Dunhuang

In 1900, the Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu discovered in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang a walled-up "library cave" (Cave 17) holding tens of thousands of manuscripts from the 4th–11th centuries. In 1907 Marc Aurel Stein took a large part of the collection (now in the British Library), in 1908 Paul Pelliot took another (now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France); later materials went to the Oldenburg (Russia) and Ōtani (Japan) expeditions. Among the manuscripts are dozens of Daodejing copies: the Wang Bi text, the Heshanggong commentary, the largely lost Xiang'er commentary (想尔注), fragments of Yan Zun, and more. The Dunhuang copies are the principal source of early medieval readings and the main bridge between the Mawangdui silk texts and the printed editions.