Еще раз о третьем сиро-тюркском фрагменте из Хара-Хото

Abstract

The article devoted to study of the fragment (so-called third Syro-Turkic fragment) of a Syrian Christian book from Khara-Khoto (the capital of the Tangut kingdom) written in Turkic language in Syriac script, which comes from the Turks who adopted Christianity from the Syrians in the XIII-XIV centuries in the region of the lake Issyk-Kul (Kyrgyzstan).This article analyses the fragment of a Christian manuscript book written in Turkic language in Syriac script from Khara-Khoto (so-called the third Syro-Turkic fragment). The author proposes a clarification of the translation of the text of this manuscript. In particular, the author gives a different translation of the word bitik, relying on the other Christian texts in Turkic languages of the 13th-14th centuries, where this word means Holy Scripture, Gospel, Bible. According to the author, this is confirmed by the data in the Karachay-Balkari language, in which this meaning of bitik has its roots in the early Middle Ages and it is associated probably with the activity of Christian missions among the North Caucasian Huns and Alans and the first translation of the Gospel into the Hunnic language in 534. The article provides a brief history of the Christian community among the Turks of Central Asia, who used the Syriac script for writing books and tombstones in Turkic language. After a careful study of the Syro-Turkic fragment the author concludes that it is part of a Christian Syriac book written in the Turkic language.