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| Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences | |
|---|---|
| Name | Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences |
| Native name | Институт восточных рукописей Российской академии наук |
| Established | 1818 (as Asiatic Museum), 1930s (current lineage) |
| Location | Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| Type | Research institute, manuscript repository |
| Parent organization | Russian Academy of Sciences |
Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a premier research institution and manuscript repository in Saint Petersburg, maintained by the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Institute preserves, studies, and publishes collections of manuscripts, printed books, and archival materials from regions including Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Its holdings and scholarship connect to international projects involving British Museum, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Vatican Library, and university centers such as Columbia University, University of Oxford, and Harvard University.
The Institute traces institutional antecedents to the Asiatic Museum founded under the auspices of Alexander I of Russia and directed by figures associated with the Russian Geographical Society and Imperial Academy of Sciences. During the reigns of Nicholas I of Russia and Alexander II of Russia, collectors such as Nikolai Petrovich Pavlov, diplomats posted to Beijing and Tehran, and scholars tied to expeditions led from Irkutsk and Orenburg augmented the collections. The early 20th century saw acquisitions from expeditions organized by Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov, Sergei Oldenburg, and purchases from antiquities markets in Lhasa, Samarqand, and Dunhuang; these were consolidated after the revolutions associated with February Revolution and October Revolution into Soviet-era institutions overseen by figures aligned with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Post-World War II reorganization under the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation produced the modern Institute, which engaged in exchanges with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, National Library of India, and museums in Japan.
The Institute’s collections comprise manuscripts in scripts and languages including Tibetan script, Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, Arabic, Old Uyghur, Mongolian, Manchu, Japanese, and Chinese. Major named holdings include documents from the Dunhuang manuscripts corpus, codices from Turfan oasis, paper fragments from the Samarqand archives, and birch-bark manuscripts associated with sites near Novgorod and Buddhist centers. The library also houses printed rarities such as block prints from Nara period Japan, lithographs from Calcutta, and diplomatic archives from Russian missions in Tehran, Beijing, and Istanbul. Holdings intersect with manuscripts catalogued by the International Dunhuang Project, the Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts, and collections referenced by scholars at SOAS University of London and the Leiden University Library.
Scholarly activity centers on philology, paleography, codicology, and textual history linked to figures such as Sergei Oldenburg, Vasily Radlov, and Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov. The Institute issues journals and series that have appeared alongside publications from Brill Publishers, Cambridge University Press, and national presses in China and Japan. Research themes include Buddhist studies linked to Nāgārjuna, Islamic manuscript traditions associated with Ibn Sina and Al-Biruni, Central Asian Turkic texts related to Mahmud al-Kashgari, and East Asian commentarial traditions referencing Kūkai and Confucius. Collaborative projects have been conducted with the International Dunhuang Project, the UNESCO Memory of the World program, and university centers such as University of Tokyo and Peking University.
Conservation laboratories at the Institute employ techniques for paper stabilization, ink analysis, and binding restoration informed by methodologies from the British Library conservation unit and the Getty Conservation Institute. Cataloguing follows standards that enable integration with international bibliographic systems such as WorldCat and specialized registers used by the International Dunhuang Project. Digitization initiatives have been coordinated with partners like the British Library and Bibliothèque nationale de France to produce high-resolution images for scholarly access, comparable to digitization efforts at Tibetan and Himalayan Library and the Digital South Asia Library.
The Institute organizes exhibitions in Saint Petersburg that highlight items connected to exhibitions at the Hermitage Museum, Russian Museum, and the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg. Past exhibitions have explored themes tied to Silk Road exchanges, Buddhism, Islamic Golden Age, and the cultural history of Mongolia and Tibet. Public lectures, seminars, and collaborations with institutions such as the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies and the Association for Asian Studies promote outreach, while catalogues produced for exhibits have been cited in international scholarship.
Administratively, the Institute operates under the Division of Humanities of the Russian Academy of Sciences with governance by a director and scientific council. Its staff includes curators, conservators, cataloguers, and researchers who liaise with embassies of China, India, Japan, and Turkey for acquisition provenance and repatriation dialogues. Funding streams have included state allocations, grants from entities such as the Russian Science Foundation and international cooperation agreements with the European Union cultural programs.
Prominent scholars associated with the Institute or its predecessors include Sergei Oldenburg, Vasily Radlov, Nikolai Yadrintsev, Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov, B. I. Pankratov, and more recent directors who have fostered ties with Sergei Starostin-era linguistic projects and collaborative teams involving Nicholas Sims-Williams, Pavel Lurje, and Matthew Kapstein. Visiting researchers and fellows have included specialists from University of Cambridge, Princeton University, Heidelberg University, and national academies in China and Japan.
Category:Research institutes in Saint Petersburg Category:Libraries in Saint Petersburg Category:Russian Academy of Sciences institutes