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Takata Tokio

• The Tibetan dominion over Dunhuang (786–848) had an inevitable influence on the social life of the Chinese inhabitants. The manuscripts, both Chinese texts written in Tibetan script and Tibetan texts recognized as being for use by Chinese people, indicate the existence of a "Tibeto-Chinese community" in Dunhuang. This assertion can be supported by Chinese poems, transcribed in Tibetan script, as well as by association (Chin. she 社) documents and texts on the Chinese Five Surnames theory written in Tibetan. This article puts its focus on when and how this Tibeto-Chinese community was formed, and how long it had lasted. The Tibeto-Chinese community remained in existence even as far as the Guiyijun period (from 848 until the beginning of the 11th c., 歸義軍), which can be observed through two-time varying systems of Tibetan transcription of Chinese characters—one is the dialect of Chang‘an (長安) and the other is the local dialect of Dunhuang (敦煌), a variety of the North-Western dialect of Chinese. As a supplementary material to reinforce this argument, the author also presents the Chinese text Yuan xinlang (願新郎 [Prayer for the Groom]—a text to be recited for wedding ceremonies) written in Tibetan script which can be dated to the Guiyijun period.