Costantino Moretti: "Mix-ups and Touch-ups in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Manuscripts"

Abstract:

The analysis of corrections found in medieval Chinese manuscripts provides important information regarding the copying process and the various phases of manuscript production in a scriptorium or in a private context. These elements can reveal the characteristics of the “source manuscript” used by the scribe, as well as specific copying techniques and other elements fundamental to the understanding of a given textual tradition or context of production. Moreover, Dunhuang manuscripts not only provide technical information concerning scribal practices used to highlight, rectify, or select textual and character variants in Buddhist sūtras or commentaries in an intermediate stage of production/standardization, but also provide evidence attesting to the “textual evolution” of certain scriptures, as well as to the alteration of their structural and formal organization in given historical periods. Many corrections found in medieval manuscripts typically concern character variants/mistakes, as well as characters or sentences omitted due, for example, to the phenomenon referred to as saut du même au même, and in most cases, these corrections would seem to be linked to unintentional errors that the scribe has made while copying the “source manuscript.” However, in other examples, the interpretation of the mechanisms leading to the production of specific mistakes is more complex than expected. In the present paper, I will analyze documents providing information on similar phenomena in Dunhuang Buddhist manuscripts and other pertinent sources.

Bio:

Costantino Moretti is Associate Professor in Chinese Medieval Buddhism and Dunhuang Studies at the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO, Paris), and member of the Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l’Asie Orientale (CRCAO). His main fields of interest are Dunhuang manuscripts and mural paintings. He teaches courses on Chinese manuscript culture, and history and philology of Chinese medieval Buddhism at the École Pratique des Hautes Études-Université PSL. He is the author of Genèse d’un apocryphe bouddhique (2016) and co-editor of La Fabrique du Lisible (dir. Jean-Pierre Drège, 2014). He is also subeditor for the Encyclopaedia of Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures-Universität Hamburg). In 2017–2021, Costantino Moretti was appointed Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Professor in Chinese Medieval Buddhism at the EFEO. He was a visiting professor at Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures-Universität Hamburg (summer 2022), and at the Institute for Research in the Humanities (Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo) of Kyoto University (fall 2023). Costantino Moretti is head of the EFEO Tokyo Centre since September 2024.