トルコ語佛教寫本に關する年代論 : 八陽經と觀音經

Abstract

Old Turkish Buddhist scriptures brought from the Turfan basin and the Dunhuang caves are one of the most wonderful legacies of the culture of the Silk Road lasting about six hundred years from the ninth century to the fourteenth century. We would like to study the chronology of the Uighur-Turkish Buddhist legacy by dealing with two scriptures: the Sakiz yukmak yaruq (Syy) or Sakiz torlugin yarumis yaltrimis (Styy) and the Quansi-im pusar (Qp) or Quansi-im bodistv (Qb) sutras translated from Chinese. These sutras spread, among the peoples, in the regions, and during the periods, over which Chinese culture and Buddhism had direct influence. According to the Chinese text of the Sakiz yukmak yaruq sutra. the Chinese texts, in Japan, Tibet, Korea, and Bangkok (Vietnamese temples), each have their phonetic transcriptions in their own languages. They must have been read or recited by their respective people in their own languages. There are also some Tibetan, and Mongolian versions translated from Chinese. We have various texts to be compared, and three groups to be classified: Group I includes Japan's old manuscripts of Chinese text, Chinese text in Tibetan script (Pt 1258), and Turkish versions; Group II consists of many Chinese and Tibetan manuscripts from the Dunghuang cave in the ninth and tenth centuries; and Group III is composed of Chinese text in Korea, Bangkok, and Mongolian versions after the fourteenth century. It is certainly considered that our Turkish version derived from an original Chinese text, which was presumably brought into the Turfan region before the Tibetan Kingdom gained control of the River-West corridor (786-848). Considering the contextual variants of each of Syy and Qp sutras, we can distinguish them into two titles: each of Syy and Qp as the first translation; and each of Styy and Qb as a revised text. Thus, an answer must be found to the question why the sutras ware revised. The question is being discussed from the viewpoint of a linguistic dating. Thanks to Doerfer Versuch the question about the date of Uighur-Turkish texts can be dealt with here. G. Doerfer especially tried to position the text at stage 1-a to 5, based on linguistic order. The standard of judgement on the chronology is composed of thirty requirements, ten of which are essential for the Buddhist texts. According to many manuscripts of Syy or Styy and Qp or Qb, there is a linguistic difference between the first translation and the revised text as follows: [Table omitted]】 In all respects it seems to be reasonable to suppose that the revised text of Styy and Qb came into existence in the eleventh century to suppose. On the other hand, which century can we date the emergence of the first translation back to? The L manuscript of Syy is older than the other Buddhist texts and letters which were sealed in the Dunhuang cave and sent from the neighbourhood in the early eleventh century based on the linguistic order of the table mentioned above. Furthermore, it is not affected by new linguistic forms (including a dialectal pronunciation of Chinese) similar to the revised text of it. From an important evidence given by J. Hamilton, im sam ('medicine'), an idiom in the first translation is related to 'le grand ancetre' of the western dialect like Ottoman Turkish afterwards. This argues strongly that the linguistic difference between the first translation and the revised text arose not only from changes of generations, but also from a dialectal trend.