ИСТИНА

The Russian Collection of Dunhuang manuscripts is one of the major and most unique Dunhuang collections in the world. Nowadays this collection dating from 6th-11th centuries is kept in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, St. Petersburg and counts more than 19,000 items. As in ancient times and the Middle Ages Dunhuang was a stronghold of the Chinese Empire on its western borders and was then transformed into an important transit point on the Silk Road, it is necessary to study its manuscripts to discover new hidden sides of cultural code of Chinese civilization and its contacts with foreign countries. The author decided to explore “transformation texts” (bianwen, 變文), a scientifically important and unique part of the Russian Dunhuang Collection. Bianwen is a narrative genre of Chinese vernacular literature, that is introduced in the form of retellings of the complex texts of the Buddhist sutras in readily available language.