National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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| 0364 |
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 |
Citation Information
OCR Text
Samarkand and Bukhara. The Sogdian script is derived
from Aramaic, and varieties of the same Semitic writing are
used also in a series of manuscripts containing Turkish texts.
Among these is a fine roll containing an early Turkish
version of the confession prayer of the Manichaeans (Fig. 92).
Evidently Mani's church, which during T'ang times had
carried its propaganda into China itself, had its worshippers
also in Tun-huang. Its priests there, as elsewhere, could live
peaceably by the side of Buddhist monks and would benefit
by the attractions which the Thousand Buddhas presented
as a popular pilgrimage place. But perhaps the most curious
evidence of Manichaean presence is afforded by a complete
little book (Fig. 92) in that oldest form of Turkish script
which, from its resemblance to the Runic alphabets of
Northern Europe, is known as 'Runic Turkish'. It is a book
of stories composed for divination, and the late Professor
Thomsen, the famous decipherer of that script, has char-
acterized it as the "most remarkable, comprehensive and
also best preserved" of the rare relics that have come down
of that earliest Turkish literature.
With this curious relic of a race and language that have
spread from the Yellow Sea to the Adriatic, I may close
this brief account of all the strange links between the
ancient East, South and West, which have come to light
at that crossways of Asia that is Tun-huang.
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157
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168
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178
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189
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200
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212
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327
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431
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442
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466
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477
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491
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502
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513
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525
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537
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550
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561
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571
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578
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