are three illustrations of
Khusrau & Shirin (Khurasan, c. 1570) and nine of the Timurnama (Qazvin, c. 1580)

||
25 The date 1029 (?) AH / 1620 CE is inscribed on fol. 10r (European foliation); the Museum
notes perhaps more correctly record the date 1026 AH /1617 CE.
26 ‘Abd-Allah Hatifi, Timurnama, ed. U’sha’ 1958, 82, at line 21.
27 Notes on fol. 1r refer only to Khusrau & Shirin, paintings and a chaharlauh (illuminated title
page) and 76 folios, but this does not necessarily suggest the two poems were not initially
bound together when they reached the Mughal library; see also below.
28 Sotheby’s 2019, 82, lot 140.
1130 | Charles Melville

(from fol. 76v).29 The Timurnama is transcribed in fourteen lines (verses) in two
columns per page and is incomplete at the end.30
The opening folio (fol. 1r, see Fig. 1) and the pages separating the two poems
(fols 75v–76r, see Figs 2–3) are covered with seals, ownership notes, valuations,
transfers and library checks (‘arz-dida), which indicate that the manuscript was
formerly in the Mughal Royal Library before reaching the Hagop Kevorkian
collection, as well as guest contents such as the records of the births of the
owners’ children.31 The earliest seal, on fol. 75v, belongs to the Mughal librarian
Fath-Allah b. Abu’l-Fath, dated 1006 AH / 1597–1598 CE, but there is a very early
inspection note dated 28 Day mah-i ilahi 32, i.e. referring to the era introduced
by Akbar, that is 18 January 1588.32 It is a very unostentatious note at the bottom
of fol. 76r, which confirms that both poems of the manuscript were bound to-
gether, probably within a decade of its production. The Timurnama starts on the
reverse side of the folio. There are numerous seals and inspection notes from the
reigns of Jahangir (1605–1627) and Shah Jahan (1627–1658), up to year 2 of the
reign of Shah ‘Alam (1707–1712).
The copy has evidently been trimmed to fit its current binding, but other-
wise seems unexceptional; even though it was clearly treasured as a fine book
and opens with a luxurious illuminated title page, it was estimated to be of third
class (fol. 1r).33 As can be seen from the table below, the paintings depict stand-
ard, popular scenes frequently chosen for illustration – battles, courtly recep-
tions and a hunt. Some have been deliberately wiped (fols 128r, 173v); others are
marred by corrosive yellow pigments and some show retouching.
The fact that this copy entered the imperial Mughal library so soon after its
production in Iran confirms the interest in the text that celebrates the exploits of
the distant ancestor of the Timurid dynasty in India.

||
29 They are numbered, up to 10, but there is no number 7; without closer inspection of the text
it is not clear whether one image has been removed. The manuscript was sold previously at
Sotheby’s on 22 April 1980, lot 307.
30 The text ends on p. 232 of the printed edition, ‘Abd-Allah Hatifi, Timurnama, ed. U’sha’
1958.
31 Three birth dates recorded in 1022 AH / 1613 CE, 1160 AH / 1747 CE and 1195 AH / 1781 CE, fol. 75v.
32 I am indebted to John Seyller for all the information on the seals that follows; most of the
librarians mentioned in the inspection notes are listed in Seyller 1997, 347–349, Appendix B.
33 It was at some point valued at 80 rupees (fols 1r, 76r), but later dropped to 20 rupees
(fol. 75v). For this designation and other examples, see Seyller 1997, 274–276, Table 1.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1131

6 A Timurnama in the Asiatic Society of Bengal,

no. 651
This is further confirmed by the copy in the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Kolkata,
the latest of the group under discussion, dated Dhu’l-Hijja 1041 AH / June 1632 CE,
by an unnamed scribe (colophon, fol. 107r). Its dimensions are 240 × 125 mm
(page) and 160 × 72 mm (written area), with quite elegant margins ruled in blue,
gold and black and columns and headings in gold and black. Rubrics are writ-
ten in tomato red. There are 15 verses to the page, in two columns. The volume
came from the library of the College of Fort William. It was clearly once a hand-
some book, introduced by an attractive double title page (fols 1v–2r) predomi-
nantly decorated in blue and gold with touches of red flowers and the text in a
good scribal nasta‘liq couched within ‘clouds’ of gold. The most striking feature
now is the large number of replacement pages in sections throughout the text
(e.g. fols 2–7, 22–25, 30–39, etc.) and especially towards the end (fols 77–103);
these pages are not ruled with either column or margins. As several of the
catchwords do not match (e.g. fols 57, 71, 89, 98), it is clear there has been some
disturbance and very probably loss of illustrations.
As it is, the manuscript contains three paintings of quite acceptable quality
and in surprisingly good condition, the first of which, the Mi‘raj (Ascension) of
the Prophet Muhammad (fol. 8r), is not commonly found in Timurnama manu-
scripts.34 Timur’s battle against Amir Husain of Balkh (fol. 17r) and another
against the Indians (fol. 49v) are commonly chosen subjects (see Table 1). In all
cases, the format is the same: two verses above and two below the picture. The
manuscript was clearly produced and illustrated in Iran, probably Isfahan, and
found its way to an Indian collection.

7 The Free Library Timurnama, Lewis O. 43

The final volume presented here is the only one in the group that remained in
Iran. It contains a different and more unusual circumstance than the others that
is worth being given more attention. Now kept in the Free Library of Philadel-
phia, Rare Book Department, John Frederick Lewis Collection of Oriental Manu-
scripts, O. 43, it has 190 folios, with 12 lines per page in two columns. It

||
34 One exception is in the Cambridge University Library, Add. 1109, see Melville 2018, 59–60.
1132 | Charles Melville

measures 233 × 145 mm (page) and 142 × 67 mm (written area). Marginal rulings in
blue, gold, blue and red; columns and headings ruled in gold and black, rubrics
are written in red. It has a single, modern foliation and the catchwords are in
place; in short, it is a neat and clean copy, with just a couple of seals and own-
erships notes.
The colophon (fol. 190r) records the name of the scribe, Muhammad b. Mulla
Mir al-Husaini and the date of the completion of copying as Ramadan 991 AH /
September 1583 CE. Muhammad b. Mulla Mir’s signature appears on several
manuscripts over a lengthy period, such as the Timurnama in St Petersburg,
Dorn 445 (dated 987 AH / 1579 CE), as well as other poetic texts, including a
Shahnama, dated 1016 AH / 1608 CE.35 Seals on fols 171r and 172r are both dated
1210 AH / 1795–1796 CE,36 the latter in the name of Husain Quli Ja‘far, evidently
the father of the owner of the two seals of Husain Muhammad Husain on
fol. 190v, dated 1255 AH / 1839 CE. This is confirmed by the inscription above the
seals by Mir Muhammad Husain Khan son of General (Sarhang) Ja‘far Quli
Khan, governor of the regions and districts of Marand, dated 24 Jumada II, 1255 /
4 September 1839 CE (Fig. 4). He is possibly to be identified as Ja‘far Quli Khan
Dunbuli, a figure active in Azerbaijan in the reigns of Agha Muhammad Khan
and Fath-‘Ali Shah and later governor of Shakki.37
The manuscript is available digitally in its entirety on the OPenn website
where, however, the subjects of the five attractive and neatly executed paintings
are not identified.38 They appear to be contemporary with the production of the
copy, though with the somewhat unusual extension into the margins in the
form of the depiction of single figures breaking through the frame.39
Examination of the textual setting for these pictures, however, reveals that
they all replace 10–12 lines (verses) – or take up the space of what is, normally,

||
35 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Cochran 3 (13.228.16). Thanks again to Karin Ruehrdanz
for other indications, such as that another copy of the Timurnama was made probably by
Muhammad b. Mulla Mir’s father, Mulla Mir b. Muhammad al-Husaini, in 973 AH / 1565 CE. See
also Richard 2013, 832–833, for work completed in 1018 AH / 1609 CE.
36 I am grateful to John Seyller for checking these seals; he reads ‘Muhammad Islam’ on the
upper register of the oval seal on fol. 171r.
37 I am indebted to Assef Ashraf for this suggestion, based on references to ‘Khavari’ Shirazi,
Tarikh-i Zu’l-Qarnain, ed. Afsharfar 2001, vol. 1, 80–84; 96–97; 114–116; 194–196; 240 and
Bamdad 2008, vol. 1, 248.
38 <https://openn.library.upenn.edu/Data/0023/html/lewis_o_043.html> (accessed on 16 March
2021).
39 See Brend 2000 for a discussion of this topic. Thanks to Barbara Brend also for her com-
ments on these paintings.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1133

one page of text (see Fig. 5).40 But (and this is the particular oddity), the pictures
do not appear to have been painted over the missing text. In other words,
whereas it is not unusual to find examples of a manuscript in which illustra-
tions have either been added to existing spaces left blank for a picture that was
not executed at the time, as seen also above – or painted over text in an effort to
enhance the market value of the volume – in this case, a lacuna appears to have
been introduced deliberately into the text (verses have been omitted) to make
room for a picture. It is as though someone at the point of designing the layout
of the volume had planned pictures to illustrate text that has been excluded: so
that the picture literally stands for the words it replaces.
If this is indeed the case, it is worth looking at the five examples a little
more closely.
The first, on fol. 28r, depicts Husain Sufi, the ruler of Khwarazm, entertain-
ing Timur’s envoy.41 The line above the painting is part of the envoy’s speech:
‘To the world, I am Qarachar Noyan; what was Qarachar? – I am Qara Khan!’42
The text resumes on fol. 28v, at line 16: that is to say, 12 verses are omitted.
These verses are the concluding part of the envoy’s speech and have no narra-
tive value that could lend itself to depiction; in other words, their omission has
little or no impact on the meaning of the passage and none on its visual poten-
tial. The text resumes with the verse, ‘He then gave tongue to his message, he
finished saying all it was necessary to say’. The Khwarazmian ruler then replies.
The second painting, on fol. 58r, depicts Timur’s troops setting off on the
second campaign to Iran, via Mazandaran. The line above the painting, ‘The
wheeling firmament’s brain went blank from the fearsome blare of the trumpets
of departure’ (text, p. 67, line 14), exactly marks the moment the army set off.
The text resumes (fol. 58v) on p. 68, line 7 (see Fig. 5): so 15 verses from the
printed edition are omitted. The passage is briefly descriptive of the march in
general terms and mentions the arrival in Firuzkuh and the coming of various
envoys, together with Timur’s desire to put paid to all the discord (fitna) in
Luristan and elsewhere. The text resumes with the army’s arrival in Tabriz. Al-
though the omitted passage could offer various details for a painting, an image,
if larger and more sophisticated, could equally well stand for the action; but the

||
40 All but one picture page does actually contain a verse or two as well, suggesting the text
was abbreviated also, as in the example in Fig. 5: 15 verses are omitted in a space that would be
filled by 11 verses.
41 In this case, the outer blue margin is drawn over the figure breaking through the frame.
42 ‘Abd-Allah Hatifi, Timurnama, ed. U’sha’ 1958, 30, line 4. For his conflation of Qarachar
and Qara Khan, see also Bernardini 2008, 134.
1134 | Charles Melville

painting itself lacks detail and indeed the falcon on the leading horseman’s
wrist suggests a hunting expedition rather than a military march.
The third scene, on fol. 72v, comes in the chapter on Timur reviewing his
troops after the Shiraz campaign against Shah Mansur Muzaffari. The verse
above the painting (text p. 84, line 4 from bottom) reads, ‘One spurred on [his
horse] with a tufted tail, the tip of his spear was like racing hooves’.43 The next
11 verses in the printed edition are omitted, the text resuming on p. 85, line 9,
with Timur anticipating the next expedition and seeing his heavily armed he-
roes all present. The excluded verses not only describe the Rustam-like heroes
lined up, but Timur mounting his steed, with a bejewelled helmet and a parasol
above. It cannot be said that the painting that replaces this passage conveys
anything of the scene, which has a military aspect but is rather an open-air
picnic with attendants. It is difficult to imagine that the intention of the artist
was to replicate the missing words with his image. This is a unique example of
the illustration of this scene, but military reviews are not an uncommon subject
for depiction.
The fourth scene (fol. 132v) depicts one of Timur’s battles on the Indian
campaign in 1398. This is a very popular scene for illustration and is located in
the text, in this manuscript, on p. 159, line 16: the carnage was such that ‘many
desires remained in the mind, many expectations stayed mired in the mud’. The
next 10 verses are omitted, the text resuming on p. 160, line 6, ‘The Indians fell
into captivity, wise or foolish, young or old’. The omitted passage describes in
colourful terms the fall of the Indians in battle (‘Indian heads fell piecemeal
under foot, [like] coconuts from the tree’) and their captivity, roped like a cara-
van of camels, the Indian elephants useless like fallen chess pieces. In other
words, there is plenty of material in these lines that could have inspired images
to replace the text. In fact, on the contrary, the siege scene bears no relationship
to either the missing text, or the verses before or after it. This shows that there
was a considerable dislocation between the work of the scribe and artist.
The final painting, on fol. 140v, is inserted in the chapter on Timur’s winter
quarters in Qarabagh and the arrival of envoys from the Ottomans, in 1401, a
topic not otherwise depicted. It is a full-page painting, located between lines 4
and 16 of p. 169 in the printed edition, thus replacing 12 lines of text (a whole
page: this one contains no verses). The verse before the picture (fol. 140r), ‘We
were victorious over the Muzaffarids, with the customary punishment we twist-
ed their ears’, is followed in the omitted verses by a discussion, essentially fol-
lowing Timur’s account of his conquests and encouraging the Ottomans to

||
43 This is rather a loose translation; the exact meaning of the verse is not clear to me.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1135

submit; a passage that does not lend itself to a narrative depiction, but which is
adequately envisaged in the painting that replaces the text.

Of the five paintings analysed, two could be said to illustrate the omitted text –
essentially, where the passage in question is a conversation and does not lend
itself to any particular narrative elements to be visualised. The other three do
not really illustrate the text at all – or only in the most superficial way: an expe-
dition, a military review and a battle.
Even if the paintings are not contemporary with the calligraphy, the fact
remains that they were inserted into a blank space that omitted, presumably
deliberately, the exact number of verses that would have made up the page.
This is a most unusual situation – the only alternative being that the underlying
text was cleaned off so thoroughly that there remain no traces of it (only a more
profound penetration of the painted area might confirm this). But even then,
why go to such pains, later, to add a painting that could merely have covered
the text, and why do such a poor job of the substitution of image for words? It is
not as though it is a cheap production – on the contrary, it appears to be a
handsome volume and if genuine (or even if a fake), it raises more questions
than I can answer at present.

8 Illustration cycles
The illustrations in the six copies mentioned here are tabulated below (Table 1),
with reference to their precise position in the printed text (page.breakline).

Table 1: Illustrations in manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama.

Manuscript/ Harvard Walters Harvard Sotheby’s Free Library Asiatic Soc.

scene 2014.392 W 648 1957.140 Lot 140 Lewis O. 43 Bengal 651

Mi‘raj of the Prophet 10.1

Muhammad
Timur fights Amir 21.11 21.15
Husain
Timur enthroned 26.4
Timur’s envoy to 30.4
Husain Sufi
1136 | Charles Melville

Table 1 (continued).

Manuscript/ Harvard Walters Harvard Sotheby’s Free Library Asiatic Soc.

scene 2014.392 W 648 1957.140 Lot 140 Lewis O. 43 Bengal 651
Wedding of Jahangir 45.8 44.2 44.2
(double p.)
Timur departs on Iran 67.14
campaign
Timur hunts near 83.21 83.12
Shiraz
Timur reviews his 84.-4
troops
Battle against 97.13
Toqtamish Khan
Defeat of Toqtamish 100.6 100.5 100.2
Khan
Timur defeats Shah 107.18 107.12
Mansur
Battle against Sultan 115.8
Ahmad Jala’ir of
Baghdad
Second battle against 131.15
Toqtamish Khan
Feasting after the 134.17
defeat of Toqtamish
Battle against the 143.-3 141.-3
Indians
Conquest of India 159.13 156.2 159.-6
Timur receives envoys 169.4
from Rum
Timur’s siege of 177.11
‘Aintab
Timur fights the 183.6
Mamluks at Aleppo
Defeat of the Mamluk 194.7
sultan at Damascus
Timur and the captive 224.2 226.-2
Ottoman Sultan
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1137

On the whole, although the 33 paintings across the six volumes share only eight
subjects between them and none appears in more than three copies, these are
among the most frequently illustrated topics, such as the wedding of Jahangir,
battles against Toqtamish Khan and the Indian campaign, as in manuscripts of
the Zafarnama of ‘Ali Yazdi also.44
These two campaigns were joined, among Timur’s greatest triumphs, by his
defeat of the Ottoman sultan, Bayezid, at the battle of Ankara in 1402, not so
strongly represented here, but an event that explains the interest in Hatifi’s
poem in Ottoman circles, the warlord being regarded there too as a model for
emulation. It is noteworthy that the earliest recorded copy of the Timurnama,
attributable to Herat in the author’s lifetime, has the seal of Bayezid’s son, sul-
tan Selim I (r. 1512–1520);45 and the second oldest, dated 905 AH / 1499 CE – also
in Hatifi’s lifetime, is an Ottoman copy.46
The pictures are not always inserted at precisely the same point in the text,
but are close to other examples noted elsewhere,47 as are other subjects found
only once or twice in these copies – the coronation of Timur is naturally one
such popular subject. On the other hand, two or three of the subjects depicted in
the Harvard codex 2014.392 have not so far been noted elsewhere. Further work
is required to determine whether the introduction of pictures had any impact on
the text, in terms of the addition or omission of verses, particularly in the im-
mediate vicinity of the paintings. In so far as this question has been observed in
these examples, apart from the strange case of the volume in the Free Library of
Philadelphia, the text has appeared to be rather stable and the verses readily
identifiable in the printed edition. It is worth noting, however, that the Phila-
delphia manuscript Lewis O. 43 contains the interpolated 49-verse section in
praise of Muhammad and ‘Ali (fols 10v–12v), that is also found in the Cambridge
University Library copy, King’s Pote 85.48 This clearly sectarian passage either
represents the Shi‘i religious affiliation of the scribe – consistent with the Sa-
favid context in which it was written, or points to the omission of this section in
copies made in a more Sunni milieu There is also a significant lacuna in Lewis
O. 43 between fols 39v and 40r, where two folios have dropped out, 45 verses
and one long rubric – equivalent to three lines – being missing. This lacuna is

||
44 See Melville 2019, tables 2 and 3.
45 Richard 1989, 360-61.
46 Bernardini 2003, 10.
47 Melville 2018.
48 Melville 2018, 64. Lewis O. 43 does have a rubric for this heading, unlike the blank in the
King’s copy.
1138 | Charles Melville

not sufficient to have included the passage on the funeral of Jahangir that is
found, so far uniquely, in the St Petersburg manuscript PNS 411.49 Neither pas-
sage is found in the other copy digitally accessible (W. 648 in Baltimore). A new
edition, which can be expected to document numerous alterations and varia-
tions in the textual transmission, and perhaps explain some of them, is long
overdue.

9 Conclusions
This brief survey of a number of manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama has revealed
something of the wide variety of ways in which this popular work has been
reproduced and preserved and how some of the volumes have travelled before
ending up in different collections, in this case mainly in the USA. An important
part of their existence before dispersal beyond the region was spent in the area
between Khurasan (eastern Iran), Transoxania and northern India, that is be-
tween Herat, Bukhara and the Mughal courts. It was precisely within this region
that the towering personality of Timur continued to exert the greatest and most
immediate claim to attention, not only as the heartland of his rule and that of
his Timurid successors, but as the scene of one of his most renowned conquests
and ultimately as a source of dynastic legitimacy for Timurid-Mughal rule in
India.
The concentration on illustrated copies of Hatifi’s work possibly distorts the
picture of how the work was received and appreciated, for the desire for a pre-
cious book already implies a rather specific clientele, like the Shibanid khans of
Bukhara and Tashkent and a circulation of volumes among princely courts. It is
striking that of the 62 manuscripts in Iranian collections, none appears to be
illustrated,50 nor any of the 19 preserved in the Biruni Institute in Tashkent. The
handful of manuscripts discussed here, therefore, is not necessarily representa-
tive of the whole large corpus, but it is interesting to observe that the same
scribe might produce more than one copy of the Timurnama, among them rather
well-known calligraphers such as Mahmud b. Ishaq Siyavushani, Mahmud
b. Mulla Mir Husaini and Pir ‘Ali Jami.
The seals recording the ownership of the manuscripts at different times,
and particularly the extensive library checks from the Mughal royal collection

||
49 See Melville 2018, 58.
50 Thanks to Majid Saeli for the catalogue list.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama  

and other inscriptions found in the ex-Kevorkian volume sold at Sotheby’s in

2019, offer some insights into the life of these manuscripts and their evaluation
after their creation, while despite similarities in layout and format, with the 14–
15 verses of the poem normally transcribed per page, the marginal rulings, treat-
ment of the chapter headings, pagination, binding and re-binding make each
slim volume an individual and personal work, typical indeed of books in the era
before printing. The copies discussed here thus extend and contribute, in gen-
eral terms, more examples of the typical illustration schemes found in the
Timurnama manuscripts of the sixteenth century and their wide dissemination
from Istanbul to Delhi and Bukhara highlights the value of achieving a better
acquaintance with the transmission of the work.

Acknowledgements
Attempting to complete research in the circumstances of a pandemic, which has
seen faculty departments, libraries and museums closed and accessible if at all
mainly online, has inevitably meant that I have been more than usually reliant on
colleagues for help and information, even for the most basic assistance in check-
ing references for me. I am happy to acknowledge Assef Ashraf, Barbara Brend,
Hamid Ghelichkhani, Robert McChesney, Mary McWilliams, Karin Ruehrdanz,
Majid Saeli, Florian Schwarz, Uktambek Sultanov and Laura Weinstein for their
readiness to answer my questions, and Firuza Melville always at hand with
suggestions and ideas. Very special thanks to John Seyller, without whose ex-
pertise in deciphering and analysing seals this paper would have been much
poorer. For welcoming assistance before ‘lockdown’, I am most grateful to
Caitlin Goodman (Philadelphia) and Lynley Herbert (Baltimore) in the course of
a visit in November 2019 and to Dr Adhikari (Kolkata) in March 2020.

References
Primary sources
‘Abd-Allah Hatifi ‫ﻋﺒﺪ ﷲ ھﺎﺗﻔﯽ‬, Timurnama ‫ﺗﯿﻤﻮر ﻧﺎﻣﮫ‬, ed. A. S. U’sha’ [Yusha‘] ‫ﺑﮫ ﺗﺼﺤﯿﺢ اﺑﻮ ھﺎﺷﻢ‬
‫ﺳﯿﺪ ﯾﻮﺷﻊ‬, Madras: University Press, 1958.
Mirza Fazl-Allah Shirazi ‘Khavari’ ‛‫ﻣﯿﺮزا ﻓﻀﻞ ﷲ ﺷﯿﺮازی ’ﺧﺎوری‬, Tarikh-i Zu’l-Qarnain ‫ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ‬
‫ذو اﻟﻘﺮﻧﯿﻦ‬, ed. Nasir Afsharfar ‫ﺑﮫ ﺗﺼﺤﯿﺢ ﻧﺎﺻﺮ اﻓﺸﺎرﻓﺮ‬, 2 vols, Tehran: Kitabkhana, Muza
va Markaz-i Asnad-i Majlis-i Shura-yi Islami, 2001.
Muhammad Yar b. ‘Arab Qatghan ‫ﻣﺤﻤﺪ ﯾﺎر ﺑﻦ ﻋﺮب ﻗﻄﻐﺎن‬, Musakhkhir al-bilad. Tarikh-i
Shibaniyan ‛‫ﻣﺴﺨﺮ اﻟﺒﻼد ’ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ ﺷﯿﺒﺎﻧﯿﺎن‬, ed. Nadira Jalali ‫ﺑﮫ ﺗﺼﺤﯿﺢ ﻧﺎدره ﺟﻼﻟﯽ‬, Tehran:
Miras-i Maktub, 2006.
  Charles Melville

Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi ‫ﺷﺮف اﻟﺪﯾﻦ ﻋﻠﯽ ﯾﺰدی‬, Zafarnama ‫ظﻔﺮﻧﺎﻣﮫ‬, ed. S.S. Mir Muhammad
Sadiq and ‘A. Nava’i ‫ﺗﺼﺤﯿﺢ و ﺗﺤﻘﯿﻖ ﺳﯿﺪ ﺳﻌﯿﺪ ﻣﯿﺮ ﻣﺤﻤﺪ ﺻﺎدق و ﻋﺒﺪ اﻟﺤﺴﯿﻦ ﻧﻮاﯾﯽ‬, Tehran:
Majles Museum and Document Centre, 2008.

Secondary literature
Bamdad, Mahdi ‫ﺑﺎﻣﺪاد‬
‫( ﻣﮭﺪی‬2008), Sharh-i hal-i rijal-i Iran dar qarn-i 12 va 13 va 14 hijri ‫ﺷﺮح‬
‫ ھﺠﺮى‬١٤ ‫ و‬١٣ ‫ و‬١٢ ‫ﺣﺎل رﺟﺎل اﯾﺮان در ﻗﺮن‬, 6 vols, Tehran: Firdaws [1st edn: Tehran:
Zuvvar, 1968–1972].
Bernardini, Michele (2003), ‘Hātifī’s Tīmūrnāmeh and Qāsimī’s Shāhnāmeh-yi Ismā‘īl: Consid-
erations for a Double Critical Edition’, in Andrew J. Newman (ed.), Society and Culture in
the Early Modern Middle East. Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period, Leiden: Brill, 3–18.
Bernardini, Michele (2008), Mémoire et propagande à l’époque timouride, Paris: Association
pour l’avancement des études iraniennes.
Blair, Sheila (1995), A Compendium of Chronicles. Rashid al-Din’s Illustrated History of the
World, London: Azimuth and Oxford University Press.
Brend, Barbara (2000), ‘Beyond the Pale: Meaning in the Margin’, in Robert Hillenbrand (ed.),
Persian Painting from the Mongols to the Qajars, London: I.B. Tauris, 39–55.
Lewis, Suzanne (1987), The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora, Aldershot: Scolar.
Melville, Charles (2018), ‘Notes on Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama in Cambridge
University Collections’, Asiatica, 12/2: 54–68.
Melville, Charles (2019), ‘Visualising Tamerlane: History and its Image’, Iran. Journal of the
British Institute of Persian Studies, 57/1: 83–106.
Minorsky, Vladimir (1959), Calligraphers and Painters. A Treatise by Qāḍī Aḥmad, son of Mīr-
Munshī […], translated from Russian by T. Minorsky (Freer Gallery of Art Occasional
Papers, 3/ 2), Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Richard, Francis (1989), Catalogue des manuscrits persans, I: Ancien Fonds, Paris: Biblio-
thèque nationale de France.
Richard, Francis (2013), Catalogue des manuscrits persans. Bibliothèque nationale de France
Département des manuscrits, II: Le supplément persan, 2 vols, Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente
C.A. Nallino.
Seyller, John (1997), ‘The Inspection and Valuation of Manuscripts in the Imperial Mughal
Library’, Artibus Asiae, 57/3–4: 243–349.
Sotheby’s (2019), Arts of the Islamic World: Auction in London, 23 October 2019, London:
Sotheby’s.
Subtelny, Maria E. (2010), ‘Tamerlane and his Descendants: From Paladins to Patrons’, in David
O. Morgan and Anthony Reid (eds), The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 3. The
Eastern Islamic World Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, Cambridge: University Press,
169–200.
Sultanov, Uktambek (2012), ‘Waqf Administration in Tashkent prior to and after the Russian
Conquest: A Focus on Rent Contracts for the Kūkeldāš Madrasa’, Der Islam, 88: 324–351.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1141

Fig. 1: Seals from fol. 1r of a Timurnama sold at Sotheby’s, London, 23 Oct. 2019. Photo: author.
1142 | Charles Melville

Fig. 2: Seals from fol. 75v of a Timurnama sold at Sotheby’s, London, 23 Oct. 2019. Photo: author.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1143

Fig. 3: Seals from fol. 76r of a Timurnama sold at Sotheby’s, London, 23 Oct. 2019. Photo: author.
1144 | Charles Melville

Fig. 4: Seals and inscription from fol. 190v of a Timurnama: Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis
O. 43. Photo: author.
 On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama | 1145

Fig. 5: Fol. 58v of Hatifi, Timurnama: Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis O. 43. Photo: author.
Contributors
Patrick Andrist is a senior researcher at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität of Munich and a
Privatdozent at the Université de Fribourg (Suisse). His research concentrates on structural
codicology applied to the scientific analysis and description of Greek manuscripts, especially
ancient Bibles, and on the development of new approaches to manuscript databases. He also
works on the history of Christian polemics from the beginnings to the fifth century.

Alessandro Bausi, Professor of Ethiopian Studies at the Universität Hamburg, is a philologist

and linguist working on ancient and medieval texts and manuscripts. He has contributed in
particular to the earliest phase of ancient Ethiopic scribal and literary history, including
epigraphy and canonical and hagiographical-liturgical collections, to the textual criticism of
Ethiopic texts, and to studying the manuscript culture of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Malachi Beit-Arié is Professor Emeritus of Codicology and Palaeography at the Hebrew

University of Jerusalem and founder of SfarData codicological online database.

William G. Boltz is Professor of Classical Chinese at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Teaching and research interests include Classical Chinese language, early Chinese
manuscripts, early writing systems, sinological philology, and textual criticism.

Dmitry Bondarev is the head of West Africa projects at the CSMC and a lecturer in the
Department of African Studies, Universität Hamburg. His research interests cover African
linguistics (Saharan, Chadic, and Mande languages), literacy studies, especially in the context
of Islamic exegetical traditions in African languages, the history of writing in Arabic-based
scripts (Ajami), and the palaeography and codicology of West African manuscripts.

Antonella Brita is a researcher and lecturer in Semitic philology at the Università degli Studi di
Firenze. Her main interests are Ethiopian hagiographic traditions and Gǝʿǝz manuscript
culture. She works on the reception of foreign late antique and medieval hagiographic texts in
Ethiopia, the emergence of local hagiography, and the use of hagiographic manuscripts in
liturgical contexts and ritual healing practices.

Christian Brockmann is Professor of Classical Philology (Greek) at the Universität Hamburg and
heads the long-term project ‘Etymologika’ at the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg.

Heidi Buck-Albulet is a researcher at the CSMC, Universität Hamburg, currently with a project
on collaborative poetry in contemporary Japan. After working at the Universität Tübingen,
where she received a PhD in 2002, and as a visiting professor at the Universität Heidelberg,
she first joined the CSMC in 2014.

Paola Buzi is Professor of Egyptology and Coptic Civilization at Sapienza University of Rome
and the principal investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant project ‘Tracking Papyrus and
Parchment Paths’. She combines historical, literary, and codicological interests with

Open Access. © 2021 Jörg B. Quenzer, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-056
1148 | Contributors

archaeological research, covering a wide chronological period, from dynastic Egypt to the early
Middle Ages.

Giovanni Ciotti is a postdoctoral researcher at the CSMC, Universität Hamburg. His main
research interests are comparative manuscript studies, the history of manuscripts in Tamil
Nadu, Sanskrit-Tamil linguistic and literary interactions, and Indian grammatical literature,
along with its influence on the formation of modern Western linguistics.

Claudia Colini is a researcher at the BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung)
and a member of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, CSMC, Universität
Hamburg. She is a book conservator and archaeometrist specializing in Islamic manuscripts.
Her current research focuses on writing supports and inks in Egypt during the early centuries
of Islam.

Marina Creydt studied food chemistry at the Hamburg School of Food Science, where she
wrote a thesis on food profiling using high-resolution mass spectrometry. Since April 2021 she
has been the principal investigator of the research project ‘Mass Spectrometric Proteome
Analysis of Written Artefacts’ in the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’
(CSMC).

Nuria de Castilla is Professor of History and Codicology of the Manuscript Book in the
Islamicate World at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL (Paris). She has published on
the history of the manuscript book, on written culture in early modern Islamic Spain, and on
the production and transmission of the Qur’an in the Islamic West.

François Déroche is a professor at the Collège de France in Paris, where he teaches the history
of the Qur’an. He is a specialist in Arabic manuscripts, with a particular interest in the history
of the written transmission of the Qur’an and in the history of the book in the Islamic world. He
has published on codicology and early Qur’anic manuscripts.

Markus Fischer is the Director of the Institute of Food Chemistry at the Universität Hamburg
and founder of the Hamburg School of Food Science. He has been the spokesperson for the
Competence Network Food Profiling since 2016 and the spokesperson for the natural science
section ‘Artefact Profiling’ in the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’
(CSMC) since 2019.

Max Jakob Fölster is a coordinator and researcher at the Max Weber Foundation, China Branch
Office in Beijing. He is affiliated with the CSMC, Universität Hamburg, where he obtained a PhD
in 2017. Along with the broad fields of philology and manuscript studies, he is interested in the
history of libraries and book collecting throughout Chinese history.

Camillo A. Formigatti studied Classics, Indology, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. He worked as a

research associate for the project ‘In the Margins of the Text: Annotated Manuscripts from
Northern India and Nepal’, in Hamburg, as well as for the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project in
 Contributors | 1149

Cambridge, and he is currently a librarian and information analyst for Oriental manuscripts at
the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford.

Markus Friedrich is Professor of Early Modern European History at the Universität Hamburg. He
has worked widely on European archives and paper-based scholarly practices.

Imre Galambos is a specialist in Chinese manuscripts and palaeography, and has worked on
writing habits in both early and medieval China. He is particularly interested in the
orthography of non-standard character forms and their spread throughout East and Central
Asia.

Jost Gippert is Chair of Comparative Linguistics at Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, and since

2020, a visiting professor at the CMSC, Universität Hamburg; he has made extensive studies of
palimpsests (Georgian, Armenian, Caucasian-Albanian) and other manuscripts (Tocharian,
Avestan, Maldivian, etc.).

Uwe Golle studied the restoration and conservation of books, archival materials, and cultural
assets in Berlin. He now heads the Graphics Restoration Department at the Klassik Stiftung
Weimar with a special focus on the Eastern European avant-garde and the Bauhaus.

Volker Grabowsky is Professor of Thai Studies at the Universität Hamburg. He is (co-)author of

several books on the history and culture of Tai ethnic groups, including the translation and
analysis of Tai Lü chronicles, and has directed various projects pertaining to the manuscript
cultures of the Tai peoples in the Upper Mekong Valley.

Michael Grünbart is Professor of Byzantine Studies at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität

Münster. His main areas of research are Byzantine epistolography, material culture, cultural
history, religion and politics, and rituals. He recently published an introduction to Byzantine
auxiliary disciplines.

Oliver Hahn studied chemistry and art history and worked at the Department for Restoration
and Conservation at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences. He is now head of the
‘Analysis of Artefacts and Cultural Assets’ unit at the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und
-prüfung (BAM) and, since 2014, professor at the Universität Hamburg, Faculty of Humanities.

Kaja Harter-Uibopuu is Professor of Ancient History at the Universität Hamburg. Her research
focuses on Greek epigraphy, especially in Hellenistic and imperial Greece and Asia Minor, as
well as on the history of ancient law.

Marco Heiles is a postdoctoral researcher in medieval German literature at the Rheinisch-

Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen. He is an expert in late medieval German
manuscript culture with a special interest in text collections, practical literature, and
discourses of exclusion.
1150 | Contributors

Felix Heinzer was Professor of Medieval Latin at the Universität Freiburg (Germany) and curator
of the Manuscript Department at the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart; he is
currently a senior professor at the CSMC, Universität Hamburg, specializing in western
medieval books and libraries.

Agnieszka Helman-Ważny is a historian of paper and books at the Universität Hamburg and
the University of Warsaw. She has published monographs and articles on the history of
regional production and the use of paper and books in Tibet and Central Asia.

David Holm is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ethnology at National Chengchi

University, Taipei. He has published a number of works on the traditional language and culture
of the Zhuang, a Tai-speaking people indigenous to southern China.

Oliver Huck is Professor of Musicology at the Universität Hamburg (since 2006) and Director of
the Graduate School at the CSMC (since 2011).

Kyle Ann Huskin is a multispectral imaging technician at the CSMC in the Cluster of Excellence
‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, Universität Hamburg. Her research focuses on late medieval
French, English, and Latin texts, issues of gender and authority, and manuscript studies.

Matthieu Husson (CNRS SYRTE-Observatoire de Paris PSL) is a researcher in the history of late
medieval astronomy in Europe and is the principal investigator of the ERC project ALFA, based
at the Paris Observatory.

Silpsupa Jaengsawang is a postdoctoral researcher at the CSMC. She received a PhD from the
Universität Hamburg (2019) with a comparative study of the Lan Na and Lao traditions. Her
ongoing research concerns Anisong manuscripts and printing technologies since the late
nineteenth century.

Andreas Janke studied historical musicology and Italian literature in Hamburg and Pavia (Italy).
He is a principal investigator for the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’
(CSMC), and his research focuses on polyphonic music in manuscripts from c. 1350 to 1425.

Shamil Jeppie teaches in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town
where he also directs the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project. He has written extensively about
manuscript collecting in West Africa and other aspects of manuscript culture in the region.

Janina Karolewski is working on the social history and manuscript culture of Alevi villages in
Anatolia. She is interested in the development of Alevi groups, with a focus on their written
transmission, social and religious hierarchies, and relationships to non-Alevi communities and
institutions.
 Contributors | 1151

Sabine Kienitz is Professor of Empirische Kulturwissenschaft / Anthropological Studies in

Culture and History at the Universität Hamburg and a member of the CSMC. Her research
interests cover material culture and anthropological studies in the history of crime, law, and
the judiciary.

Michael Kohs is a postdoctoral research associate at the CSMC, Universität Hamburg, where
he is working on Jewish magic and Hebrew manuscripts. His dissertation project examined the
typology of magical texts from the Cairo Geniza.

Uta Lauer is an affiliated researcher at the Universität Hamburg and senior fellow at the China
Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Publications focus on Chinese calligraphy, seals, painting, and
iconography.

Domenico Laurenza studied history of science at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici (San
Marino). He is an expert in the history of anatomy and anatomical illustrations, the history of
geology, visual culture, and especially in the scientific illustration of Leonardo’s anatomic
drawings. He is currently a research fellow at the Museo Galileo in Florence.

Lothar Ledderose is Senior Professor of East Asian Art History at the Universität Heidelberg. He
is a member of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, of the British Academy, and of
the China Center of Visual Studies 視覺中國研究院 at the China Academy of Art 中國美術學院,
Hangzhou 杭州.

Zhenzhen Lu is Assistant Professor of Chinese at Bates College (Maine, USA). She received a
PhD in premodern Chinese literature from the University of Pennsylvania and was a researcher
at the CSMC for the period 2017–2019.

Marilena Maniaci is Professor of Codicology at the Università degli Studi di Cassino e del Lazio
Meridionale. Her research concentrates on the history of Greek and Latin manuscripts
(including statistical approaches), their materials and manufacturing techniques, the
development of theoretical models for understanding the structure of complex codices, as well
as the codicology of the Latin Bible and of Greek and Latin liturgical rolls.

Charles Melville is Professor Emeritus of Persian History at the University of Cambridge

(Pembroke College) and currently president of the British Institute of Persian Studies (British
Academy). He has published extensively on the history and culture of Iran in the Mongol to
Safavid periods, the illustration of Persian manuscripts, and the epic Shahnama of Firdausi.

Piotr Michalowski is the George G. Cameron Professor Emeritus of Ancient Near Eastern
Civilizations at the University of Michigan. He is the author of numerous studies on the literary
history, poetics, magic, religion, history, historiography, linguistics, epigraphy, and other
aspects of ancient Mesopotamian manuscript cultures.
1152 | Contributors

Cécile Michel is a senior researcher at the CNRS, Archéologies et Sciences de l’Antiquité –

Histoire et Archéologie de l’Orient Cunéiforme, Nanterre, and a professor at the Universität
Hamburg, CSMC. As an Assyriologist, she studies cuneiform tablets from Turkey, Syria, and
Iraq and, through experimentation, conducts research on the palaeography and shaping of
clay tablets and envelopes.

Boriana Mihailova received a PhD in physics from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1997.
Since 2005, she has been Professor of Crystallography at the Universität Hamburg. Her main
research interests are solid-state spectroscopy, phase transitions, ferroelectrics, complex
hydrous silicates, disordered silicates, biomaterials, and novel methods for non-destructive
mineral characterization.

Ralf Möller is Professor of Computer Science and heads the Institute of Information Systems at
the Universität zu Lübeck. His main research areas include: data management and artificial
intelligence, in particular knowledge representation and database technologies for
information systems; machine learning and data mining for decision making; and probabilistic
relational modelling for multi-agent systems.

Luigi Orlandi, formerly a member of the Graduate School at the CSMC, is currently a researcher
at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. His main scholarly interests lie
in the field of textual criticism and Greek palaeography, with particular focus on scribes and
scholars of the fifteenth century.

Jürgen Paul is Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies and specializes in the medieval and early
modern history of Central Asia and Iran. He has written extensively on local and imperial
power. He joined the CSMC in 2017 as a senior professor, and has since then rekindled his
interest in Islamic manuscript culture.

Jörg B. Quenzer is Professor of Japanese Studies at the Universität Hamburg. His research
focuses on premodern Japanese literature, especially aspects of mediality, and the
relationship between Japanese literature and Buddhism. He also served as vice spokesperson
for the Sonderforschungsbereich 950 ‘Manuscript Cultures in Asia, Africa, and Europe’,
Universität Hamburg (2011–2019).

Ira Rabin studied chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Freie Universität
Berlin and researched nanomaterials at the Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
Since 2003, her research has been dedicated to history of black inks, papyrus, and parchment
manuscripts, particularly the Dead Sea Scrolls, at the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und
-prüfung (BAM) in Berlin and at the Universität Hamburg.

Charles Ramble is Directeur d’études in the History and Philology Section of the École Pratique
des Hautes Études, PSL University, Paris, and the director of the Tibetan Studies research team
at the Centre for Research on East Asian Civilisations (CRCAO). His publications include several
books and over a hundred articles on the religion, anthropology, and history of Tibet and the
Himalaya.
 Contributors | 1153

Bruno Reudenbach was Professor of Art History at the Universität Hamburg and a member of
the Sonderforschungsbereich 950 ‘Manuscript Cultures in Asia, Africa and Europe’. Since 2019
he has been a senior professor at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’
(CSMC). His research focuses on medieval art, especially early medieval manuscript culture.

Martin Jörg Schäfer is Professor of Modern German Literature and Theatre Studies at the
Universität Hamburg. His research interests include: the relationship between text,
performance, and the respective written artefacts in theatre; narratives of cultural crises and
transformation; problems of literary translation as well as theories of representation; and
theatricality and literary aesthetics.

Jochen Schlüter has been the curator and director of the Mineralogical Museum, Center of
Natural History (CeNak) at the Universität Hamburg since 1988 and Professor of Mineralogy
there since 2008. His main research interests are new mineral species, gemstones, and
meteorites.

Tilman Seidensticker is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Universität Jena (since
1995) and a senior professor at the Universität Hamburg. He became the head of the Arabic
manuscripts section of the project Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in
Deutschland (KOHD) in 1997 and head of the KOHD project in 2013.

Ivan Shevchuk is an imaging technician at the CSMC, Universität Hamburg and a member of
the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’. His background is mechanical
engineering, and his specialization is multispectral imaging and image processing. His current
work focusses on operating and improving imaging equipment and image-processing
methods.

Ondřej Škrabal is a research associate at the CSMC, Universität Hamburg. A historian of

ancient China, his recent research focuses on the sociocultural and political underpinnings of
epigraphic production.

Thies Staack is a principal investigator at the CSMC, Universität Hamburg. His research
interests lie in the manuscript cultures of early and late imperial China, ancient Chinese law
and administration, as well as Chinese medical literature.

Barend ter Haar is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Universität Hamburg; he has published
extensively on Chinese religious, social, and cultural history.

Stefan Thiemann is head of the Centre for Sustainable Research Data Management at the
Universität Hamburg and principal investigator in the Research Unit ‘Data Linking’ of the
Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ (CSMC). He studied meteorology and
information science. Since 2000 he has worked as an IT expert at the Asien-Afrika-Institut of
the Universität Hamburg, and he participated in the project ‘Informationinfrastructure’ of the
Sonderforschunsgbereich 950.
1154 | Contributors

Stefano Valente is, since 2011, the Scientific Coordinator for the project ‘Etymologika’
(Universität Hamburg / Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg). His main fields of expertise
are Greek manuscript studies, Greek and Byzantine scholarship and lexicography, and
Aristotle’s reception in Byzantium.

Dick van der Meij studied Indonesian languages and cultures at Leiden University. At present
he is Liaison Officer and Academic Advisor of the Digital Repository of Endangered and
Affected Manuscripts in Southeast Asia (DREAMSEA) at the Universität Hamburg. He has
published extensively in the fields of Indonesian, Javanese, and Balinese manuscripts,
literature, and culture.

Giuseppe Veltri is Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion, Director of the Maimonides
Centre for Advanced Studies, and the Director of the Academy of World Religions at the
Universität Hamburg. His publications cover various areas of Judaic Studies and the
philosophy of religion. In the field of Jewish magic, his publications include the monograph
Magie und Halakha.

Eva Wilden is Professor of Tamil and Manuscript Studies at the Universität Hamburg. She was a
researcher at the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) from 2003 to 2017, working on the
critical re-edition and transmission history of the Tamil Caṅkam corpus. From 2014 to 2019 she
directed the ERC project ‘NETamil: Going from Hand to Hand ‒ Networks of Intellectual
Exchange in the Tamil Learned Traditions’, jointly hosted by the Universität Hamburg and the
EFEO.

Hanna Wimmer is a Junior Professor in the Department of Art History at the Universität
Hamburg and a member of the CSMC. Her research focusses on European medieval
manuscripts and printed books, with a particular interest in the role of their visual
organization in the communication and transmission of knowledge.

Carsten Wintermann studied restoration and conservation science at the Department for
Restoration and Conservation at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences. He is now working
in the Graphics Restoration Department at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar with a special focus on
the non-invasive scientific investigation of drawings.
Indices
Two indices are provided. The first includes the main written artefacts (such as manuscripts,
archival documents, or inscribed objects) that are discussed in the book. Page numbers with
an asterisk refer to illustrations.

The second index reports things, concepts, and geographical names that are of cross-disciplinary
interest and that may help orient the reader to the book. Terms that are overly general or
whose meaning is too ambiguous, such as ‘author’, ‘document’, or ‘content’, have not been in-
cluded. Because the book contains so many contributions and deals with so many different
cultures, to provide a printed list of names or to include terms that are of interest only to the
specialist in one field does not seem useful. For such purposes, we refer the reader to the PDF
version of the book. The general index was made with the help of Jost Gippert, to whom we are
very grateful.

Caroline Macé, Jörg B. Quenzer and Laurence Tuerlinckx

Index of Manuscripts and Other Written Artefacts

Addis Ababa, Casa Provinciale dei Padri georg. 42 649
Comboniani, georg. 45 649–650, 654
Emilio Ceccarini collection, photo- georg. 56 653
graph (no inventory) 20, 31, 33 georg. 61 647, 653, 656–657,
664*–665*
Artemidorus papyrus,
georg. 65 652
see Turin, private collection
georg. 83 649
Athens, Ethnikē Bibliothēkē tēs Hellados
Bakhshālī manuscript,
(EBE),
see Oxford, Bodleian Library
56 (GA 773) 1066
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum,
Athos, Dionysiou,
W.102 840
274 938
W.648 1125, 1138
Athos, Iviron,
Basel, Universitätsbibliothek,
georg. 1 648
A.N. I. 8 385
georg. 4 647, 653, 655–657,
660*–661* Beijing, Capital Library of China (CLC),
georg. 9 647, 649, 653–654, 656– ji 401 1099, 1102–1104, 1109, 1111–
657 1112, 1118*–1119*, 1121*–1122*
georg. 10 655 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin –
georg. 11 649, 659* Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Stabi),
georg. 13 655 Ms. or. quart. 2112 795, 797, 806,
georg. 16 647, 653, 656–657, 818*–820*
662*–663* Hs. 384 312

Open Access. © 2021 Caroline Macé, Jörg B. Quenzer, Laurence Tuerlinckx, published by De Gruyter.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301
1156 | Index of Manuscripts and Other Written Artefacts

Turfan-Collection, Collegeville, Hill Monastic Manuscript

SHT no. 612 879 Library,
SHT no. 810 [= Spitzer manuscript] EMML 1763 [= Dabra Ḥayq ʾƎsṭifānos,
871–873 Homiliary] 31
EMML 1832 468
Bucharest, Romanian Academy of Sciences,
Ms. grec 508 939 Cologne, Erzbischöflichen Diözesan- und
Dombibliothek,
Cairo, Coptic Museum,
Cod. 1001a 780
MS 3814 1065
MS 3817 1065 Cologne, Historisches Archiv,
MS 3818 1065 Cod. W 312 780

Calcutta, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Dabra Ḥayq ʾƎsṭifānos, Homiliary

G4077 470 see Collegeville, Hill Monastic
no. 651 1131 Manuscript Library

Cambridge MA, Harvard Art Museums, Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum,

1957.140 1127 AE 679 780
2014.392 1128
Diamond Sūtra
Cambridge UK, Cambridge University see Tai Shan (Mount Tai)
Library,
Dublin, Trinity College Library,
834:1.a.85.44 291
MS A. I. [= Book of Kells] 775
834:1.a.85.54 291
MS Add. 2318 297 Dunhuang collection,
MS Add. 1109 1131 491–511, esp. 499–508; see also
MS Add. 1645 469 General Index s.v.
King’s College, Pote 85 1137 Pelliot chinois collection (Paris,
MS Or. 954 711, 723* Bibliothèque nationale de France)
501, 503, 508
Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine,
Stein Collection (British Library)
MS 269 834
501, 503–505, 508
Changsha City, Yuelu Academy (Hunan
El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio
University),
de San Lorenzo (RBME),
Qin manuscripts,
Arabic collection (bindings) 405–
vol. 4: group 1 900
416, 418*–422*
vol. 5: groups 1– 3 900, 901*
y. I. 1. 474
vol. 6: groups 1 and 4 900, 901
Fenghuangshan,
Codex aureus Epternacensis
tomb no. 8 901–902*
see Nuremberg, Germanisches
tomb no. 9 902
Nationalmuseum
tomb no. 168 902
Codex Sinaiticus tomb no. 169 902
see Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek
Fisher Antiphonary,
Codex Valerianus see Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare
see Munich, Bayerische Staats- Book Library
bibliothek
 Index of Manuscripts and Other Written Artefacts | 1157

Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Landgericht Hamburg, 213-11 L

Med. Pal. 87 [= Squarcialupi codex] 231/1921 359, 361
747
Iviron Monastery,
Plut. 17,1 738
see Athos
Plut. 59,12 939
S. Marco 304 592, 593 Jerusalem, Greek Patriarchate,
georg. 107 657
Florence, Museo di San Marco,
Panaghiou Taphou 150 605
MS 516 746
Jinpenling,
Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève,
tomb no. 9 892*
gr. 19 384, 388–389, 391–392
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek,
Ham, Dabra Libānos,
Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 307,
Golden Gospel (no inventory) 18, 31
308*, 311–321, 324, 331*
Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Cod. Donaueschingen A III 20 308,
(MKG), 309
#1964.290 236
Karlsruhe, Landesarchiv Baden-
#1964.294 236
Württemberg, Generallandesarchiv
#1964.324 240–241*
Karlsruhe (GLAK)
#1965.122 236–238*, 240
Badisches Justizministerium,
#1965.130 238, 240*
234 354, 361
Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbiblio-
Kathmandu, National Archives of
thek Carl von Ossietzky (Stabi),
Kathmandu,
Cod. germ. 13 309
1-882 470
Cod. hebr. 252 533–553, 557*–
5-737 470, 472
562*
6-7 469
Cod. hebr. 337 533
Cod. orient. 195 480 Kells, Book of
Theater-Bibliothek, 477 1047 see Dublin, Trinity College Library
Theater-Bibliothek, 499b 1045
Theater-Bibliothek, 514 1044 Kolkata
see Calcutta
Theater-Bibliothek, 948b 1044
Theater-Bibliothek, 1460 1052, Kültepe Archaeological Mission,
1055* Kt 89/k 232 94
Theater-Bibliothek, 1989b 1045 Kt 93/k 211 98*
Theater-Bibliothek, 2029 1051– Kt 94/k 878 99
1052, 1056*–1060* Kt c/k 834 99
Hamburg, Staatsarchiv Hamburg (StAHH), Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek,
Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, Gr. 01 [= Codex Sinaiticus] 376–377
Nichtrichterliche Beamte, 213- Ms. 76 773
1_1842 360
Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht, London, British Library (BL),
Stenographie im Gerichtsdienst, Add. MS 17492 476
213-1_1961 357, 358, 360–363 Add. MS 18720/2 823
Add. MS 47680 822
Add. MS 58224 757
1158 | Index of Manuscripts and Other Written Artefacts

Arundel MS 527 759*, 764, 770* Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Arundel MS 528 756–757, 759*, (BSB),
762*, 764, 769* Clm 6224 [= Codex Valerianus] 31
Egerton MS 2711 476, 490* Clm 641 316
Harley MS 5786 473 Clm 671 316
Harley MS 5266 824 Cod.hebr. 36 545
MSS Jav. 28 795, 797, 800, 812*– Cod.graec. 547 755–756, 762*,
815* 764, 768*
MSS Jav. 89 795–797, 800, 805,
Mytilene (Lesbos), Potamoneion
816*–817*
IG XII 2 44–46
Or. 3581B 1064
Or. 6954 1064 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Royal 12.D.II 829 Cochran 3, 13.228.16 1132

London, Sotheby’s, New York, Doyle,

Auction 23 Oct. 2019, lot 140 Auction 3 May 2006, Books and
1129, 1135–1136, 1139, 1141*– Print, Sale 06BP01, Lot 3004 745
1143*
New York, Morgan Library and Museum,
London, Victoria and Albert Museum, MS M.260e 746
E.120-1996 749* MS M.584 1065
MS M.761 829
London, Wellcome Library,
MS M.755 777, 791*, 794*
Sanskrit litho 112 293
New York, Private Collection, William
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum,
Voelkle,
MS Ludwig III 1 (83.MC.72) 832,
parchment leaf 746
841*
Nuremberg, Germanisches
Lübeck, Stadtbibliothek,
Nationalmuseum,
Ms. hist. 8° 1a 316
Hs. 5339a 309
Ludwigsburg, Landesarchiv Baden- Hs. 156142 [= Codex aureus
Württemberg, Staatsarchiv Epternacensis] 780
Ludwigsburg (StAL),
Nuremberg, Historisches Archiv,
Kriminalsenat Ellwangen,
Bestand Deutsches Reich, Fragen
E 341 I, Bü 36 352
und Antworten über das Freigericht
E 341 I, Bü 37 352
(Wilshörst) 1408 / 1428 312
Mawangdui,
Oslo, The Schøyen collection,
tomb no. 3 898, 902–903*
Bamyan fragments 872–873, 876
Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana,
Oxford, Bodleian Library,
A 159 sup. 757
Barocci gr. 131 937
Milwaukee, Haggerty Museum of Art, Clarendon Press, B40.1-2 1070
79.21 747 Elliott 318 1127
Or. B 125 470
Mahārājā Serfoji Sarasvati Mahāl Library
Sansk. d. 14 [= Bakhshālī manu-
(MSSML)
script] 877
see Tañcāvūr
 Index of Manuscripts and Other Written Artefacts | 1159

Sanskrit incunabula and lithographs Dorn 447 1125–1126

285–293 PNS 411 1138
PNS 561 563, 567, 575*–581*
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
(BnF), San Lorenzo de El Escorial,
Coislin 157 606, 609, 611, 621* see El Escorial
Coislin 161 605
San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums,
Coislin 166 605, 619*–620*
Achenbach Foundation, 25644 745
Coislin 167 606, 609, 611
Achenbach Foundation, 25650 746
Coislin 330 609
éthiopien, d’Abbadie 110 10, 31 Squarcialupi codex
grec 1312 758, 771* see Florence, Biblioteca Medicea
grec 1815 757 Laurenziana
grec 1828 755
Schlatt, Eisenbibliothek,
grec 1921 605
MSS 20 821–822, 826, 830–832,
grec 1969 757
grec 1972 606, 609, 611 834–835, 838*–842*
grec 2141 757 Shuihudi,
latin 7197 514–715 tomb no. 11 894, 905
latin 7273 514
latin 7295A 513, 514, 530*–532* Schwäbisch Hall, Stadtarchiv (StAH),
latin 7305 514 Stadtratsprotokoll in gerichtlichen
latin 7314 514 Sachen, 19/480 350
latin 7333 514 Sinai, Saint Catherine’s Monastery,
latin 7347 514 georg. 92 657
latin 7432 514 georg. 56 657
latin 7446 514
latin 7450 514 Sofia, SS Cyril and Methodius National
latin 11232 514 Library,
OP 994 1125
Paris, Musée du Louvre,
AO 19735 92* Spitzer manuscript,
AO 2681 92* see Berlin, Staatsbibliothek

Pelliot chinois collection (Paris, Stabi,

Bibliothèque nationale de France), see Hamburg, Staats- und
see Dunhuang collection Universitätsbibliothek Carl von
Ossietzky
Philadelphia, Free Library,
Lewis O. 43 1131, 1135–1137, Stein collection (London, British Library),
1144*–1145* see Dunhuang collection

Saint Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et

Cod. Sang. 459 31 universitaire,
Ms. 583 1065
Saint Petersburg, National Library of
Russia (NLR), Taipei City, Fu Sinian Memorial Library –
Dorn 445 1132 Academia Sinica,
Dorn 446 1128 A T10－123 1120*
1160 | Index of Manuscripts and Other Written Artefacts

Tai Shan (Mount Tai), Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,

Diamond Sūtra 53–55, 57, 62* gr. Z. 453 (= 821) 474, 489*
gr. Z. 192 755
Tañcāvūr, Mahārājā Serfoji Sarasvati
gr. Z. 227 604
Mahāl Library (MSSML),
gr. Z. 512 755
631 689, 700*, 702
gr. Z. 523 757
Tehran, Tehran University Library,
Vienna, Deutsch Auctioneers,
no. 6035 1126
Auction 25 Sept. 2018, Lot 53 747
Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library,
Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
MSS 09700 [= Fisher Antiphonary]
(ÖNB),
730, 748*, 750*
Cod. 13711 309
Turfan-Collection, Cod. Med. gr. 1 385
see Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Cod. Mixt. 1480 1126
Cod. Phil. gr. 64 755, 756, 759*–
Turin, Private Collection, Banco di San
760, 764, 768*
Paolo, Pap. A.Ch.9 166, 177
Artemidorus papyrus 382 Pap. A.Ch.1252 + A.Ch.14324 166,
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica 178
Vaticana (BAV), Pap. A.Ch.1488 166, 178
Barb. gr. 70 583, 586–597 Pap. A.Ch.7379 166, 173
Reg. gr. 107 609, 611 Pap. A.Ch.7814 166, 178
Urb. gr. 35 609 Pap. A.Ch.12868 166, 177
Vat. copt. 2 1064 Pap. A.Ch.32363 166, 178
Vat. copt. 3 1064 Pap. A.P.4097 166, 177
Vat. copt. 4 1064 Pap. A.P.4360 166, 178
Vat. copt. 58 31 Pap. A.P.6004 166, 177
Vat. copt. 59 31 Pap. A.P.14000 166, 178
Vat. copt. 66 31 Pap. A.P.14063 166, 178
Vat. copt. 67.2 1064 Pap. A.Perg.82 166, 178
Vat. ebr. 66 399 Pap. A.Perg.236 166, 178
Vat. gr. 7 586 Pap. A.Perg.340 166, 178
Vat. gr. 133 757
Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek,
Vat. gr. 244 603, 606–610*, 611–
Cod. 18.12 Aug. 4° 309
613, 615, 622* Gud. gr. 29 594
Vat. gr. 604 604 Gud. gr. 30 594
Vat. gr. 712 939, 941
Vat. gr. 749 604 Zhangjiashan,
Vat. gr. 1147 761 tomb no. 247 904, 894
Vat. gr. 1818 592–593
* Location unknown (private owner),
Vat. gr. 1858 762*, 764
handscroll Orchid, Rock and Bamboo
1077–1093, 1095*–1097*
 General Index | 1161

General Index
abbey 954; see also monastery America / American 346, 402, 729, 735,
abbot 667, 672, 947, 952, 954, 957, 958, 866, 916, 990; see also Mesoamerica
1014, 1038, 1082 amino acid 184, 191, 196, 200; see also
acid 132, 163, 189–190, 194, 197–198, protein
201; see also amino acid, DNA amulet 70, 162, 239, 427, 466, 534–537,
addenda 323, 350 546–550, 552, 558, 561, 567, 717–
addition passim, esp. textual 8, 104– 718, 878
105, 128, 321, 349–350, 369, 464, Anabaptist 921
479, 480, 490, 493, 525, 552, 587– Anatolia / Anatolian 68, 79, 94, 97, 648–
588, 594, 656, 730, 835, 847, 1044, 649
1050, 1065, 1137; see also deletion, animal 67, 148, 158, 185–186, 188, 234,
omission 236, 274, 318, 608, 631, 651, 670,
address 938, 941; see also letter writing 685, 718, 798, 808–809, 822, 829,
addressee 82, 97, 99, 100, 572; see also 970, 986, 1025–1026, 1031, 1033–
letter writing 1035, 1037
administration / administrative / adminis- annotate / annotation / annotational 77,
trator 11, 36, 37, 46, 76, 78, 80–81, 90, 103–105, 107, 248, 397, 514, 524,
94, 96, 97, 100, 102, 104, 338, 358– 587–588, 605, 613–614, 667, 702,
361, 569, 676–677, 874–875, 878, 708, 713–714, 716–717, 728, 830,
889–890, 893–896, 898, 900, 904– 834, 967, 1044, 1047, 1077, 1103,
909, 920–921, 954, 983, 1043, 1099 1106; see also notation
aesthetic / aestheticisation 72, 139, 154, anthology / anthological 340–341, 397,
395, 398–399, 405–406, 416, 623, 466, 628, 632, 635, 640, 1105; see
640, 774, 776, 799, 808, 825, 867– also compilation, florilegium
868, 1016, 1032, 1090, 1113 anthropomorphism / anthropomorphise /
Africa / African 333, 339–340, 397, 707– anthropomorphic 246, 545
709, 712, 714, 717–719, 723, 725, anticlerical 573
727, 872–873, 916 antigorite 232, 234–235, 237–238, 240
agate 230, 232, 239 antigraph 372, 375–376, 384, 1071
AI see artificial intelligence antiquarian / antiquarianism / antiqued
Ajami (ʿajamī) 707–710, 712–719 72, 309, 733, 914–915
Akkadian 68, 70, 74–75, 77–80, 82, 101, antiques dealer/market 165
104–105, 108 apparatus criticus 335, 380, 934–935
Aksum / Aksumite / Axum / Axumite 4–5, Arab 20, 108, 162, 430; non-Arab 708,
12, 18, 21–23, 31; Post-Aksumite 4–5 see also Ajami
algorithm 203, 246, 252–254, 256, 259– Arabic 13, 108, 161–165, 170–171, 177,
260, 267 338, 340–341, 395–397, 399–400,
alphabet / alphabetic(al) 13, 67, 81–82, 441–453, 466, 468, 473, 474, 537,
101, 108, 185, 276, 293, 313, 396, 564, 566–568, 569, 572–573, 707–
539–540, 563, 584–589, 591, 593, 709, 712–719, 727–728, 827, 1064,
631, 757, 833, 845, 856–859, 898; 1071; non-Arabic 444, 707–708, see
non-alphabetic 353 also Ajami, gum arabic
alphanumerical 650 Aramaic 70, 72, 81–82, 101–102, 104,
540, 544, 548
1162 | General Index

archaeology / archaeological / archaeolo- authentication 42, 115, 133, 194, 350, 362
gist 41, 69, 75, 77, 82, 89, 98, 106, autograph 296, 382, 451, 513, 563–565,
108–109, 115, 120, 124, 126–128, 131, 570, 604, 652, 656, 710, 755, 761,
133, 161, 165, 171, 184, 234, 423–424, 989–990
425, 427, 433, 493, 1064–1065, authorship 320, 323, 460, 690, 175, 849–
1072; see also zooarchaeology 850, 938, 950, 956, 1077
archaeometry / archaeometric 183, 865
archbishop 18–19, 656, 760, 1066–1067, Babylon / Babylonian 68, 71, 73–74, 76,
1069–1070; see also bishop 82–83, 94, 101, 103, 108, 399–400,
archetype / archetypus 850, 933; see 539; see also Neo-Babylonian
also subarchetype bamboo 35, 127, 147, 185, 398, 401, 403,
architecture / architectural 37, 39, 81, 259, 431–432, 439, 480, 685, 889, 897,
261, 732, 740, 776, 832, 1127; see 904, 971, 1077–1085, 1087, 1089–
also layout, formatting 1093, 1095
archive / archival / archivist 25, 39, 41, bark 67–68, 163, 185, 430–431, 870,
67–69, 79, 81, 91, 95–97, 99, 103, 874, 877, 1009, 1039; see also birch
106, 107, 189, 192, 268–270, 273, belief 146, 466, 550, 713, 971, 1005,
338–339, 341, 353, 359, 361, 424, 1008, 1017–1018, 1020
443, 464, 469–470, 472, 477, 514– Bible 186, 285, 295, 302, 376, 386, 397,
515, 583, 625, 638, 668–670, 678, 471, 479, 604, 648, 823
727, 736, 851, 881, 918–919, 922, biblical 386, 391, 397–398, 537, 539–
926, 993–994, 1009, 1077 540, 657, 782, 849, 948, 950, 959;
Armenian 396 non-biblical 953
artificial intelligence (AI) 245–265, 273 bibliophily / bibliophile 914–916, 921
artist / artistic 75, 116, 238, 372, 384, bifolium / bifolia 395, 398–400, 402–
433, 464, 632, 642, 735, 742, 773– 403, 537, 541
774, 776, 779, 787, 796, 798–800, binder 376, 405–407, 409–410, 412–
803–804, 806, 808–809, 824, 881, 413, 415–416, 649; see also book-
1053, 1078, 1081, 1085, 1088, 1092, binder
1134 binder (chemical) 163, 187–188, 193
asbestos (paper) 913–914, 916, 920, binding passim, esp. 405–422
923–924; non-asbestos 923 birch / birch-bark 67–68, 870, 874–877,
Asia / Asian see Asia Minor / Western 880
Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, South bishop 15, 18–19, 31, 756, 759–761,
Asia, South-East Asia 763–765, 826, 934, 937, 954, 1069,
Asia Minor / Western Asia 37, 40, 68 1072; scribe-bishop 753, 760; see
Assyria / Assyrian 68, 72, 79–82, 93, 95, also archbishop
97, 103, 108–109, 548; see also Neo- blank (book, quire, leave, space) 105, 128,
Assyrian 191, 308, 313, 373, 410, 460, 464,
astrology / astrological / astrologer 104– 467, 475, 478–481, 516, 524–526,
105, 513–514, 822, 972, 1025, 1031– 534, 537, 538, 552, 588, 605, 637–
1033; see also cosmogony, cosmo- 639, 673, 800, 803, 826–827, 877,
logical 995, 998, 1015, 1045, 1051, 1078,
astronomy / astronomical / astronomer 1129, 1133, 1135, 1137
101, 513–517, 519, 521–528, 533, 538, block / inscription block 39, 45, 71, 74,
544–545, 552, 560; see also cosmog- 93, 116–118, 121–122, 125–132, 372,
ony, cosmological
 General Index | 1163

399, 407, 566, 701, 831, 854, 971, calculation 164, 170, 203, 311, 513, 906–
972, 1025, 1026, 1027, 1028, 1035, 907, 977, 1029, 1031–1032; see also
1126; block book 311–312; see also computation, wheel (chart), diagram
content (BlockCont), woodblock calendar 4, 9–10, 13, 17–18, 271, 296,
board 67, 70, 76–83, 95, 101, 121, 151– 311, 468, 572, 801, 805
152, 249–250, 284, 406–408, 410, calligraphy / calligraphic / calligrapher
413–414, 1029, 1045 53, 58, 116, 140, 142–145, 152–153,
Bohairic 17, 1064–1065, 1067, 1071; 308, 357, 397, 428, 453, 504, 571,
Bohairic-Arabic 444, 1064 588, 626, 642, 738, 754, 758, 761,
Bön 1025–1026, 1029, 1033–1035, 1037– 773, 781, 785–786, 1077, 1079–1080,
1038 1082–1088, 1092, 1104, 1110, 1127–
bookbinding / bookbinder 405, 408, 410, 1128, 1135, 1138
416, 464, 475, 564, 1015 canon 57, 389, 390, 391, 392, 471, 500,
booklet 289, 307–309, 311–313, 316– 502–503, 509, 524, 526, 649, 652–
317, 321, 516–518, 523–527, 564, 653, 871, 937, 950, 956, 997, 1001
924, 994 canonical 470–471, 855, 859, 933, 983,
Borno 708, 711, 714, 715, 716, 724, 725, 1022
726, 727 capital (letter) 517, 731, 740, 758, 773,
Bozo 718 776–778, 780–781, 874, 995; see
Brahmanism 878 also majuscule
bronze 54, 55, 115–118, 120–127, 129– carbon / carbon ink 163–165, 168, 170–
131, 133, 141, 145, 849–850, 859– 175, 177–178, 187 (radioactive car-
860, 1083, 1085; see also casting bon, radiocarbon dating), 218, 220,
brush 82, 121, 145, 401, 625–626, 870, 225, 230, 359 (carbon copy), 872
872, 1081–1082, 1084–1085, 1088 (carbon testing)
Buddha 56, 58–59, 145, 506, 631, 677, carnival play 309, 314, 316–317, 321
878, 1005, 1009, 1012, 1016–1018, Carolingian 773, 776, 949–950
1020–1022; Buddhahood 54 Carthusian 318, 320, 947, 951–956
Buddhism / Buddhist 54–55, 57–58, 140– casting 80, 116–117, 121–124, 128–130,
141, 143, 145–146, 149–150, 156, 132, 668, 850, 860
298, 425, 427–428, 499–500, 502– cataloguing / cataloguer 379, 441–442,
503, 509, 667, 671, 678, 868, 870– 444, 446, 448–449, 452–454, 535,
871, 874–875, 878–879, 893, 969, 537, 655, 708, 731, 938
1005, 1018, 1020, 1022–1023, 1026, censor / censorship 60, 324, 338, 925,
1034 1043–1053, 1055–1056, 1058–1059
Burma / Burmese 669–671, 877, 1006, Central Asia / Asian 162, 423–424, 426,
1022; Tibeto-Burman 671 429, 432–433, 563, 566–567, 569,
Byzantium / Byzantine 20, 402, 538, 585, 573, 865, 870–873, 875–877, 880,
587, 591, 603, 654, 753, 755, 757– 1123–1124, 1126–1128
759, 762, 764, 933–936, 938, 941– ceramic 94, 115–117, 121, 124, 129, 132–
942, 1069; Byzantine-Slavic 760 133
chancellery 42, 97
calamus 948, 952,959; see also probatio chant 649–652, 733, 737, 741, 746, 972–
calami, qalam 973, 996, 1005, 1008–1009, 1016,
1018–1019, 1022, 1028, 1035–1036,
1038
charm 263, 544, 740
1164 | General Index

chart see grid, wheel (chart) clay 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 77, 79–83, 89–
chemical 94, 163, 173, 189–191, 193– 97, 99–103, 105–108, 115, 117, 121–
194, 199, 219, 222, 225, 229–231, 126, 128–130, 132, 185, 213, 229,
235–236, 431 248, 877, 1027, 1036
China / Chinese 53, 60, 62, 67, 68, 115– clerical 357, 360, 950, 1085; non-clerical
116, 118, 120–121, 123–124, 127, 325; see also anticlerical
132–133, 139, 140, 141, 143, 148– codex passim, esp. 369–404; non-codex
149, 152, 162, 187, 272, 333, 335– 395, 398, 403, 460; see also pre-
336, 340, 398, 401, 403, 423, 424, codex
426–431, 433, 491–492, 499–500, codicology / codicological 35, 36, 38, 90,
508, 509, 626–628, 632–633, 635, 46, 164, 300, 301, 369, 381, 386,
638–640, 668, 845, 849–861, 872, 395–403, 445, 459, 460, 464, 465,
877–879, 889, 890, 967, 968–970, 470, 475, 478, 479, 480, 481, 535–
972, 1025, 1040, 1079, 1088, 1091, 537, 549, 753, 755, 763, 823, 835,
1099, 1101–1102, 1104–1109, 1112– 865, 916, 1064, 1065, 1125; see also
1115, 1118–1119, 1121–1122; Chinese- unit
Tai 668 collate / collation 384, 397, 453, 596,
choir book 729, 731, 733, 734, 735, 736, 848, 852, 889–897, 900–904, 908–
737, 738, 740, 741, 742, 745, 747 909, 1100
Christ see Jesus collector 123, 154, 552, 916, 1077–1080,
Christian / Christianity 12, 17–19, 319, 1082, 1084, 1088, 1090–1092, 1102,
375, 396–397, 443, 445, 452, 471, 1114
474, 534, 546–547, 550, 572, 647, colonial 72, 282, 338, 423, 689, 712,
775, 781, 783–874, 880, 917, 948, 874; see also pre-colonial
950, 1064, 1066, 1069 colophon 18, 53, 56–57, 82, 105–106,
chromatography / chromatographic 191, 281, 282, 288–290, 292–293, 296,
196–197, 199–200, 204 300, 302–303, 336, 372, 374, 379,
chromolithography /chromolithographic / 381–384, 407, 424–425, 431, 466,
chromolithographer 732, 735, 738– 469, 472, 551, 647–651, 653–657,
739, 742 659–665, 690, 960, 1011, 1014–1015,
chronicle 77, 147, 341–342, 376, 648, 1063–1064, 1066, 1070, 1077–1081,
656, 669, 798, 871, 952 1083–1093, 1096–1097, 1125, 1127,
church 4–5, 17–19, 24, 33, 317, 320, 1131–1132
347, 387, 400, 469, 473, 479, 572, column (layout) 40–43, 45, 53, 57, 91,
651, 925, 649, 761, 763, 781, 921, 93, 124, 127, 131, 465, 468–469,
1065–1066, 1068–1069; see also 473–474, 494, 502–503, 517–519,
temple 539, 546, 566, 605, 692, 778, 823,
classics / classical 54–55, 183, 229–232, 826–828, 830, 939, 972, 1011, 1082,
237, 239, 242, 251, 334, 412, 571, 1089, 1103–1104, 1125, 1127–1132
623, 625, 627, 631, 693, 845, 852– commentary passim; commentaries (lit-
853, 856, 858–859, 890, 893–994, erary genre) 104, 385, 397, 450,
1079, 1101, 1106, 1109, 1113 464–465, 474, 514, 584, 603, 604,
classical (Greek and Latin Antiquity) 3, 606–608, 611, 614, 691–693, 707,
89, 302, 583, 585, 587, 781, 845, 728, 823–824, 1101, 1110–1111; see
847–849, 851–852, 854, 859, 915, also exegete
933, 934, 948–950 commonplace 116, 464, 475–476, 490
 General Index | 1165

compilation / compile / compiler 37, 105, correction (textual) 128, 130, 349–350,
140, 340, 424, 442, 450, 463–464, 382–383, 588, 592, 761, 830–831,
466, 468, 480, 494, 502, 518, 523– 835, 904, 908, 995, 1015, 1045, 1051,
525, 535, 544, 553, 566, 584–586, 1053, 1060, 1089; see also addition,
589, 633–635, 649, 656, 675, 692, cross-out, deletion, overwrite
694, 755, 796, 806, 851, 854, 856, corruption (textual) 846–847, 855, 859,
890, 897–899, 906, 926, 938, 942, 889, 909, 953
968, 1046, 1065, 1105–1106, 1110, cosmic 1034
1114, 1122; see also anthology, flori- cosmogony 1034
legium cosmological 521, 523, 533, 538, 544–
composite 35–36, 38, 47, 300, 309, 460, 545, 561; mystical-cosmological
515, 535, 563, 565–566, 849–850, 549, 552
1063, 1114; see also miscellaneous court (political or legal) 43, 55, 60, 103,
computation / computing 96, 105, 245– 237, 320, 336, 341, 345–351, 353–
246, 250–252, 260, 267, 513–517, 355, 357–363, 474, 476–477, 629,
519, 521–528, 531, 564, 1025, 1032; 668–669, 682, 687, 694, 801, 871,
see also calculation 880, 894–898, 906–907, 967–968,
computer 174, 245–247, 252, 254, 257– 983, 1043, 1079, 1084, 1093, 1123,
258, 260–265, 267–269, 271–276, 1138
396, 865 criticism (textual or literary) 845–849,
Confucianism / Confucian 54–55, 1086, 852–855, 859–861, 865, 889–890,
1089, 1107–1109; see also Neo- 925, 1107, 1111, 1113
Confucian cross (mark) 350, 902
Confucius 858 cross (object) 19, 20, 652, 778–779; see
contaminate / contaminant / contamina- also cross-like
tion (chemical) 171, 189–191 crosscheck 905, 907
contaminated (textual) 855 cross-out 308, 323, 479–480
content passim, esp. 369–392 (BlocConts, cross-like 411
UniConts); see also guest content, cross-register 707
paracontent cross-reference 16, 590–591, 596–597,
content unit 373, 824 822, 828, 835, 918, 1084
copper 70, 163–165, 177, 220, 223, 225 cross-section 127, 129, 202 (collision
Coptic 13, 16, 19–20, 161, 166, 395, 444, cross section), 241 (Raman cross
447, 1063–1068, 1070, 1072 section)
copy passim; see also duplicate cross-stroke 119, 122, 129
copyist 315, 337, 360, 397, 402, 447, cryptographic 13
474, 518, 524, 653, 737, 739, 753– crystal / crystallise / crystallisation / crys-
754, 756–757, 759, 762, 764, 855, talline 95, 200, 230, 236–237, 239–
879, 947–949, 952–956, 958–959, 241
993, 1016, 1071, 1088, 1099, 1103 cuneiform 67, 68–70, 72, 78–79, 82–83,
corpus / corpora 18, 37, 165, 168, 267, 89–91, 93–94, 96, 99–104, 106–109,
273–274, 334, 387, 398, 412–414, 248, 274
416, 460, 465, 467–473, 480, 499– curriculum 96, 99, 691, 949
500, 503–504, 525, 527, 604, 615, Cyrillic 395, 564, 568–569, 757
715, 784, 851, 853, 889, 934, 936–
937, 950, 960, 1101, 1138
1166 | General Index

dance / dancer 317, 624, 641, 821, 833– divine 71–72, 75, 102, 107, 142, 147–148,
835, 842, 969 150–151, 284–285, 323, 496, 503,
data passim; data mining 247, data 545, 758, 781–783, 785, 832, 940–
model 447; see also database, 941, 947–948, 952, 959, 1066
metadata divinity 148, 785, 1026, 1031, 1034, 1036,
database 162, 191, 196, 202–205, 231, 1038–1040; see also deity
242, 267, 276, 311, 314, 376, 441– DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) 184–185,
442, 446–449, 454, 551, 935, 1065, 188, 190, 193, 872; aDNA (ancient
1110 DNA) 184, 189
decoration 90, 234, 308, 370–371, 379, drama / dramatic / dramatist 551, 570,
389, 392, 405–409, 411, 415–416, 697–698, 714, 730, 763, 798, 957,
475, 527, 647, 730–732, 737–740, 1044, 1051, 1101–1102, 1105–1106,
745–747, 774, 877, 1014; see also 1109, 1111, 1113; see also melodrama
ornament Dunhuang 424, 428–429, 432, 491–492,
decree / decreed 38, 45, 477, 611, 667, 499–500, 502–505, 877
669, 671–677, 680–681, 687, 1045; duplicate 99, 893, 898–901, 906–907,
see also edict 909
deity 71, 151–153, 158, 300, 626, 632– durability / durable 67–68, 71, 89–91,
633, 641, 643, 893, 1009, 1012, 94–95, 100, 162, 229, 401, 873, 855,
1017–1018, 1020, 1022, 1039; see 924; see also sustainability
also divinity dynasty 54, 59–60, 68–69, 72, 139–141,
deletion 307, 321, 323–324, 702, 1051– 147, 157, 426, 430, 502, 627, 668–
1053; see also addition, omission 669, 692, 698, 856, 889, 968, 1082,
demon 70, 547 (demonic), 1025–1026, 1099–1101, 1103, 1105–1106, 1111,
1028, 1035, 1037; see also spirit 1114, 1123, 1130
desert 431–432; Desert of Gobi 423;
Desert of Taklamakan 876 East Asia/Asian 509–510; see also
destruction 69, 72, 143, 153, 541, 668, South-East Asia
778, 914, 918–920, 922–923, 925– eclipse 105, 521, 524–527
927, 1026, 1029, 1033, 1036, 1083 edict 42, 45, 147, 671; see also decree
destructive 186–187, 192, 195, 204; non- editing 295, 593, 847, 851, 933, 935,
destructive 186, 193–194, 224, 993, 1051
229–230, 232, 236, 238, 240, 242; edition 6–7, 12, 15, 41, 140, 170, 295,
see also invasive 296, 301–303, 310–311, 314, 316,
Dhamma 673, 681, 1011–1012, 1014, 324, 335, 378–379, 385, 494, 503,
1017, 1019, 1021–1022 535, 548, 571, 583, 594, 605, 607,
diacritic / diacritical 272, 569, 570, 981, 609, 632–633, 639, 689, 696, 698,
1089, 1097 700, 702, 739, 756, 796, 808, 834–
diagram 516–524, 526, 528, 530, 533, 835, 846, 848, 854, 873, 890–891,
538, 544–545, 552, 560–561, 848, 903, 933–939, 942, 951, 956, 967,
1031, 1034 990, 994, 1070, 1103–1104, 1108,
diaspora 396 1110–1111, 1130, 1133–1134, 1137–
disease 70, 237, 718, 1019, 1026; see 1138
also heal, medicine editor / editorial 7–8, 11, 45, 82, 281,
divination / divinatory 101, 104–105, 107, 323, 338, 376, 379, 383, 442, 528,
797, 848, 1025, 1032 535, 592, 689, 690, 761, 810, 830,
 General Index | 1167

833, 851–853, 889–891, 893, 897– erotic 544, 833, 1108; see also love, sex
901, 909, 933, 936–937, 939, 1110– error 8, 12, 21, 25, 103, 151, 170–171,
1111, 1115 219–220, 319, 375, 543, 593, 694,
education / educational 101, 335, 359, 846–848, 852–853, 855, 858–859,
463, 571, 689, 691, 698, 714–716, 891, 1013; see also mistake
719, 878, 935, 948–950, 983, 1109; ethics / ethical 245, 256–257, 262, 264,
see also school, teaching 273–274, 603, 605, 764, 823, 1107
Egypt / Egyptian 9, 16–17, 20, 67, 89, Ethiopia / Ethiopian / Ethiopic 3–5, 9, 11,
100, 162–163, 165, 240, 337, 585, 13, 16–17, 18, 20–24, 31, 443, 466,
782–783, 1064–1065, 1067, 1069 468, 473–479, 539, 1065–1067; non-
elements (physical) see four elements Ethiopian 10, 468
emendation 8, 298, 846, 848–849, 852, Europe / European 72, 109, 163,–164,
855, 891, 900; see also addition, 168, 309, 311, 333, 339, 341, 346,
correction, deletion, omission 396–397, 401–402, 423–424, 427,
emotion / emotional 351, 799, 802, 857, 452, 460, 513–514, 516–517, 543,
1106 547, 549–550, 552–553, 563, 567–
emperor 7, 12, 36, 39–44, 46, 56, 59– 569, 729–730, 732, 734, 774, 804–
60, 142–144, 146–147, 151–153, 320, 805, 821, 823, 825, 829–830, 846,
430, 729, 834, 852, 889, 895, 934, 854–855, 861, 874, 913–917, 920,
975, 1065, 1067, 1080, 1082, 1089– 922–924, 926–927, 948–949, 957,
1090, 1092 990, 994, 1003, 1032, 1043–1044,
England 309, 346, 353, 739, 832, 840– 1053, 1106, 1128–1129; see also Indo-
841, 1048–1049, 1051–1052 European
engrave 16, 37, 45, 53–57, 59, 61–63, exegete / exegetic / exegetical 54, 595,
65, 76, 89–90, 102, 109, 117, 229– 603, 607, 611–612, 615, 784, 848,
236, 238–240, 242, 270, 296, 406, 859, 1101; see also commentary
409, 668, 738, 741, 1078; see also exorcism 1025, 1034; see also ritual
modelling technique, master pattern
(technique) facsimile / facsimilist 636, 709, 713–
epic 105, 237, 1123–1124 714, 723, 737–739, 746–747, 1104,
epigraph / epigraphic / epigraphy 3–4, 1108, 1113
12, 15, 17, 19, 21–24, 35–36, 38, 41– fake 493, 495, 498, 733, 1135; see also
42, 45, 53–58, 62–63, 69, 89–91, forger
107–109, 115–116, 125, 127, 133, 141, family / familial 45–46, 57, 74, 79, 97,
143, 145, 316, 325, 510, 551, 668, 106, 108, 143, 144, 150, 153, 334,
859–861, 1085; non-epigraphic 18 336, 452–453, 464, 466, 477, 534,
epistemology / epistemic / epistemologi- 540, 542–544, 563–564, 625, 633,
cal 784–785, 866–868, 918 692, 735, 919, 948, 970–971, 976,
epistle 380, 386, 389, 761, 763, 938, 954 982–983, 1009, 1018–1019, 1026,
epistolography / epistolographic / epis- 1048, 1079, 1082–1085, 1087–1089,
tolographer 933–935, 937–938, 1091–1092, 1113, 1128
941–942; see also letter writing fiction / fictional 351, 869, 914, 934,
erase / eraser / erasure 77, 81–82, 96, 1066–1068, 1072, 1101–1102, 1106,
103–104, 107, 140, 186, 192, 194, 1108, 1110–1111
541, 545, 570, 573, 579, 581, 733, fingerprint 163–164, 170, 186, 202–203,
826, 834, 1129 220, 225, 229–230
Eritrea 3–5, 24, 31; non-Eritrean 5
1168 | General Index

fire 68, 94–95, 121, 129, 185, 189, 287, gall nut 163; see also iron-gall
413, 469, 495, 545, 742, 913, 919, Gǝʿǝz 3–4, 7, 12, 16–17, 20, 22–24, 31,
922, 923, 925, 927, 1007, 1011, 1030; 33, 468, 473
fireproof 922–923; unfired 95, gem 6, 7, 41, 229–243, 317, 319, 534,
100, 185 763, 919, 955; gemstone 230, 534
folio passim; see also bifolium gemmological 229–230, 232, 234, 237,
florilegium / florilegia 466, 934, 942; 242
see also anthology, compilation gender 324, 335, 829
fluorescence 161, 163, 167, 213, 216, 224, Georgia / Georgian 647– 657
226; see also X-ray fluorescence Germany / German 307, 310–311, 314,
(XRF) 316, 323, 345–348, 354–355, 357–
forger / forgery 78, 120, 123, 132, 185, 359, 361, 363, 424, 441–442, 448,
269, 382, 729–734, 740, 745, 747, 452, 456, 466, 524, 533, 545, 552,
749, 751, 1088; see also fake 583, 587, 650–651, 669, 914, 947,
formatting 603–604, 611, 615; see also 1045, 1048–1049
layout glauconite 232, 241–242
four elements 545, 1006–1009, 1011– gloss 104, 397, 448, 450, 465, 398, 493,
1012, 1020 497, 498, 502, 594, 614, 702, 708,
Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) 161, 714, 715, 716, 725, 830, 797, 986,
233 987, 1035; diglossic 717; multi-
Fourier-transform ion-cyclotron-resonance glossic 715
(FT-ICR) 201 glossary 293–294, 298, 588, 589
fragment / fragmentary 12, 20, 45, 67, gnomic 307–308, 316
70, 76–77, 81, 83, 93, 100, 129, 150, gold / golden 18, 31, 70, 100, 115, 147,
162, 164, 165, 167–171, 174–177, 196, 196, 240, 389, 390, 392, 466, 479,
199–200, 202–203, 269, 274, 399, 524, 669, 670, 682, 733, 773–774,
424, 427, 430, 440, 444–445, 470, 777–778, 780, 796, 823, 824, 872,
523, 525–527, 533, 553, 564, 586, 957, 1034, 1040, 1043, 1099, 1125–
638, 648, 671, 745, 823, 871–873, 1129, 1131–1132
876–877, 879, 890–891, 896, 898– goosequill 357; see also quill
899, 1064 gospel 18–20, 31, 284–285, 301, 377,
France / French 72, 108–109, 298, 334, 380–382, 385, 389–392, 450, 465,
336, 338–340, 346, 369, 397, 424, 470–471, 479–480, 649, 773–774–
525, 651, 668, 671, 674, 732, 742, 777, 779–780, 785, 1065, 1066
761, 825, 968, 1043–1046, 1048, graphic 9, 12, 14, 20, 331, 396–397, 402,
1051–1053 450, 465, 497, 499, 502, 514, 515–
friendship (in literature) 938, 941, 1083, 516, 519, 522, 523, 526–527, 605,
1084, 1099, 1101–1103, 1105–1110, 708, 745–746, 753, 762, 775, 845,
1112, 1114 856–857, 976–982
FT-ICR see Fourier-transform ion-cyclotron- graphite 213, 218–221, 225
resonance Greco-Roman 35, 164
FTIR see Fourier Transform Infrared Greek 11, 13, 15–20, 22–24, 31, 36–37,
funding 275, 335, 338, 417, 442, 447, 42–44, 46, 72, 89, 101–102, 232,
597, 717 236, 284–286, 376, 395–396, 398–
funerary / funeral 17–20, 24, 144, 146, 399, 468, 470–471, 473–474, 479,
898, 901–905, 908, 1082, 1086, 1138 545, 583–587, 591, 594–595, 603–
604, 607, 648–653, 655, 657, 753,
 General Index | 1169

756–758, 761, 763, 781–782, 835, iconography / iconographic 102, 667,

845, 847–848, 852–854, 859, 868, 669, 775–776, 782, 799, 803, 809,
922, 933, 1066 824, 828, 833, 1126; see also illumi-
grid 7, 119, 122–123, 125–127, 129–131, nation, miniature
518–520, 522, 528, 531, 546, 1085; illegibility / illegible 104, 334, 353, 358–
see also chart, diagram 359, 361–363, 573, 773, 776–777,
guest content / text 533–534, 536, 549– 779, 781, 786–787, 1047, 1050; see
553, 1130 also legibility
gum arabic 163 illumination / illuminator 90, 167–168,
173–174, 179, 216, 225, 312, 396,
halakhic 397–398 729, 731–735, 737–740, 742, 745–
handscroll 1077–1081, 1083–1084, 1087, 746, 774, 780, 795–796, 799, 803,
1093, 1095; see also scroll, roll 821, 824–826, 833–834, 866, 916,
handwriting / handwritten 35, 108, 116, 1013; see also miniature
142, 275, 312, 314, 337–338, 342, imaging 161, 164–165, 168, 171–176,
349, 353, 356–357, 361, 363, 461, 194, 224, 274
479, 548, 573, 588, 636, 639, 746, imperial 42–45, 71, 141, 145–147, 387,
753–754, 758–759, 761, 795–796, 401, 403, 477, 668, 889, 894, 897,
828, 874, 879, 915–916, 918, 921– 906, 908, 934, 983, 1080, 1082–
923, 925, 947, 949–950, 955, 957, 1084, 1090–1092, 1100, 1106, 1130;
1011, 1014–1015, 1031, 1043–1044, see also pre-imperial
1046, 1048, 1052, 1077, 1082, 1088, incipit 20, 105, 379, 447, 450, 524–526,
1103 773–774, 776–777, 792, 821, 826–
heal / healer / health(y) 336, 535, 546, 827; see also opening
548, 553, 567, 709, 717–719, 940, incunabula 281–283, 311
956, 1005–1009, 1012–1014, 1017, India / Indian 281, 299, 303, 335–336,
1019–1020; see also disease, 424, 430, 469, 539, 689, 691–692,
medicine 697, 703, 801, 805, 834, 866, 870–
Hebrew 13, 285–286, 375, 395–400, 878, 880–881, 1123–1124, 1126,
402, 524, 533–540, 542–546, 548, 1128–1131, 1134, 1136–1138
553, 559, 782; non-Hebrew 396 Indo-European 68, 79, 108, 858
Hellenise / Hellenic / Hellenist / Hellenistic Indonesia / Indonesian 796–798, 800,
15, 36, 46, 101–102, 584, 592, 653, 803, 806–807, 877, 880
852–853 infrared (IR) 161, 163, 165, 167–168, 171–
hermeneutic 773, 783–784, 786, 915 172, 174, 176, 195, 213, 216–217, 219,
Himalaya 432, 870, 875, 1025 224–225, 229–233, 236, 241–242;
Hindu 881, 1034, 1126 see also FTIR, IRR, NIR, SWIR
historiated initial 731, 745–747, 823– infrared reflectography (IRR) 165, 168,
826, 833 171, 178, 216–218, 224
Hungary 346, 757, 760, 913 initial see historiated
hybridity / hybrid 298, 463, 639, 707, ink passim, esp. 161–181, 213–227;
1005–1006, 1011, 1016, 1019–1020, inkstone 626; see also carbon, gall,
1022–1023, 1048 plant
hymn / hymnographic / hymnographer inscription passim; see also block, en-
300–301, 463, 648–650, 652–654 grave, multiple-text
intaglio 117–125, 127, 129–131, 229,
231–234, 236–238, 240, 1078, 1083,
1170 | General Index

1085–1086, 1088–1092; see also kaishi (renga manuscript) 625–626,

seal 629, 631–632, 636–639, 643
interlace 408–412, 415–416, 419, 777, 785 Korea / Korean 427, 431, 499–500, 502–
intermediary (manuscript) 606, 611, 832 503, 505, 509, 1080
invasive 186, 191, 193; non-invasive 183, label 72, 99, 107, 465–469, 471–473,
186, 192, 204, 213, 242; see also 475–476, 516, 479, 520–522, 636,
destructive 656, 708, 867, 869–870, 872, 878,
Iran / Iranian 68, 71–72, 78, 89, 238– 899, 998, 1078–1079,
239, 424, 452, 1123–1124, 1126, Lao 497, 503–504, 667–669, 671–677,
1128–1131, 1133, 1136, 1138 680–681, 686, 1014; Lao-China 671;
Iraq 69, 97, 399 Lao-Vietnamese 676; Lao-wo 668;
iron-gall 163–164, 168, 171–175, 177– see also Thai/Lao
178 Laos 667–668, 674–675, 677, 875, 969
IRR see infrared reflectography lapis lazuli (stone) 70–71, 77–78
Islam / Islamic 162, 287, 296, 334–335, Latin 15, 19, 36, 41–43, 89–90, 108, 185,
396, 405, 407, 411, 414, 442–443, 295, 310, 395–397, 399–400, 402,
466, 476–477, 550, 707–710, 714– 471, 473–474, 513–514, 536, 543,
716, 718, 724–728, 795, 798, 801, 546, 584, 755, 760, 765, 774, 782,
880–881, 1069, 1127, 1132 784–785, 821, 824, 845–846, 848,
Italy / Italian 5, 37, 267, 346, 397, 533, 852, 854, 856, 915, 922, 934, 936,
537–538, 543–544, 551, 552, 559, 948, 951–953, 1045
587, 729–731, 736–738, 741, 742, layer 45, 69, 92, 95–97, 117, 121, 234–
745, 753–754, 764, 823–825, 838, 235, 238, 397, 400, 461, 465, 468,
918, 1049, 1093, 1107 553, 563–569, 572, 587–589, 591,
ivory 70, 81, 89, 185, 229, 685, 877 593–594, 596, 605–606, 611, 708,
715, 821, 824, 835, 1047, 1051; see
Japan / Japanese 272, 424, 427, 430– also multilayered
431, 491, 508–509, 623–625, 627– layout 40–44, 314, 350, 374, 376, 383,
629, 631, 633–637, 639–641, 643, 385–386, 397–398, 463, 465, 468,
1079, 1092 473–475, 477, 480, 517–518, 530,
jasper 230, 232, 237, 241–242 566, 572, 604, 606, 612, 623, 626,
Java / Javanese 648, 795–807, 809 629, 636–638, 702, 707, 709–710,
jazz 989, 990, 991, 992, 993, 994, 995, 712–714, 718, 741, 871, 880–881,
998, 999 1045, 1103, 1133, 1139
Jesus / Christ(us) / Jesus Christ 9–10, 15, lead (matter) 70, 164, 177–178, 218
17, 284, 296, 382, 389–390, 392, lead pen / pencil 213, 218–220
651–652, 654, 656, 774, 778–779, lead sheet 989–992, 994
783, 824, 1066 learning 54, 245–247, 250, 252–255,
Jew / Jewish 162, 318, 320, 397, 401– 257, 259–260, 262, 264–265, 273,
402, 533–553, 746; Arabic-Jewish 357, 603, 714, 716, 834–835, 949,
161; non-Jewish 545–547, 553 957, 989, 1109; see also education,
judicial / judiciary 346, 352, 354, 361; school, teaching
see also legality leather 69, 81–82, 95, 98, 101–102, 107,
117, 126, 163, 185, 190, 199, 406, 408,
Kabbala / kabbalistic 534–536, 541 412–413, 802, 876–877
legality / legal(ly) 36–38, 43, 46, 96,
98–99, 101, 102, 107, 166, 273, 334,
 General Index | 1171

336, 338–339, 341, 345–353, 358– Maghreb / Maghrib 405, 333, 335–337,
363, 397, 477, 565–567, 674, 716, 339–341, 410, 414–416, 451–452;
830, 889, 894, 905, 920, 990, 1091, see also Morocco
1100; halakhic 397–398; illegally magic / magical 162, 237, 239, 241, 533–
69; see also judicial / judiciary 541, 544–553, 567, 718, 856, 1006,
legibility / legible 8, 131, 239, 308, 353, 1008, 1026–1027, 1040; non-magical
356–357, 363, 497, 568, 572, 672– 246; see also charm, exorcism, ritual
673, 773, 776–777, 779, 786, 1021; magnetite 232, 237–240
see also illegibility, readability majuscule 19, 373, 649, 654; see also
letter writing / writer 934, 942 capital (letter)
lexical 11, 89, 99, 101, 107, 583–584, Mali / Malian 319, 333, 339–340, 654,
634, 714–715, 845, 856–858, 970, 695, 708, 713, 717, 855
973, 982 marble 71
lexicography / lexicographic / lexicogra- margin / marginal(ly) / marginalia 43,
pher 80, 491, 493–495, 500, 503– 90, 104–105, 320, 322, 324, 350,
505, 508–510, 583–586, 594–595, 370, 371, 376, 380, 382–383, 389,
597, 857; non-lexicographic 503, 392, 395–396, 464–466, 473–474,
508; see also noise 478–479, 518–519, 525, 538, 552,
lexicon 22, 89, 301, 380, 583–597; see 586–590, 592, 603, 605–608, 610,
also glossary 614, 637, 650, 653, 672–673, 689,
librarian 442, 448, 735, 922–923, 955, 700, 702, 708, 716, 719, 747, 753,
1130 758, 821, 823, 825–835, 838, 840,
limestone 71, 73 842, 857, 904, 921, 934, 938, 996,
liner note 989, 997–998, 1002 1011, 1015, 1033, 1045, 1051, 1099,
literacy 19, 139, 310, 345–347, 352, 709, 1101, , 1102–1105, , 1109–1112, 1118,
970, 992, 1017, 1022 1125, 1127–1129, 1131–1133, 1139
literate 101, 153–154, 568, 874, 1000, market 165, 202, 281, 307, 312, 314, 543,
1012, 1019, 1021–1022 920–921, 925, 1091, 1093, 1103, 1108,
literati 76, 1083, 1085, 1107 1112, 1133; mass-market 334
literature / literary passim; non-literary mass spectrometry/spectrometric (MS)
859; paraliterary 166 183, 184, 186–187, 194–197, 199–
lithograph / lithography / lithographic 203
281–282, 289–292, 294–295, 297, master pattern (engraving) 118, 121–123,
299, 302–303, 337, 564, 739, 874, 131–132; see also modelling tech-
879; see also stone nique
liturgy / liturgical 162, 385, 463, 468– material passim; materiality 162, 307,
469, 474, 480, 487, 539–540, 545, 349, 362, 667, 731, 775, 782, 875–
653, 730–731, 740, 745–746, 758, 876, 913–918, 924, 926–927, 948
776, 970 mathematics / mathematical / mathemati-
longhand 353–355, 357–360, 362; see cian 82, 101, 103, 105, 246, 258, 267,
also shorthand 513–514, 518, 521–522, 525–527, 545,
love / lover / beloved 75, 309, 316, 318– 852, 903–904
320, 324, 507, 543–544, 634, 653, Mauritania 333, 341
674, 677, 686, 697, 711, 734, 807, mechanism / mechanical(ly) 117–118,
834, 921, 998, 1044, 1093, 1108, 122, 230, 247, 256–257, 264, 276,
1111, 1114; see also emotion, erotic, 295, 337, 354, 374, 378, 381, 396,
friendship, sex 849, 854, 935, 970
1172 | General Index

medicine / medical / medicinal 70, 101, 593–594, 596, 858, 879, 904–905,
107, 188, 195, 215, 335–336, 340, 514, 1051, 1082, 1089, 1126; see also error
515, 564, 718, 913, 926, 1008–1019, modelling technique (engraving) 123–
1020; see also disease, heal, 126, 130–133, 257
physician mogong 969–970, 973, 975–976, 982–
Mediterranean 80, 89, 229, 396, 403, 983, 985
416, 549–550, 553, 1070–1071 monastery / monastic 5, 58, 145, 150,
melodrama 1044 156, 400, 444, 479, 485–486, 647–
merchant 79, 94, 97, 103, 106, 321, 333, 651, 654–655, 657, 659–665, 667,
336, 341, 686–687, 1080, 1112 677, 736–737, 747, 758–759, 761,
Mesoamerica 67 764–765, 773, 777, 785, 824, 829,
Mesopotamia / Mesopotamian 67–78, 80– 834–835, 871, 941, 948–950, 954,
81, 83, 91, 95–96, 99, 108–109, 399 957–958, 1014, 1018–1019, 1038,
metadata 270–272, 275, 448, 717 1064, 1068–1071; see also abbey
metal / metallic / metallurgy / metallurgi- monk 57, 150, 267, 318, 320, 452, 504,
cal 80, 82, 89–90, 100–101, 107, 634, 649, 657, 754, 756, 759–761,
116, 163–164, 185, 225, 229, 239– 763–764, 871–872, 878, 939, 941–
240, 299, 309, 321 (metalworker), 942, 947, 949–951, 955, 958–959,
397, 479, 670, 872, 876–877, 1034 1008–1009, 1014, 1017–1019, 1021–
metaproteome / metaproteomic(s) 183, 1022, 1034, 1066, 1070–1071, 1082;
186, 188, 190, 193–194, 196, 199, 202, see also abbot, nun
205 monogram 19, 777
meteorite 1040 monograph 10, 370, 373, 1079
metrological 82, 96, 99, 101; see also Morocco / Moroccan 335, 337–340, 405–
numerical 407, 409, 411–413, 421
microscopy / microscope / microscopic mountain 75, 140–142, 149–150, 152–
167, 213, 216–217, 225, 232–233, 153, 287–289, 291, 497, 506–508,
436–437 624, 632, 641, 651, 684, 696, 856,
Middle East / Middle Eastern 90, 163, 968, 975, 994, 1106
400– 402 MS see mass spectrometry
mimesis / mimetic 596, 936, 941, 942 MTM see multiple-text manuscript
mineral 230–231, 233–235, 237–242, Mughal 880, 1124, 1129–1130, 1138
914, 923, 1025; biomineral 199 mulberry / paper mulberry 162, 426,
Ming 54–55, 59–60, 494, 498, 668, 429–432, 437, 675
1039, 1082, 1089, 1092, 1101, 1106– multigraphic 513, 516, 563–564, 821
1111 multilayered 563–564, 603, 1048, 1053
miniature 90, 102, 167, 370, 730–733, multilingualism / multilingual 474, 564,
736–738, 740–741, 745–746, 832, 567, 719
950, 1125, 1127; see also illumination multiple-text manuscript (MTM) 35, 41,
minister 361, 670, 682–683, 684–685, 459–482, 487, 489, 523, 533, 535–
1106 537, 553, 700, 821
minuscule 20, 762, 773, 1035 multiple-text inscription 35, 38, 40, 43, 46
miscellaneous / miscellany 466, 535, multiscript 544, 563–564
633, 756, 764, 934, 1113; see also multispectral 224, 259, 261, 264, 274
composite muscovite 232, 235–236, 242
mistake (scribal) 8, 116, 128, 234, 255, music / musical 67, 84, 147, 274, 370–
350, 375, 376, 448, 450, 568, 586, 371, 384–385, 641, 729, 731, 733,
 General Index | 1173

740–742, 745, 747, 757–758, 764, offering table / offerings 5, 18, 24, 971–
972, 989–1003, 1105; see also chant, 972, 1005, 1009, 1011–1012, 1014,
notation, score 1018–1021, 1027, 1029
Muslim 338, 409–410, 547, 566, 573, omission (textual) 20, 128, 493, 594,
710, 880, 1032 614, 934, 1090, 1133, 1137; see also
mystic / mysticism / mystical 533–534, addition, deletion
536, 538, 541, 544, 546, 549–550, ontology / ontological 865–868, 870, 881,
552–553, 782, 1032, 1123; see also 989
magic opal 230, 232, 241–242
myth / mythic(al) / mythology / mytholog- opening (text) 390, 773, 776, 779, 831–
ical 95, 101, 149, 157–158, 237, 239, 832, 948–949, 974, 976, 983, 997,
547, 595, 782–783, 1017, 1029, 1034, 1033, 1130; see also incipit
1048 optical 163, 214, 222, 230; optical char-
acter recognition (OCR) 273
Near East / Eastern 89–90, 97, 101, 401, orality / oral / orally 97, 149, 301, 316,
845 336, 340, 345–353, 355, 360–361,
near infrared (NIR) 161, 164, 167–169, 363, 472, 643, 711–712, 853, 874–
171, 176, 216–217, 224–225 875, 917, 970, 993, 999, 1005, 1016,
Neo-Assyrian 82, 97, 101–102 1023; non-oral 1005
Neo-Babylonian 81, 95, 104 oriental / orientalist 239, 398–400, 405,
Neo-Confucian 54 409–412, 414, 416, 424, 428, 441–
Nepal / Nepalese 431, 469–470, 472, 444, 448–449, 452, 480, 538, 563,
1026 568, 1064, 1066, 1131
Nippur 76, 77, 96, 548 origami 637
NIR see near infrared originator 44, 351, 734, 989
noise 170, 174, 202, 509, 881; signal-to- ornament / ornamentation / ornamental
noise 202, 204 154, 341, 396, 405–412, 414–416,
notation (also musical) 20, 177, 215, 271, 420–421, 451, 689–690, 692, 695–
274, 385, 550, 729, 731, 733, 741– 696, 699, 773–781, 785–787, 802,
742, 745, 747, 903, 989, 993, 996; 824–825, 830, 1039, 1129; see also
see also annotation decoration
notebook 188, 312, 460–461, 464, 475– orthography / orthographic(al) 4, 12, 21,
478, 481, 563–567, 569–570, 572– 23, 58, 284, 380, 491, 499, 504, 710,
573, 918, 990, 998 856, 879, 949, 1021–1022, 1026
Nubia / Nubian 5–6, 10–11, 15–19 ostracon / ostraca 70, 82, 100, 163, 447;
nude 833, 842 see also potsherd
numeral / numerical 8–10, 13–17, 19– Ottoman 405–406, 415–416, 452, 460,
20, 24, 96, 99, 101, 516, 518–522, 477, 550, 1123, 1134, 1136–1137
528, 537–538, 564, 568, 589, 607, overwrite 53, 56, 60, 127, 252, 309, 479,
647, 718, 827, 1022, 1128; see also 746
alphanumerical, metrological
nun 878 painter 596, 729, 737–739, 741, 774,
781, 787, 1077, 1079, 1084, 1086,
oasis 165, 426, 431, 876, 1067 1088, 1091, 1093, 1110
ochre 70, 77, 178 painting passim, esp. 1077–1097, 1123–
OCR see optical 1145
1174 | General Index

palaeography / palaeographic(al) / palaeo- pen 170, 218–221, 323, 356–357, 540,

grapher 3–4, 6–7, 9, 14–17, 24, 40, 563, 567, 569, 573, 742, 947, 949,
90–91, 108–109, 116, 309, 321, 469, 998, 1100; pen-flourished 825–
508, 536, 538, 587, 612, 753–754, 828; reed-pen 297, 959; see also
757, 759, 761–763, 865, 871, 876, calamus, goosequill, qalam, quill
904 pencil 213, 218–221, 292, 357, 537, 563–
paleoproteomics 183, 204 564, 568, 572–573, 626, 1050–1053
palimpsest 57, 371, 648–649, 746 peptide 184, 186–188, 190–204
palm / palm-leaf / palmette 35, 57, 67, performance 171, 197, 247, 254, 258,
80, 97, 185, 229, 298–299, 409, 411– 273, 348, 463, 472, 474, 476, 630,
412, 480, 667, 669–674, 677–678, 632, 634–635, 641, 798–799, 802,
702–703, 717, 870–873, 875–877, 874, 955, 971, 989–994, 999, 1001–
880, 1013, 1039 1003, 1011, 1016, 1025, 1027, 1029,
Palmyra (Borassus flabellifer) 872–873 1033, 1039, 1043–1046, 1048–1049,
paper passim, esp. 423–440; see also 1051–1052, 1102, 1113–1114; system-
asbestos, mulberry, papermaking, performance 251
staff paper performativity / performative 345–346,
papermaking 171, 423, 425–428, 430, 623, 629, 635, 641, 970
432–433, 438–439, 924 Persian 166, 237, 294, 395–396, 405,
papyrus / papyrology / papyrological 15, 446–447, 480, 563–564, 566–567,
35, 42–43, 67, 70, 81–82, 90, 100– 570–572, 1123, 1125, 1129; see also
101, 107, 161–162, 164, 166–171, Turco-Persian
174–176, 185, 382, 400, 447, 470, petition / petitioner 41–44, 683, 937
585, 859, 933–934, 1066, 1068, 1070 philology / philological / philologist 3,
paracontent 374, 380–381, 383–385, 23, 74, 247, 369, 373–377, 379, 381,
387–393, 473, 533, 536, 539, 549, 451, 702, 753, 755–756, 795, 845–
551, 553, 604, 611, 623, 821–823, 846, 855, 860–861, 865, 889–890,
830, 833, 835, 1014, 1021, 1123, 909, 914–917, 934–935, 1120
1125–1126; see also content, paratext physician 341, 514, 543
paratext / paratextuality / paratextual pictorial 218, 229, 234, 236, 238, 242,
282, 371, 373–374, 380–382, 384, 775, 785, 821–822, 829–830, 833–
386, 388, 390–391, 393, 479, 481, 835
516, 518, 543, 603–604, 607–608, plant 67, 93, 163–164, 174–175, 177–
623, 631, 635–637, 639–640, 689, 178, 187, 274, 336, 428, 430–432,
695, 995, 1009, 1050, 1065–1066; 534, 631, 718, 872–873, 877, 970,
see also paracontent 1025, 1040
parchment 35, 67, 70, 81, 83, 90, 161– plate (binding) 405–406, 416, 669–670,
162, 164, 166–168, 170–171, 174, 756, 1066
185–186, 188, 193, 199, 229, 398– poetic / poetical(ly) 58, 290, 549, 590,
400, 402, 447, 540, 546, 548, 587, 624, 626, 628–629, 632, 638–639,
651, 730–732, 737–738, 740–741, 689–690, 692, 694, 697–700, 709–
745–747, 773, 780, 798, 914, 916, 710, 713, 795, 797–798, 800, 882,
920, 922, 959, 1066, 1070, 1072 956, 983, 1100, 1105–1106, 1123,
part (music) 989, 993–1003 1132
patron / patronage 415–416, 442, 669, poetry 101, 153, 299, 323, 334, 337, 341,
674, 692, 741, 1026, 1033, 1123–1124 466, 476, 478–479, 566–567, 570–
571, 623, 625–632, 635, 638–641,
 General Index | 1175

689, 692, 695, 699, 709, 711, 719, proceedings 43, 144, 345–346, 348–
1079, 1082, 1106, 1114, 1124 350, 353–355, 360–361, 363, 565,
polishing 119, 125, 129–131 972, 1029
politics / politician / political 36, 40, 44, profile / profiling 188, 229, 231, 235, 242
59, 76, 139, 141–144, 146, 149, 153, prompt book 1043–1049, 1051–1052,
310, 337, 359, 509, 572–573, 669, 1056
677, 680, 689, 702, 880, 916, 920, prompter 1044–1045, 1048, 1050
925, 936–937, 1013, 1092, 1123, prooimion 938–939, 941–942; see also
1048–1049, 1052; geopolitics 69 preface, priamel
pothi (pothī) 287–293, 865–866, 868, protein / proteinaceous 163, 184–188,
870–881 190–196, 198–202, 224; see also
potsherd 70, 195; see also ostracon, amino acid
pottery proteome / proteomics 183–189, 195–
pottery 67, 82, 91, 892 197, 199–202, 204–205; see also
pre-codex 516 metaproteomics, paleoproteomics
pre-colonial 674, 675 protocol 12, 43, 161–162, 164, 166, 168,
pre-imperial 849, 851, 852, 853, 854, 890 170, 174, 177–179, 231, 348, 350,
pre-modern 491, 493–494, 499–500, 503, 355, 359, 921
505, 509, 624–626, 849, 916, 947, Prussia / Prussian 346, 356, 361
983 publisher / publishing 290, 293, 295,
preface 494, 627, 689–690, 692–698, 301–302, 310, 334 (sponsor-
700–702, 826, 955–956, 1080, publisher), 369, 454, 729, 958, 992,
1099–1105, 1107–1109, 1112–1114, 1101–1105, 1111, 1114
1119; see also priamel, prooimion punctuation / punctuated 376, 514, 518,
prescript / prescription / prescriptive 41, 526–527, 609, 830, 899, 935, 1104;
500, 856, 894, 904–905, 989, 991– unpunctuated 1104
992 puppet 797–799, 802, 806, 808–809
preservation 67–68, 76, 95, 170, 174,
184, 187, 192, 199, 395, 497, 736, qalam 563, 573; see also calamus
738, 871, 921–922, 925, 1102 Qin 148, 889, 893–897, 900–901, 904–
priamel 307–309, 314–325, 330, 938 907, 909
priest 37, 45, 102, 107, 267, 317–320, quaternion 587, 1066, 1070; see also
322, 650–651 (priestmonk), 782, 950 quire
(worker-priest), 969, 971, 982, 1026, quill 350, 355–357, 1045, 1050; see also
1035, 1086; see also abbot, goosequill
archbishop, bishop, monk, nun quire 312–313, 371, 376, 384, 395–396,
printer / printing 281, 282, 292, 294, 398–403, 407, 474–475, 477–478,
295, 299, 301, 302, 303, 311, 312, 480, 515–516, 518, 523–527, 537,
313, 314, 315, 324, 325, 337, 338, 541, 585, 587, 605, 648, 653–654,
396, 427, 428, 690, 702, 845, 854, 656, 758, 763, 822–823, 825–826,
855, 874, 879, 882, 917, 919, 920, 1045, 1066; single-quire 314; see
922, 957, 1014, 1035, 1043, 1045, also signature
1139 Qur’an / Qur’anic 162, 400, 409, 473,
probatio pennae / calami 322, 371, 537, 707–708, 714–717, 725–728
539–540
1176 | General Index

Raman 161, 229–233, 235–238, 240– ritual 117–118, 141, 143–144, 148–149,
242, see also cross section, spec- 299, 336, 461, 463, 467, 471–472,
troscopy, spectra 550, 626, 632, 713, 719, 878, 903,
readability / readable 58, 101, 240, 322, 967, 969–976, 982–983, 1005–
325, 387, 396, 519, 773, 777–778, 1006, 1008–1009, 1011–1023, 1025–
785–786, 798; see also legibility 1031, 1033–1036, 1038–1040; see
recension 846, 848–849, 859–860 also exorcism, magic, mogong
recipe 161, 163–164, 171, 475, 533–536, rock 53, 56–57, 63, 140–142, 148–149,
538, 552, 564 153, 229–231, 234, 236–237, 241–
records (administrative) 37, 39, 68, 81, 242, 268, 469, 685, 1077–1078; see
140, 141, 151, 165, 345–347, 349, 351, also engraving
353–355, 358–359, 361–363, 475– roll (manuscript) 78, 585, 1066, 1068,
477, 479, 893–894; see also register 1070; see also handscroll, scroll,
recycle 68, 77, 91, 96, 107, 162, 429, rotulus
432, 459, 478–481, 933, 935, 941– roll / roller 98, 100, 102, 807, 1082
942, 997 Roman 36, 39–42, 46, 236, 293, 347,
reed 68, 93–94, 98, 400, 431–432, 567, 546, 564, 567–569, 572, 760, 763,
959, 995, 998; reed-pen 297 781, 898, 947, 953, 1065, 1068–
reflectance see infrared reflectance, 1069; see also Greco-Roman
spectral reflectance romance 807, 1124
reflectography see infrared reflectogra- romanisation 569, 572
phy, UV reflectography romantic 801, 1048–1049, 1053, 1108,
register (book) 311, 453, 464, 476–477, 1110
481, 894, 896, 904, 907, 970–971, rotulus / rotuli 396, 1068; see also hand-
982–983; see also records scroll, scroll, roll
relief 75, 99, 101, 109, 121, 123–125, 128, rubric / rubricate / rubrication / rubricator
397, 1078, 1083–1085, 1087, 1089– 300–301, 308, 514, 518, 526–527,
1092 647, 652–653, 657, 821–828, 830–
religion / religious 99–100, 103–104, 107, 831, 835, 954–995, 997, 1125–1129,
139, 141–142, 147, 149, 151, 153, 156, 1131–1132, 1137
162, 427, 396, 425, 427, 463, 472, ruling / ruled (codicology) 18, 93, 395–
476, 509, 540–541, 565, 571, 626, 398, 474–475, 517–518, 527, 779,
673, 707, 709, 711, 757–758, 760, 1125, 1127–1129, 1131–1132, 1139;
860, 870, 875, 917, 925, 947, 949, pre-ruled 475
951, 953, 955, 969, 996, 998, 1009, Russia / Russian 68, 188, 335, 424,
1013–1014, 1017, 1022, 1025, 1029, 563–565, 568–569, 572, 648, 760;
1137 non-Russian 569
Renaissance 597, 603, 731–732, 735,
737, 740, 762, 848, 915, 927, 949 Saadian 405–406, 415–417
renga 623– 643; see also kaishi sacred / sacredness 53, 299, 472, 479,
repository 23, 191, 270, 273–274, 423– 539–540, 548, 773, 775–776, 782–
424 785, 829, 871, 879, 969, 974, 1017,
restauration / restaurator 413, 922–923 1022, 1039; see also divine, spiritual
revolution / revolutionary 359, 396, 569, Safavid 1123–1124, 1126, 1137
571–572, 854, 874, 957, 990, 1048; Sahidic 1063–1065, 1067, 1075
pre-revolutionary 572 sampling 183, 185–187, 191–194, 204
 General Index | 1177

sandstone 71, 129 (whetstone) shelf mark 177–178, 271, 293, 321, 371,
Sanskrit 281–286, 293–298, 301–303, 376, 444, 446–447, 450, 452, 533–
424, 428–429, 446, 472, 689, 692– 534, 800, 806, 1064–1065
693, 695–696, 698–699, 702, 866, ship 149, 795, 797, 798, 800–808, 873,
876, 879, 881, 1034, 1039 953
Sassanian 238, 239 Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) 168, 174
satellite 690, 700 shorthand 345–347, 353–355, 357–363;
school / schooling 54, 76, 96, 100, 233, see also longhand
290, 310, 690–692, 694, 700, 702– Siam / Siamese 667, 674, 675
703, 786, 871, 881, 922, 948, 950, sieve 167, 223, 431, 432, 438–439
1102, 1108; sub-school 689; see signature 56–58, 63, 66, 284, 337, 350,
also education, learning, teaching 359, 362–363, 567, 824, 829, 904,
score (musical) 370–371, 989–994 957, 1046–1047, 1078, 1081, 1086,
scrapbook 475–476 1088–1090, 1095, 1132; quire
scribal 108, 116, 151, 302, 375, 382, 395, signature 371
474, 499–500, 502, 505, 509, 543, Sikh 881
603, 690, 714, 758, 775, 830, 947, silk 67, 146, 185–187, 190, 425–426,
949, 955, 960, 1131; scribal 429, 431–432, 495, 501, 504, 780,
publisher 1101–1105, 1114 876–877, 1078–1079, 1084–1085
scribble 371, 569 Silk Road 423–428, 430–432, 440
scribe passim; scribe-bishop 753, 760; silver 70, 94, 100, 103–104, 479, 669–
scribe sponsor 1014; see also copyist 670, 682, 773, 775
scripture 427, 471, 502, 667, 773, 776, sketch 41, 51, 81, 117, 124–125, 127–128,
781, 783, 784, 785, 786, 875, 947, 130, 213, 215–222, 340, 452, 918,
948, 949, 956, 1070 991–992, 995, 997, 999, 1001, 1081
scroll 82, 90, 101–102, 162, 164, 396, slave 37, 38, 656
425, 504, 539, 548, 632, 648, 831, Slavonic 757; Byzantine-Slavic 760
875, 879, 1077–1085, 1087, 1089– slip 124, 128, 132–133, 401, 403, 480,
1093, 1104; see also handscroll, roll, 540, 894–905, 918, 1078–1079;
rotulus wood slip 401; see also bamboo
seal 43, 90, 98–102, 121, 147–149, 238– soapstone 230, 232, 234–236
239, 274, 294, 297–299, 362, 363, Sogdian 162, 428, 430
567, 667–673, 675–678, 681, 899, Soninke 708, 713–717
904, 1077–1081, 1083–1093, 1095– South Asia / Asian 281–282, 448, 870–
1097, 1102–1103, 1105, 1112–1113, 872, 874–875, 882; see also South-
1119, 1125–1130, 1132, 1137–1139, East Asia
1141–1144; seal/stamp 99, 297 South-East Asia / Asian 551, 674, 804,
Senegal 333, 339, 708–709, 714 865–866, 870, 872–876, 969; see
Senegambia 708, 713, 717 also East Asia, South Asia
serpentine / serpentinite 230, 232–235, Soviet Union / Soviet 563, 568–569,
237–240, 242 571–572
sex / sexual / sexuality 307, 315, 319– Spain / Spanish 338, 397, 405, 413, 538,
320, 322–325, 349; see also erotic, 541–543, 548, 731–732, 734, 740,
love 745, 747, 1044
Shan 669, 675, 896, 1006 species 152, 184–187, 872
Shang 54, 116–117, 124–125, 129, 131 spectral 173, 231, 232, 234, 236, 242;
see also multispectral
1178 | General Index

spectral reflectance 173 limestone, lithography, magnetite,

spectrometry see mass spectrometry, muscovite, opal, serpentine, soap-
X-ray fluorescence stone
spectroscopy / spectroscopic 161, 202, storage 189, 191, 222, 269–270, 273,
229–233, 235–236, 241–242 469, 922, 1009, 1015–1016, 1066,
spectrum / spectra (light) 163, 168, 169, 1070, 1072; see also repository
170, 176, 177, 201, 203, 204, 224, stylistic 58, 322, 754, 852–853, 879, 950
230, 231, 232, 233, 235, 236, 237, stylus 68, 82, 90, 93–94, 101, 127–128,
238, 240, 241, 261; see also spectral 297, 870, 1028, 1035–1037
spirit 3, 143, 108, 143, 323, 650–651, 742, subarchetype 10
782–785, 787, 969, 971–972, 975– sultan / sultanate 335–336, 338, 341,
976, 1005, 1008, 1012, 1017–1020, 405, 415, 477, 715, 993, 1123–1124,
1022–1023, 1038, 1067 1126–1127, 1136–1137, 1139
spiritual / spirituality 3, 237, 325, 466, Sumer / Sumerian 68, 72, 77, 78, 80, 96,
649–650, 760, 783–786, 829, 832, 101, 104–105, 108
947–948, 951, 959, 996, 1005, 1008, sustainable / sustainability 263, 273,
1017, 1019–1020, 1022–1023 441, 448, 449; see also durability
sponsor 334, 1014; sponsor-publisher sūtra 53–60, 62–64, 878, 1079
334; sponsor-scribe 1014 Sūtra Stone Valley 54–60, 62–64
Sri Lanka 871, 873 SWIR see Short-Wave Infrared
stage (theater) 1043–1045, 1047–1049, symbiosis / symbiotic 869–871, 875–
1051–1053 881
staff paper 995, 998 symbol / symbolic / symbolically 67, 79,
stamp 91, 99, 119, 294, 298–299, 321, 231, 237, 240, 248, 294, 377, 540,
362, 371, 405–412, 422, 669, 676, 543, 545, 667–668, 670–671, 673,
742; seal/stamp 99, 297; see also 677, 779, 782–823, 829–830, 874,
seal 996–997, 1000, 1014–1016, 1021,
stanza 284, 289, 299, 302, 470, 472, 1089
690 Syria / Syrian 162, 649
statue 40, 70–72, 101, 151, 194, 427 Syriac 13, 395–396, 399–400, 424
stele 41, 43, 47, 58–59, 66, 75–76, 101,
139, 141–147, 149–153, 158 Tǝgrāy 5, 485, 486
stemma (codicum) / stemmatic / stemma- tablet 68–71, 76–83, 89–97, 99–108,
tology 450, 606, 611, 848, 850– 143, 152, 163, 185, 229, 248, 274,
852, 859–861, 933, 935 782–783, 871, 949, 1034
stenography / stenographic / stenographer tadpole 148–149, 157
347, 359, 361–363 Tai 667–671, 673, 680, 967, 968–969,
stick-lac 667, 669–671, 673 982, 1006, 1011; Tai-Kadai 967; Tai
stone 24, 36–38, 45, 54–60, 62–64, 67, Lao 675; Tai Lü 680; see also
69–73, 75–77, 79, 81, 83, 89–90, Chinese-Tai
100–103, 107, 109, 139–144, 146– Tai (Mount) 53, 58, 62–64, 66
148, 150, 152–153, 157, 229, 233– Tajikistan / Tajik 162, 563–564, 567–573
234, 237, 239, 242, 270, 500, 668, talipot 872–873, 878
779, 782–784, 914, 924, 949, 1102, Tamil 667, 689–699, 701–702, 870,
1107; stonecutter 8, 12, 16, 21; 873, 880
stone worker 76; see also agate, tea 333, 335–337, 339–342
antigorite, glauconite, jasper,
 General Index | 1179

teaching 57, 102, 145, 247, 549, 603, transmission 36, 46, 173, 311–312, 320,
677, 692, 695, 781, 797, 853, 989, 371–372, 375–377, 381, 425–427,
1016, 1108; see also education, 450, 459, 461–462, 468–469, 472–
learning, school 473, 535, 549, 588, 606, 611, 689–
temple 37, 58, 66, 69, 71, 74, 76–78, 81, 690, 692–693, 696, 700, 702–703,
93, 95, 99, 101–102, 106–107, 149, 713, 756, 845–847, 851, 854–855,
151–153, 157–158, 164, 292, 626, 859–861, 871, 933–936, 939, 942,
638, 669, 871, 1018–1019, 1111; see 1101–1102, 1115, 1138–1139; non-
also church transmitted 859
testimony 36, 79, 316, 339, 345, 347– transportable 96, 97, 107, 387
348, 350, 359–362, 415, 696, 782, trial (court) 347–348, 350–351, 363, 570
935, 1084; see also witness Turco-Persian 870, 880, 881
textual passim; non-textual 154, 385, Turfan 424, 428–429, 432, 448, 491,
808, 1021; see also unit (textual), 879 (Turfanfund)
paratext Turki 564, 566–567, 569–571
Thailand / Thai 272, 667–669, 673–675, Turkic 424, 430, 446, 880
677, 680, 686, 870, 872, 969, 1005– Turkey / Turkish 108, 447, 452, 460,
1006, 1009, 1013, 1018, 1019–1020, 466, 651, 754; Persian-Turkish 443;
1023; Thai/Lao 675; see also Tai Arabic-Turkish 444; see also Turco-
Tibet / Tibetan 424, 428, 430–431, 446, Persian
870, 874–875, 877–880, 1025–1026, typeset / typesetter 287, 295, 297, 301,
1031–1035, 1037; Tibeto-Burman 671 1113
Timurid 1123–1124, 1130, 1138 typewriting / typewritten/ typewriter
Tocharian 424, 428–429 359, 362–363, 729
tomb 58, 401, 425, 892–894, 898, 901– typography / typographic(al) / typographed
905, 1067–1068; tombstone 1085 15, 281–282, 289, 294–295, 299,
transcript / transcription / transcriptomics 302, 312, 314, 854, 917
6, 12, 41, 142, 154, 183, 300, 345–
346, 349, 351, 353, 359, 361, 363, Uighur 428, 879
414, 543, 624, 711, 753, 755, 834– ultraviolet (UV) 161, 163, 167, 189, 200,
835, 894, 898, 905, 985, 989, 991, 213, 216–217, 224–225, 232
995–996, 1002, 1079, 1093 Umma (city) 92
translation 4, 7–8, 11, 14, 18, 21–22, 42, unfired see fire
54, 104, 122, 125, 239, 282, 285– unit passim; unit (codicological) 35–
286, 295, 301–302, 308, 335, 340, 36, 38, 46, 300–301, 401–402, 460,
348, 351, 359, 361, 405, 464–465, 464–465, 470, 475, 478–481, 535,
471, 473–474, 478, 540, 543, 564, 755, 763, 823, 835, 1063, 1065, 1072;
570–571, 613, 624, 636, 648–651, unit (textual) 465, 467, 468, 469,
655–656, 667, 669, 675, 677–678, 535, 549; see also content
680–681, 686, 692, 696, 712–717, UV see ultraviolet
719, 729, 784, 806, 823, 826, 847– UV reflectography 161, 163, 224
848, 850, 858, 868, 872, 890, 893– Ur 68–69, 72, 76–78, 80, 92
898, 905, 936–937, 940–941, 948, Uruk 82, 95, 101–102
952, 976, 1011, 1025, 1035–1036, Uzbek 569, 1123–1124
1040, 1047, 1049, 1053, 1066, 1070,
1086–1087, 1105–1106, 1110–1111,
1134
1180 | General Index

variation (graphic, textual) 471, 522, 430, 535, 566, 626, 651, 691, 700,
528, 614, 689, 708, 710, 715, 799, 703, 757–759, 832, 848, 850, 855,
805, 829, 834, 845, 853–856, 859, 859–860, 891, 893, 907–909, 935,
879, 900, 915, 936, 942, 1008, 1138 1000; see also testimony
vernacular 281, 297, 302, 311, 713–714, wood / wooden / woody 67, 70, 76–77,
717–718, 856, 881, 921, 953, 967– 79–83, 89–90, 95, 100–101, 105,
969, 976–978, 980–982, 1011, 1016– 107, 121, 140, 143, 147, 152, 163, 185,
1017, 1021–1023, 1101–1102, 1106 190, 297, 299, 401, 707, 871, 873,
Vietnam / Vietnamese 678, 967–968, 876–877, 889, 971, 1028, 1038,
976–982; see also Lao-Vietnamese 1105; heartwood 685;
visual 40, 118, 141, 167, 214–215, 224, agarwood 870, 877; see also
229–230, 373–376, 381, 385–386, xylography
397, 428, 465, 516, 518–522, 528, woodblock 500, 854, 875, 877, 879–
641, 718, 742, 773, 775, 779, 781, 880, 1102, 1104, 1028 (wooden block)
786–787, 800, 825, 830–831, 847, woodcut / woodcutter 312, 1106
909, 1013, 1021, 1092, 1104, 1125, workshop 127, 133, 311–312, 412, 414–
1133 416, 426, 464, 564, 588, 597, 731–
visual organisation 39–40, 43, 312–313, 732, 824–825, 828, 835
473, 522, 527, 731, 775, 777–780,
782, 786, 821–825, 832, 1104 X-ray 167, 226, 248
visual pattern 274, 1021 X-ray fluorescence (XRF) 161, 163 (spec-
vitriol / vitriolic 163–164, 177–178, 225; tometry), 167–171, 176–177, 213, 216,
non-vitriol 163, 170, 174 218–219, 225–226, 248
volvelle 1025–1026, 1029, 1031–1033; xylography / xylographic 311, 315–316,
see also wheel (chart) 330, 854, 874–875, 879–880; see
Vorlage 474, 585, 891, 908 also block book, wood

watermark 223, 307, 309, 453, 515 Yemen / Yemenite 446, 451–453
wax 67, 70, 77–83, 89–90, 95, 100–101, youth book 1099–1107, 1109–1114
185, 672
Western Asia see Asia Minor
Zhou / Western Zhou 117–118, 120–122,
wheel (chart) 236, 545, 1025, 1032; see
124–125, 132, 850, 860
also volvelle
zidishu see youth book
witness (textual or legal) 37, 43, 98–99, zooarchaeology 186
149, 341, 348, 350, 352–353, 355,
362, 372–375, 378–379, 382, 386,