passages in the Fathers of the Church show, was long a serious rival to Christianity on the shores of the Mediterranean.
But apart from this quasi-historical interest, the Manichaean relic from the ` Thousand Buddhas ' has proved also of philological value. Dr. A. von Lecoq, the distinguished Turkologist savant of the Royal Ethnographical Museum at Berlin and the successful leader of the second German expedition to Turfan, who was kind enough to undertake its publication, has shown in an annotated edition recently brought out in the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal that the Tun-huang manuscript contains the most complete text so far known of the ` Khuastanift ' or Confession Prayer of the Manichaean auditores or laymen, in its early Turkish version. Only about one-tenth of the text at the cornmencement has been lost, and this could fortunately be supplemented from fragments now at Berlin. Without going into details it will suffice to mention, in Dr. von Lecoq's words, that " its excellent state of preservation and the fact of its being written in the clear unequivocal letters of the Manichaean alphabet render this manuscript a most valuable help to all interested in the study of the ancient Turkish speech."
For the same reason another unique ` find ' from the walled-up library claims mention in this place. It is a small manuscript book of over a hundred pages in that earliest Turkish writing designated Runic Turki, known until recently only from the famous Orkhon inscriptions. Some fragmentary leaves in the same script resembling in appearance the runes of the North had turned up at Turfan, and I myself had come upon a sheet of it in the ruined fort of Miran, as already related, as well as some fragments among the contents of the Tun-huang cave. But the little book just referred to is complete from beginning to end (Fig. 192, 3), and by far the largest literary text in that script.
Its value is much increased by the fact that, according to a communication of Professor V. Thomsen, who has honoured me by accepting the task of publishing it, the book is probably an original composition in Turkish and
IIIF Color HighRes
