British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
A HUNDRED YEARS OF DUNHUANG, 1907-2007
Abstracts
The earliest Sogdian texts: Stein's ‘Ancient Letters’ and the newly discovered inscriptions from Southern Kazakhstan
Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams, School of Oriental and African Studies
As was demonstrated by W. B. Henning, the so-called ‘Ancient Letters’ unearthed by Sir Aurel Stein at a site near Dunhuang can be dated to the early 4th century C.E. on the basis of references to contemporary events in China. However, their long-established status as the earliest known Sogdian texts of any significant extent is now called into question by the discovery of several fragmentary Sogdian inscriptions in A. N. Podushkin's excavations at Kultobe in in Southern Kazakhstan. While both groups of texts contain archaic features which shed light on the development of the Sogdian script and language, a comparison shows clearly that the Kultobe inscriptions are even older than the ‘Ancient Letters’