Up to that time Sung wood block prints had been considered by scholars to be the be-all-and-end-all of Chinese literature and art history; suddenly there appeared from Tunhuang more than 40,000 manuscripts concerning the activities of people in the Tang dynasty, a huge number of concrete records of every facet of life at that time that could only enrich other areas of research.
當時宋朝刻本已被研究中國文史、藝術學者視為寶拱璧，敦煌卻忽然出現四萬多卷唐人留下的手抄本，林林總總，具體記載了當時的各種生活情形，豐富了不同學科領域的研究。