Turfan Texts

Within the relevant literature there have been different (often conflicting) approaches to the issue of the sources of the Gospel of Thomas. This topic is connected to the relationship between Th and the Synoptics (and other early Christian texts)—hence, to the vexata quaestio of Th’s
“dependence”/“independence.” The article begins with some methodological considerations on the composition and sources of Th, also trying to provide a list of the sources that have been proposed for this gospel. The second part examines the possibility of a relationship between Th and the Pauline epistles, a theme which is emerging with new perspectives in the research on Th’s sources and parallels: some of Th’s logia seem to have connections with certain Pauline trajectories and texts. The final part focuses on Th 17 and 1 Cor 2:9, also exploring
their relationship with some parallel texts (e.g. 1 Clem. 34.8, Turfan M 789, and 1 John 1:1), in order to investigate the possible sources of Th 17.

吐魯番隨葬衣物疏中五道大神與果願大德比丘解題

中文摘要        "版權所有 引用請註明出處"
        他界觀科層化現象，意即將他界的架構想像為與現世中國官僚制度相對映的信仰概念，普遍被學者視為是中國宗教裡的一個重要特徵。中國宗教中他界觀科層化現象，自漢代起，最早具體呈現在前漢與後漢墓葬如遣策、地券以及鎮墓文，其後為道教、佛教吸收，發展成在喪葬儀式中所使用的牒文等。本文研究在吐魯番所發現六、七世紀高昌時期現存最早佛教墓葬衣物疏形成的起源。雖然經過一千多年，六、七世紀高昌時期佛教衣物疏中，佛教法師與他界五道大神聯繫的文書形式內容，與現代台灣佛教喪葬使用的三寶司牒文相較，仍存在相當程度的類似性。雖然根據史料，在四、五世紀甚至更早以前佛教已盛行於吐魯番地區，不過在高昌時期以前，吐魯番地區的墓葬卻極少發現關於佛教的文物。以往學者如馬雍以為這可能是因為佛教只盛行於上層貴族之故。  根據衣物疏的內容與形式，韓森 (Valerie Hansen) 認為這些吐魯番佛教衣物疏，不僅是佛教僧侶介入信眾墓葬的證明，同時也顯示佛教也由中國傳入吐魯番。  這些學者解讀吐魯番地區墓葬的論點，基本上是建立在墓葬中顯示的宗教觀與死者生前的宗教信仰應該是一致的前提下。
        不過，在本文中，我質疑這個前提是否適用於所有佛教徒的墓葬。我認為在探討佛教徒的墓葬時，有必要先釐清兩個重要的議題 第一：佛教教理與中國墓葬傳統相容性的問題。特別是佛教在印度與中國發展早期，在面對不同的環境以及文化條件時，如何處裡死者遺體的態度與方式。第二：印度與中國佛教僧侶在喪葬儀式中的角色。包括佛教僧侶在喪葬儀式中的主要工作，以及僧侶與葬儀人員及死者家屬在葬儀中的互動。
          我的研究顯示，最初，佛教僧人在喪葬儀式的主要角色就是誦經迴向功德給死者。在處理死者遺體的議題上，早期印度佛教中，因應不同環境條件，有不同處理死者遺體的方法。印度並沒有類似中國式的土葬葬儀，而在印度象徵尊貴的火葬，要到唐宋時期才逐漸被中國人接受，不過，這種在印度，因應不同狀況，有不同方式處理死者遺體的彈性態度也出現在六朝時期的重要偽經，《灌頂經》中。關於喪葬議題，《灌頂經》提到：只要是在依附佛教信仰的前提下，中國式的喪葬儀式傳統可以被視為是正確的喪葬處理方式。以在五世紀北涼時期吐魯番墓葬中發現的北涼王沮渠蒙遜之妻彭氏為例，她極可能如其夫婿及家族，也信仰佛教，不過在其衣物疏及墓葬文物中，並未發現有與佛教相關者。但是，這並不意謂在她的喪葬儀式中一定沒有佛教僧人的參與。可能佛教僧人有為死者誦經迴向功德，只是這樣的角色不一定能具體顯現在中國式的墓葬中。
          其次，關於高昌時期佛教衣物疏，有兩個問題已經困擾學者多年。第一，許多衣物疏都是由署名果願的僧人來聯絡他界的五道大神，不過由於最早與最晚提到果願的衣物疏相隔近一世記，所以，有些學者們懷疑果願可能是某種神聖稱謂，而非真有其人。第二，衣物疏中經常有語意片斷不完整文句，其中部分死者，特別是女性姓名常有留白、不詳的情況。在分析這些高昌時期佛教衣物疏時，過去學者有兩個基本的態度: 第一，佛教衣物疏是佛教僧人終於介入中國式墓葬儀式的證明。第二，他們傾向選取較完整正確的樣本研究，並視其他語意不全的樣本是因書寫者中文能力不足之筆誤。
        然而，高昌時期衣物疏中，僧人的出現並不意謂他們取代原先衣物疏中葬儀專家的角色。因為衣物疏本身陪葬物的內容還是必須有葬儀人員介入，所以這些佛教衣物疏所隱含的葬儀互動架構，應該不僅僅是建立在佛教僧侶以及信眾雙方間的互動，這個架構應該還包括葬儀專家在內的三角配合關係。在我的研究裡，我認為我們不能將那些在高昌衣物疏中，常見的死者或僧人之身份留白、語句顛倒不完整或語意錯誤單純視為是書寫者的錯誤。事實上，這些錯誤顯示反而為我們理解葬儀的互動架構提供許多線索。因此，不同於以往學者，傾向只選取少數內容較完整的衣物疏或墓葬為對象，並試圖將之解釋為處理高昌佛教衣物疏的較正確做法，我選取四個分別出土兩個以上衣物疏的家庭墓葬，作交叉分析比較，並輔以其他有特殊情形的個別衣物疏。我發現，雖然整體來說，高昌佛教衣物疏的書寫者對當中與五道大神聯繫的文書內容有一定程度的共識，但是他們之間對於文書內容的宗教目的、意義、忌諱似乎存有幾種不同的詮釋，有些甚至有可能是出自於誤解。即使是有出土佛教衣物疏的墓葬，有些似乎不見得實際上有佛教僧人的介入，它們的存在，有可能只是被葬儀人員當作是流行的或是具有避邪功用的陪葬物。換句話說，在墓葬的三角架構裡，三者之間的互動模式是有多元的可能而非只是依照某個單一模式。而且，在這個三角架構裡，葬儀人員或專家往往扮演著解讀這些吐魯番佛教衣物疏的關鍵角色。

Evidence from Chinese documents supports the hypothesis that Sogdians dominated Silk Road trade in East Turkestan during the seventh and eighth centuries. The merchants lived and/or traveled among a diaspora of Sogdians who settled in the oasis cities of the region and also practiced farming and handicraft making. Some traders traveled the entire distance between China and West Asia, but others operated along circumscribed routes that connected to the broader commercial network. Residents of the diaspora facilitated trade by acting as cultural intermediaries for unassimilated merchants.

Diese Publikation wurde einem anonymen, internationalen Begutachtungsverfahren unterzogen. This publication was subject to international and anonymous peer review. Peer review is an essential part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press evaluation process. Before any book can be accepted for publication, it is assessed by international specialists and ultimately must be approved by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Publication Committee. Die verwendete Papiersorte in dieser Publikation ist DIN EN ISO 9706 zertifiziert und erfüllt die Voraussetzung für eine dauerhafte Archivierung von schriftlichem Kulturgut. The paper used in this publication is DIN EN ISO 9706 certified and meets the requirements for permanent archiving of written cultural property.

Old Uigur administrative orders are indispensable sources for historical reconstruction of the taxation system in the Thrfan Uigur society under the domination of the Qoco Uigur Kingdom and the Mongol Empire. The author has been engaged with the philological edition of the administrative orders, and in this presentation I would argue how to date the orders and the related problems, mainly on the chronological transition of the taxation systems behind the texts.

What do dice and gods have in common? What is the relationship between dice divination and dice gambling? This interdisciplinary collaboration situates the tenth-century Chinese Buddhist "Divination of Maheśvara" within a deep Chinese backstory of divination with dice and numbers going back to at least the 4th century BCE. Simultaneously, the authors track this specific method of dice divination across the Silk Road and into ancient India through a detailed study of the material culture, poetics, and ritual processes of dice divination in Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian contexts. The result is an extended meditation on the unpredictable movements of gods, dice, divination books, and divination users across the various languages, cultures, and religions of the Silk Road.
Link: https://brill.com/view/title/59960

The purpose of this study is to investigate the global phenomenon of Manichaean magical practice. Studies of magic in the Classical, Semitic, Iranian and South Asian cultural spheres have, to a large extent, ignored the parallel traditions of Manichaean magic that grew up alongside these more dominant traditions. While an impressive body of literature has accumulated around pagan, Jewish, and Christian magic in the antique Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, since 1947 only a handful of articles have been published dealing with Manichaean magic. This is in part because of the small corpus of Manichaean magical texts that survive and because of the formidable challenges that the material’s array of languages and cultural influences presents. In this study I look globally at the different manifestations of magic in Manichaean communities from the earliest traces of evidence in late antique Egypt and Mesopotamia, to the last manifestations on the early Medieval Silk Road. In doing so I hope to understand what was a constant in Manichaean magic throughout this expanse of time and cultural and linguistic alterations and analyze how these cultural goods traveled and transformed across Eurasia

Item ВДсэ-524 in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is an amulet scroll written in Syriac which was discovered by the Second German Turfan Expedition (1904-1905) and kept afterwards in the Museum of Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde) in Berlin. The artifact originates in the Turkic-speaking Christian milieu of the Turfan Oasis, probably from the Mongol period. The text, however, reflects a long tradition of magical literature that goes back to ancient Mesopotamia and can be categorised as a piece of apotropaic (protective) magic. The article contains an edition of the Syriac text with translation and a discussion of its place of discovery, its overall composition and specific words and expressions found in the text. The authors point out likely connections between the Hermitage amulet and the Turfan fragments SyrHT 274-276 kept in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz and briefly discuss its similarity with amulet H彩101 discovered in Qara Qoto by the 1983-1984 expedition of the Institute of Cultural Relics, Inner Mongolia Academy of Social Sciences.

Abstract

The Khaganate (or Qaghanate) of the Türk, centered in the Central Eurasian steppes, was one of the hegemonic powers in Eurasia during the second half of the 6th and the first part of the 7th centuries C.E., exerting suzerainty over large parts of the Eurasian continent. The constituent hallmark of the empire of the Türk was the principle of collective sovereignty, vesting legitimate rule over the Türkic realm in the Ashinas lineage. This tradition – like other ideological as well as structural key features of their polity – the Türk inherited from their various predecessors in the steppes, notably the Xiongnu and the Rouran. Türk rule had a long-lasting impact on imperial ideologies and structures of governance in Eurasia down to the time of the Mongol Empire. Like the pax Mongolica in the 13th century, the unification of territories under Türk rule, from Manchuria in the east to Crimea in the west, resulted in a considerable increase of trans-cultural economic and diplomatic exchanges across Eurasia.

Keywords: mid-6th–mid-8th centuries CE ; Chinese Empire; Eurasia; imperialism and conquest; nomads; steppe

This article examines a fragmentary Christian text from Turfan written in Uyghur which contains an embedded Syriac magical text intended to be used for capturing a horse. After giving a transcription and translation of the Syriac passage and setting it in its literary context, including the role of amulets and other magical texts in the history of Syriac Christianity, the article discusses the angelic name Saraqael found in the Syriac extract, in an effort to trace the origins of the text. Excurses are given on the book of I Enoch and the Book of Giants, the first because the angelic name is found in it, the second because of its connections with the Aramaic and Central Asian cultural zones. The article then examines another text where the angelic name occurs, the Pishra de-Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa, before discussing possible links to other Syriac amulets and incantation bowls.

The earliest existing Chinese Buddhist manuscript found in the world, the Buddhasaṃgīti-sūtra, was excavated at Toyuq in Turfan, and was dated the sixth year of Yuankang 元康六年 （296 CE）, in the Western Jin. It was a copy by Dharmarakṣa’s (384-433) monk disciple Zhu Fashou 竺法首. (Figure1, 1a) Who was one of the distinctive Buddhist scribes in Dharmarakśa 竺法護 translation team. During the period when Buddhism was initially transmitted into China, historical documentation and archaeological findings both demonstrated the sacred Buddhist writing by Buddhist monk scribes from Central Asia played a key role in transmission of Buddhism without borders. It also enhanced producing the diversity and vigorous calligraphic styles in China during 3rd to 5th century. However, before the 20th century, early Buddhist scribes or foreign calligraphers were unknown in history of Chinese calligraphy or official records. This paper aims to examine the early sacred writing culture with a broader and more in-depth study of the extent and nature of the role of the Central Asian Buddhist scribes, as well as the significance of their calligraphic expertise to the history of Chinese calligraphers and calligraphy.

The whole volume is available: https://emagaza-tdk.ayk.gov.tr/assets/ebook/1946.pdf

Turkish versions has been already published: "Eski Uygur Hukuk Belgelerinde Geçen borun ve borunluq Üzerine" in Eski Türkçeden Çağdaş Uygurcaya (Konya, 2015); and Japanese version "Joint Surety Association in the Old Uigur Society in Turfan" in The Worlds of Dunhuang-Turfan Documents and Their Ages (Tokyo, 2017).

A fragmentary Christian Sogdian version of the Six Books on the Dormition of Mary from Turfan has recently come to light, but the place of this narrative within the larger context of Eastern Christian Marian literature has not yet been studied in detail. One distinguishing trait of the Sogdian fragment is the topographic shift in the discovery story which prefaces most versions of the Six Books. Whereas according to the Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic versions two monks from Sinai discover the “Book of Mary” at the tomb of St. John in Ephesus, the Sogdian text uniquely locates the book in the city of Constantinople. To explain this consequential change, this chapter will first reconstruct the historical and theological context of the earliest Syriac manuscripts containing the preface. These manuscripts date to the early 6th century and probably originate in an anti-Chalcedonian milieu in northern Syria. It will then be argued that the original Syriac version underwent a Melkite Syriac reworking in ca. 8th-century Syria or Palestine that involved a turn towards the Byzantine capital as the new symbolic center of Christian devotion to Mary. The last part of the study will discuss how this (now lost) Melkite Syriac narrative may have reached the Christian communities of Central Asia where it was translated into Sogdian.

This article is a reexamination of three selected passages from the Syriac version of the legend of Saint George found in Turfan. By means of a line-by-line commentary, I also discuss parallel texts culled from various sources in and beyond Syriac (e.g. Greek, Latin, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Chinese), and show how the parallels help us to read the Turfan fragments, and how the Turfan version adds to our knowledge of the transmission history of the legend. In particular, I argue that the Turfan version actually contains more elements of the original Greek text than the textus receptus, and that it records the earliest Syriac translation by far of the legend.

It has long been recognized that the Western Turks (Tujue), 1 their subtribes, and successors such as the Türgish (Tuqishi), ruled the settled oases of Turkestan in the sixth through eighth centuries. Even though these Turkic peoples were pastoral nomads generally living in steppe regions, they had a keen interest in controlling the agricultural oasis societies of Turkestan. However, the reasons for and organization of their domination of Turkestan has yet to be explored adequately. 2 This paper attempts to fill this lacuna in our knowledge by demonstrating why and how nomadic rulers controlled the oases.

Scholars have studied in great detail the different units making up the classical anaphoras; however, the fruits of communion unit or "communion epiclesis" is one part of the anaphora that has not been systematically studied. While often considered part of the epiclesis, the fruits of communion are their own anaphoral unit that can be seen in eucharistic texts as early as the Didache. This article studies the fruits of communion unit across the classical anaphoras, focusing in particular on this unit in Addai and Mari, Apostolic Tradition 4, and the anaphora in the Barcelona Papyrus, as well as the anaphoras of St. Mark, Sarapion of Thmuis, St. Basil, and St. James. Attention is also paid to this unit in other West and East Syrian anaphoras. This unit is highly malleable and can provide important insights into how wide-ranging intercessions began to be included within the Eucharistic prayer. As a result, this article also looks at the absence of anaphoral intercession in early texts like ApTrad and BARC, and argues that in many cases, the anaphoral intercessions were either: 1) expanded from the fruits of communion unit; or 2) were inserted alongside it. Through an analysis of this unit, it is clear that the fruits of communion are the ancient hinge that united the prayers over the Eucharistic meal with the reception of communion and the communicant's call to continual conversion.

In the Mongol period, the Uighurs who settled around the Turfan region not only translated Chinese Buddhist works into the Uighur language, but also directly copied them in Chinese characters or composed original works with the combination of arbitrary quotations from Chinese works. The Insadi-Sūtra is such a work in question. The author of this paper succeeded in identifying two Chinese Buddhist texts written by Uighurs. They will help us better understand the background in which these Uighur -Chinese mixed texts came about.

A new edition and English translation of the Sogdian fragments E27/31 and E27/126, now identified to belong to the Christian Sogdian translation of Isaac of Nineveh's Second Part (Gnostic Chapters, IV.39-46 and a few smaller fragments). The chapter also includes a preliminary critical edition of the Syriac original corresponding to the preserved Sogdian fragments.
Further info: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503584195-1

Among the unidentified Syriac fragments catalogued in HUNTER/DICKENS 2014 (Appendix VII), a group of philosophical fragments still awaits to be investigated. This article provides for the first time the full transliteration and translation of the 7 fragments in question (SyrHT 255, SyrHT 285, SyrHT 389, n415, n417, n419, n420), and identifies these fragments as a hitherto unknown Syriac witness to Aristotle’s Categories.