Digitisation of 2,000yr old Buddhist scroll

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Fishnut
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Digitisation of 2,000yr old Buddhist scroll

Post by Fishnut » Fri Dec 13, 2019 1:35 am

A Buddhist scroll from the Peshawar valley in Afghanistan has been digitised. Atlas Obscura describe the painstaking work that went into unrolling the scroll back in 2005. It's written on birch bark and the glue has disintegrated leaving incredibly fine sheets that are extremely vulnerable to shattering with even the slightest disturbance.

The scroll has since been translated from the ancient Gandhari, and it retains,
around 75 to 80 percent of the original text—one of the better-preserved Gandharan scrolls in existence, [Jonathan Loar, South Asia specialist at the Library of Congress] says. It tells the story of 15 seekers of enlightenment who came before and after Siddhārtha Gautama, the sage living in the 5th or 6th century B.C. who became known as the Buddha.
The digitisation is quite remarkable. It can be found here. The script is different to anything I've seen before and you can see knots and the grain of the bark. It's incredible to think you're looking at a text written so long ago and so far away, and now it's accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

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bolo
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Re: Digitisation of 2,000yr old Buddhist scroll

Post by bolo » Fri Dec 13, 2019 4:09 am

I have visited the lab where they did this. They do some really cool stuff there.

bmforre
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Re: Digitisation of 2,000yr old Buddhist scroll

Post by bmforre » Fri Dec 13, 2019 6:58 pm

This unrolling illustrates the incredibly broad offerings from LoC.

Here's something from more modern history:
Musical celebration of justice catching up with General Custer:

General Custer's Last March

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