Nikolai Nevsky, Ishihama Juntarō, and the lost "extended manual" of Tangut characters with Tibetan phonetic glosses

Abstract

<p>Shortly before his return from Japan to Russia in 1929, the prominent Russian Orientalist and Tangutologist Nikolai (Nicolas) Aleksandrovich Nevsky (1892–1937), best known for his successful decipherment of the extinct Tangut language and script, prepared and left in Japan some kind of a glossary, an extended manual of Tibetan phonetic glosses for more than 500 Tangut characters, which was planned to be sent to the Tōyō Bunko for publication. However, this work was not published, and the manual was lost for decades and literally forgotten by scholars. This article is an investigation into the fate of this lost work prepared by Nevsky and a report on its re-discovery. Based on the study of his academic activities in Japan, it presents four photographic copies of Tangut fragments with Tibetan phonetic glosses and seven non-inventoried Nevsky’s notebooks from the Ishihama Collection of the Osaka University Library. Our careful examination and preliminary study of these notebooks reveals that three of them are most likely the complete lost manuscript of the extended manual and the four photographs are its integral part.<br></p>