ABSTRACT
Among the documents discovered at Dunhuang 敦煌 are 12 physiognomy manuscripts which restore to us previously unknown texts and illustrations on a subject for which source material is rare. The 12 Dunhuang manuscripts can be classified in four groups: four versions of a text on physiognomy (Xiangshu 相書) in 36 chapters attributed to Xu Fu 許負 of the Han dynasty and 12 other diviners; 1 a text on general physiognomy in two badly damaged fragments; 2 a text on divination through the examination of marks on the body (P. 3492 V°) and two series of illustrations with captions; 3 and lastly on the recto of the Pelliot manuscript P. 3390, an illustrated text dating to the mid-tenth century where the sole divination method consists in the examination of the complexion. This chapter therefore chooses to compare the latter text with earlier, contemporary and later medical sources which set out methods of diagnosis using the examination of the complexion.
