The Newly-Assembled Precious Dual Maxims is one of the most fascinating xylographs in the collection of Tangut manuscripts and incunabula in the Leningrad Branch of the Oriental Institute of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. It is valuable not only as a book produced almost eight centuries ago and preserved practically in its entirety, but also as a monument of Central Asian mediaeval literature, basically of folklore.
The measurements of the original are 21,5 by 15 centimetres; the space occupied by the text is 17.5 by 12 centimetres. It has been stitched in «butterfly» shape, in the early form widely used in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the Far East and particularly in China. Typical of this style is the regular alternation on the sheet of one side filled with text and the other blank. Tangut pagination (this is an important point, as there are books with Chinese pagination in the Tangut language) is uninterrupted from page one to thirty-one, thus forming sixty-two pages of text. There are seven lines of text on each page. The number of printed signs in a line is not always the same but ranges from ten to sixteen. The signs are standardized clear-cut and well printed. They are not all the same size; this depends upon the number to a line Previous to restoration, the book was bound in coarse unbleached linen…
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