IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
216 A POLYGLOT TEMPLE LIBRARY CH. LXIX
not a translation from some Buddhist or other imported religious text, as is the case with most early Turkish language remains so far recovered. It contains a collection of short stories on men and animals, bringing out points of moral instruction for children and youths, and the author's own colophon records occasion, place, and time of writing. Though the date given in the usual Turkish cyclical years cannot be accurately determined, it is improbable that the manuscript is later than the eighth century.
Old Turkish translations of Buddhist canonical works are represented by half-a-dozen books in the so-called Uigur script which developed from Syriac writing, and was in use already for Sogdian texts. Several of these books are perfectly preserved volumes, counting hundreds of pages and largely interspersed with Chinese rubrics and glosses (Fig. 192, 4, 6). My friend Dr. E. Denison Ross has been able to identify in at least two of these volumes translations of different portions of a commentary on the Abhidharmakosa, a famous Buddhist metaphysical work, which H süan-tsang was the first to transplant into Chinese from its Sanskrit original. In spite of the difficult contents, there is reason to hope that a detailed study of these Uigur versions, such as Dr. Ross is now engaged upon, will materially enlarge our knowledge of the early Turkish vocabulary.
I have already explained how sadly I felt on the spot my total want of Sinologist training with reference to those masses of Chinese manuscript which formed the preponderating bulk both of the hidden library and of what I was able to bring away from it. Helped by Chiang-ssû-yeh's zeal and intelligent interest I had, indeed, endeavoured, while any selection was possible, to secure Chinese manuscripts
mainly from those ` miscellaneous ' bundles in which documents and secular writings of various kinds seemed to be
more frequent than among the closely tied packets of rolls
with Buddhist canonical texts (Fig. 194). But even if Chiang had been a scholar trained in Western methods
of research, it would have been difficult for him to find time for any systematic selection under the conditions
it :I!
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