Reviews Of Diffeent Books

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

Page 59

REVIEWS
253
Jens Peter Laut, Der frühe türkische Buddhismus und seine literarischen Denkmäler (Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica, Band 21). In Kommission bei Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1986. X, 228 pp. DM 60,
In his preface the author stresses the importance of the Old Turkish literature for Indian and Buddhist studies. He points out that among the fragments of Uigur texts are Buddhist texts which are not known elsewhere or which differ greatly from versions in other languages. As examples he mentions the Uigur Daśakarmapathāvadānamālā which shows a structure in ten Karmapathas not found in any other collection of legends and the Maitrisimit which, although based on the Tokharian Maitreyasamitinātaka, differs considerably from it. Laut concludes his remarks as follows: "In jedem Fall ist sicher, dass auch die Turkologie einen eigenständigen Beitrag zur buddhistischen Literaturgeschichte leisten kann."
In the introductory chapter Laut discusses the “Sogdian hypothesis" and points out that the discovery of a Sogdian inscription near Bugut in Mongolia renders it probable that the Turks used the Sogdian script in the sixth century for writing Turkish and that the Sogdians have been active in propagating Buddhism under the Uigurs in Mongolia. Laut remarks that the "Sogdian hypothesis” is supported by Old Turkish Buddhist texts which contain a greater number of loan-words from Sogdian than other texts and which show the characteristics of the ñ-dialect, the language of the Manichaean Turkish texts. These texts are clearly differentiated from the great mass of Old Turkish texts written in the language of the Old Turkish koine and in which loan-words from Tokharian are predominant. The two Old Turkish "pre-classical” texts which Laut examines in his book are the Säkiz Yükmäk Yarok sūtra, a Turkish version of a Chinese apocryphal text probably compiled in the first half of the 8th century, and the Maitrisimit.
Before examining the loan-words and the dialectical features of both texts Laut reports on the history of the study of Maitrisimit. The discovery in 1959 of 293 folios of a manuscript in Hami and the publication of several chapers of this manuscript enable the author to identify many fragments and to analyse differences between the manuscripts from Hami and Sängim. As concerns the Säkiz Yükmäk Yarok Sūtra, the author does not make use of the edition published by W. Bang, A. von Gabain and R. Arat in 1934 because it does not faithfully reproduce the readings of the London scroll, but quotes from the scroll itself.
The main part of Laut's book is devoted to a study of the orthography and language of these two texts and to the study of the loan-words in them.
Indo-Iranian Journal 32: 1989.