SI 3656 and other Kuchean tablets related to the Kizil grottoes in the St. Petersburg Collection

This paper introduces five wooden tablets written in Kuchean (Tocharian B) and kept in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences (IOM, RAS), namely SI 3656 (SI P/136в), 3669 (SI P/139д), 6385 (SI Strelkov-D/3), 1931 (SI Strelkov-D/51) and 6456 (SI Strelkov-D/85). THT4063, an unedited tablet kept in Berlin, the text of which is largely parallel with SI 6456, is also introduced here. According to the joint authors’ investigation, which has been ongoing since 2009, these tablets are economic and administrative documents, and some of their features are comparable with the Kuchean sale contract THT4001. The severely damaged SI 1931 is particularly valuable because it proves that three currencies circulated in pre-Tang Kucha. Together with THT4063, the other four tablets are closely related to the Yurpāṣka Monastery, which is repeatedly mentioned in the findings from the Kizil grottoes as well as the graffiti surviving there. Therefore, the content of these tablets helps scholars to restore the history of this important Buddhist site as well as the activity of foreign expeditions in Chinese Turkestan.

Kucha, Tocharian, Kizil, Buddhism, Central Asia