This handbook was compiled for the use of students beginning their study of Turfan. Input into a PC, using Twin Bridges software for Chinese (which has, alas, many bugs, and which we hope will be superseded by a better system) and Microsoft Access (which also has more than a few idiosyncrasies and conflicts with Twin Bridges), this database aims to facilitate research in the Turfan materials. The inputting was done during the academic year 1996-97 in New Haven by Deng Xiaonan (Tulufan chutu wenshu), Rong Xinjiang (other Chinese materials), and Zhang Guangda (the non-Chinese materials), with the assistance of Eric Rasmussen and Larissa Schwartz of Yale University and Wu Jianguo from Yunnan University. During 1998 Elizabeth Owen and Katherine Lee (both from Yale) did the entries for all artifacts, and Valerie Hansen translated many entries into English.

Each entry includes the following heading, some of which may be blank. Diane Perushek of Northwestern University helped us to design this template. Any information of which we are unsure is in parentheses.

Because the handbook is designed for students, the compilers have not included any document fragments so small that they cannot be used for research. Admittedly we have had to make a series of judgement calls. Sometimes we have included documents consisting of a single character when it seemed significant to us, yet omitted longer documents of negligible use.

New users may simply want to read through the entries in numerical order to familiarize themselves with the wide range of materials and languages in the form of documents and artifacts both Chinese and not available for study. Researchers with specific interests may use the on-line version to search for materials relevant to their study. In short, the aim of the database is modest. We hope to point the way to materials that students may not know about. Previous research on Turfan has focused on Chinese materials at the expense of non-Chinese materials. Art historians have tended to use only visual materials, while historians have systematically ignored material culture. If the database succeeds in breaking down some of these entrenched research habits, we will be delighted.

• Key Words include broad rubrics, such as "monastic economy" or "women", and more detailed headings like "silver coins" or individual place names. English and Chinese are both given, and difficult-to-translate technical terms are sometime left in pinyin.
• Title of the document or artifact, usually as given in the published version. If more than one title is used in different books, we have chosen the one we think most suitable. Occasionally, we have created a new one.
• Date of composition, if given, in both the original language and converted to calendar years. We may assign an item to a dynastic period on the basis of style or quality of paper.
• Languages used in the document.
• Photographs of Original usually refers to published photographs, but we sometimes refer to a photograph held by the Turfan project at Yale.
• Transcription either into Roman letters or into standard Chinese characters. We have used the principle of the "earliest and the latest," so that we include the first path-breaking studies of a given document and the most recent, which should include references to any intervening studies.
• Translation of an original document into another language.
• Described in which secondary works. We do not aim to be comprehensive here, but hope simply to guide students to materials they may not know about. These entries give author and date of publication; they are keyed to the bibliography.
• Material description highlights any unusual materials used. We do not note when a document is written on paper.
• Physical description can include dimensions or unusual coloring.
• Comments and notes we have used to include anything else we think important for students to notice about a given item.
• Cross-reference highlights other documents or materials of a similar nature that students should compare with the given item.
• Identification number as used by the institution which currently holds the item in question. According to the numbering system of the Xinjiang Museum, each document has been given a registered number showing the year of excavation, the site at which it was found, the tomb number, and the item number. For example, 73TAM506:4/35 refers to the document no. 4/35 excavated from tomb no. 506 at Astana in 1973. Likewise, 75TKM96:33(a) refers to document no. 33, recto, excavated from tomb no. 96 at Kara-khoja in 1975.