Abstract
This article surveys the Indian (Sanskrit and Prakrit) loanwords used in the Christian literature in Sogdian, including some which have not been noticed previously. In particular, it discusses a possible borrowing of the Buddhist Sanskrit technical term citta-saṃtāna-, used in a Christian Sogdian text in the sense train of thought
Highlights
Almost all of these words are attested in Buddhist and Manichean Sogdian texts
The Manichean texts too employ a considerable number of Indian and Buddhist loanwords, which is not surprising in view of the attempt of the Manichean missionaries to present their religion in a Buddhist guise in order to attract converts in Central Asia and China
The only probable exceptions to this generalization are those words which are used in Christian Sogdian in polemical contexts: qrm ‘evil action, evil fate’ in an anti-Manichean tract; mxĔqĔr ‘Mahākāla’, which serves as translation of the name of the heathen deity Apollo; yqšyšt ‘fiends’, used as an epithet of the persecuting Zoroastrians
Summary
Almost all of these words are attested in Buddhist and Manichean Sogdian texts. One of them, the word for “price”, is already attested in the form mwδy in the Sogdian “Ancient Letters” of the early 4th century, and others, such as ĔĔqĔc “sky” (probably borrowed via Parthian), fcmbd “world”, qwtr “family”, smwtr- “sea”, no doubt belonged to the Sogdian core vocabulary. The Buddhist texts were mostly translated from Chinese, they contain a substantial Indian (Sanskrit and Prakrit) vocabulary, including both everyday words and Buddhist technical terms.
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