Monthly Photos　Nov 2023

Photos taken by ILCAA staff and associates are posted here once a month; most of them are taken during their field research in Asia and Africa.

(The copyright belongs to the photographers.)

Small fragment inscribed with Tangut script preserved in the Xixia Museum

Specializing in Xixia Studies, I used to attend the “conference of the Xixia Studies” held in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China (the land Xixia used to own) at least once a year before the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the excursion, a visit to the “Xixia Museum” was always organize. Frankly speaking, I grew weary of repeatedly viewing the same exhibition year after year.
However, it has been impossible to look at the original in Tangut script for several years due to the Corona crisis and 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the summer of 2023, I was invited to an in-person conference and had an opportunity to encounter the “Tangut script preserved in foreign countries” once again after a long separation. It was a precious experience to actually observe even a small fragment like this, which was too fragmented to grasp the meaning of a passage engraved in it. I prayed that the times where we could conduct overseas research into the original as a matter of course would come again.

August, 2023
Xixia Museum, Xixia District, Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China
Photograph by Shintaro ARAKAWA