Early in the 20th century a hidden cache of manuscripts was discovered in the monastic cavecomplex of Dunhuang in Central Asia. The majority of the manuscripts, dating from the first millennium C.E.，are in Chinese and Tibetan. The largest collections of Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang are in France and England. However，the fact that there are collections of almost equal size within China is hardly known outside of that country. In this article，I report on the nature and size of these Chinese collections, and the results of my own examination of the collections in Dunhuang. This information largely completes the puzzle which was left to us after the dispersal of the manuscripts to various institutions, and allows us to attempt a reconstruction of the contents of the original ‘library’ of Tibetan manuscripts in the cave in Dunhuang.
