Written
Monuments
of the Orient
Volume 7, No. 1(13), 2021
ISSN 2410-0145
Issued twice a year
Full text as a *.PDF file
CONTENTS
Olga Lundysheva, Dieter Maue,
Klaus Wille. Miscellanea in the Brāhmī Script from the Berezovsky and Krotkov Collections (IOM, RAS)
with an Appendix: ВФ-4190 — 3
The main part of this article provides a complete edition (description, transliteration,
transcription, preliminary translation, annotation as well as the reproduction of
the photographs) of forty-two fragments in different languages, circulated along the
northern Silk Road, today in the territory of modern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
(PR China) in pre-Mongolian times: Sanskrit, Tocharian A/B, Old Uyghur [hereafter:
Uyghur]. Their common feature is the use of the standard North Turkestan Brāhmī
and its Tocharian and Uyghur varieties. In terms of content, the fragments include extracts
from Buddhist texts such as Abhidharmadīpavibhāṣaprabhāvr̥ tti, Prajnāpāramitā,
Prasādapratibhodbhava, Prātimokṣasūtra, Pravāraṇasūtra, Saṃyuktāgama, Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra,
Udānavarga. There are also some Tocharian B document fragments.
Several of these texts are found on the back of Chinese scrolls. The Chinese texts have
been identified. Where possible, a reconstruction of the relevant section of the scroll has
been added. An introduction provides general background information. The lexis of the
edited manuscripts is given in concordances.
Key words: Sanskrit, Tocharian A, Tocharian B, Uyghur, North Turkestan Brāhmī, Buddhist
literature, Mātr̥ceṭa, Prasādapratibhodbhava, bilinguals (Sanskrit – Tocharian A,
Sanskrit – Tocharian B, Sanskrit – Uyghur, Tocharian B – Uyghur)
Peter Zieme. An Old Uyghur Translation of the
開蒙要訓 Kaimeng yaoxun — 71
The verso of a scroll of the Old Uyghur version of the Säkiz yükmäk yaruk
sudur contains an Old Uyghur translation of the Kaimeng yaoxun 開蒙要訓, a textbook
for learning Chinese which is known from the Dunhuang finds only. The Uyghur fragments
of this version are preserved in the Serindia Collection of the Institute of Oriental
Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as in the Turfan Collection of
the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In this paper one section
is given in transliteration, transcription and in translation based on the Chinese Vorlage.
Key words: Kaimeng yaoxun 開蒙要訓, Turfan, Dunhuang, Chinese teaching books, Old
Uyghur translation
Ayşe Kılıç Cengiz, Anna Turanskaya.
Old Uyghur Sitātapatrā Dhāraṇī Fragments Preserved in the State Hermitage Museum — 100
Due to the publication of Nikolai Pchelin and Simone-Christiane Raschmann
“Turfan manuscripts in the State Hermitage — a rediscovery” published in 2016, it became
obvious that some manuscript and blockprint fragments in different languages used in
Central Asia, that had been discovered in the course of four German Turfan expeditions
(1902–1914) and later housed in the Museum für Völkerkunde (Berlin) for exhibition
reasons, nowadays are preserved in the depot of the State Hermitage Museum. The present
article deals with two Old Uyghur fragments of Sitātapatrā dhāraṇī blockprinted during the
Yuan era. This paper presents codicological description of the fragments, and transcription,
transliteration, translation and facsimiles of the preserved parts of the text.
Key words: Old Uyghur Buddhist literature, Old Uyghur blockprinted editions, State
Hermitage Museum
Hartmut Walravens. Letters from Stanislas
Aignan Julien (1797–1873) to Baron Paul Ludwig von Canstadt (1786–1837) — 118
Julien was one of the outstanding Sinologists while Schilling von Canstadt is
known as an inventor, as an Orientalist, a printer, and a bibliophile. The latter assembled
a great many rare books in Chinese, Manchu, Mongol and Tibetan which later enriched
the collections of the Russian Academy of Sciences. As a printer he mastered the intricacies
of handling Oriental scripts by means of lithography and paved the way for cost
effective and aesthetically satisfactory Oriental printing in Europe. The following letters,
so far unpublished, give an insight into the relationship of the two scholars.
Key words: Schilling von Canstadt, Paul (1786–1837); Julien, Stanislas Aignan (1797–
1873); Chinese book collections in Europe
