Conference by Alexander Zorin, member of CRCAO-TRACT Team, at Maison de l’Asie, 22 avenue du président Wilson, 75016 PARIS.

In 1721, the Paris newspaper La Gazette published news about mysterious writings brought to Russian Tsar Peter the Great from the ‘Kalmyk lands’ (referring to the upper Irtysh region, now part of Eastern Kazakhstan). It was soon determined that the writings were not Scythian, as the Tsar had hoped, but rather ‘Tangut’ (Tibetan). Nevertheless, Peter wished to understand their content, and one folio was sent to the French Academy of Sciences. A translation was produced, which, although it bore little resemblance to the original text, marked the beginning of European translations from Tibetan. The folio remains in the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, along with other folios in Tibetan and Mongolian, brought from two abandoned Buddhist monasteries of the Oirats in the 18th century. In my talk, I will present this earliest collection in the context of the history of Oriental studies in Europe and the study of the Buddhist canon.