The Line Drawing of Dunhuang 敦煌白畫

Between 1978 and 1979, Professor Jao Tsung-i lectured at École Pratique des Hautes Études in France. During this period, he studied extensively the Dunhuang manuscripts taken to France and discovered that the scrolls contained sketches on their ends and on the back of the manuscripts. He thoroughly studied these sketches and later he researched the same type of line drawing on the Dunhuang manuscripts housed in the British Museum. His finds were published by the École française d’Extrême-Orient in a book entitled The Line Drawing of Dunhuang. This was the first publication in this field, in which Professor Jao demonstrated using firsthand material showing this form of early Chinese human figure painting, a field that has long been neglected. This work also presented precious information on paintings during the Tang Dynasty.

法國遠東學院出版之《敦煌白畫》為饒宗頤教授於一九七八年至一九七九年在法國高等研究院講學期間，遍閱法京所藏敦煌卷子，得見卷末及卷背之白描畫稿，又參與大英博物館所藏敦煌卷子後的同一類型線描畫稿而成之專著，開創研究敦煌白描畫樣新領域，亦是自古以來第一本這方面著作，為唐代繪畫增添了重要史料，亦提出了一向未有人注意到的第一手有關中國人物畫的資料。

原書以中文、法文兩種文字出版。香港大學饒宗頤學術館將此書重新編印，分成中文、英文及日文三種版本，並以饒教授白畫方面的創作為插圖。