OM RAS Tangut Fund History: Hypotheses Based on Some New Facts
In this article some new facts and hypotheses concerned the IOM, RAS Tangut collection’s cataloguing and description in the period of 1910s-1930s are presented. This data is based on research of description records in the No. 1 and No. 2 inventory books of the Tangut Fund. The main idea assumes that along with N. Nevsky and A. Dragunov other Asiatic Museum researchers could participate in the initial stage of the Tangut Fund inventory work. This hypothesis is based on the obvious difference in handwritings especially in records of inventory book No. 1. It should be noted that all evidences about this period in the Tangut Fund research history are both precise and exiguous in the same time. It is enough to mention the absence of the necessary dates of recordings and names of persons who made it. Considering the whole history of P. Kozlov collection and great interest to collection’s research can we assume that more than one or two well-known researchers of AM described it too? Maybe yes. Because, apart from “incognito” hand in the first inventory book, we find oblique or indirect confirmation to it in personal correspondence of N. Nevsky himself. So, despite the significant and basic contribution of Nevsky to first cataloguing work with Tangut books biggest collection, it is logically to propose that it should be “collective” work too. If we follow the research history of Kozlov archeological findings after Khara-Khoto and then, we recognize the rightfulness of this assumption.