DUMAQU

 

DUMAQU (or Domoko), administrative center of the eastern region of the Khotan oasis in Chinese Turkestan. About 20 km to the north are the ruins of Old Domoko, a settlement abandoned in 1840. Manuscript fragments to which the name Dumaqu or Domoko has become attached were actually excavated by native treasure hunters in the numerous ruined towns of the region dating from the 6th-8th centuries; they were purchased by traveling scholars from dealers on the spot or in Kašgar and Khotan (Gropp, pp. 23-25, 364, 368, fig. 2/65, with references to earlier excavation reports). Sir Mark Aurel Stein labeled a few manuscript fragments in Khotanese, Old Indian, and Chinese in the British Library, London, with the letters DK (for Domoko), though they actually came from the ruins of Uzun Tati and Balawaste. Many of the texts bought in 1914 by A. H. Francke for the Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich, and in 1928 by Ernst Trinkler for the Preussische Akademie in Berlin were labeled with the same letters. The beautiful manuscripts of the Suvarṇabhāsa Sutra in Khotanese and the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sutra in Sanskrit, which are divided among many collections, also belong to this group (Bechert, p. 21; Yuyama, pp. 29, 49).

 

Bibliography:

H. W. Bailey, Indo-Scythian Studies V. Khotanese Texts, Cambridge, 1963, p. 106.

H. Bechert, Über die “Marburger Fragmente” des Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Kl., 1, 1972.

G. Gropp, Archäologische Funde aus Khotan, Chinesisch-Ostturkestan. Die Trinklersammlung im Überseemuseum, Bremen, Monographien der Wittheit zu Bremen 11, Bremen, 1974.

S. Konow, Zwölf Blätter einer Handschrift des Suvar-ṇabhāsasutra in Khotan-Sakisch, SPAW, Phil.-hist. Kl., 18, Berlin, 1935.

A. Yuyama, A Bibliography of the Sanskrit Texts of the Saddhar-mapuṇḍarīkasūtra, Oriental Monograph Series 5, Canberra, 1970.

(Gerd Gropp)

Originally Published: December 15, 1996

Last Updated: December 2, 2011

This article is available in print.
Vol. VII, Fasc. 6, pp. 585-586