Eski Uygurlarda Mani Yazısının Gelişimi

Abstract

Manichaeism and Manichean texts are important fields of study for the researchers of both Ancient Iranian and Turkic languages. During the first half of the 20th century, numerous extremely valuable manuscripts and archaeological items from the Old Uyghur Kingdom period were found in the Turfan oasis located in east of Uyghur Autonomous Region in China especially in expeditions by German archaeological teams. Most of these works were brought to the museums and research centers in Europe. Today, the largest archives of Manichean texts are located in the Turfan Studies department of Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin. In these large archives of various works, there are many manuscripts containing both religious and non-religious texts belonging to the Manichaean Iranian and Turkic corpus. In our article, the origin of Manichean script, the appearance of Manichean letters, numbers and the other signs in the texts are explained in general. Furthermore, how the tradition of writing had developed and changed was comparatively explained with examples taken from both Middle Iranian and Old Uyghur texts. The texts studied in this study are mainly from the collection of Turfan Studies department of Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In this paper the following texts were analyzed: M17, M172, M47, Shapuragan text, M473, M475, M477, M482, M472, M470 (in Middle Persian); M5, M6, M47 (in Parthian); M178, M172 (in Sogdian); U74, London and Berlin fragments of Xwastwanift (in Old Uyghur).