ABSTRACT
The script and language of the Dunhuang medical manuscripts present a complex picture. One finds formal (楷) and cursive (草) styles, as well as ancient (古), vulgar (俗) and loan (通假) forms of the script and also unusual lexical forms. This situation creates certain difficulties for the task of ‘transcribing the script’ (釋字) and ‘determining the reading’ (釋讀). * While recognizing that since the time of the discoveries at Dunhuang enormous advances have been made in this work, one must say, to put it bluntly, that problems, both big and small, still exist, and that hope for a radical advance in this field must start with facing up to those problems. This chapter presents a small number of examples of such problems. These examples illustrate some of the difficulties encountered in reading and transcribing Dunhuang medical texts. In proposing solutions, we have looked for principles which arise out of the nature and history of the Chinese script. Our hope is that, if other scholars find this method useful, they may join us in the attempt to establish a more general, systematic procedure for the transcription of Chinese manuscripts.
