194 wilkens
The most important written source from the First Türk Empire, the Bugut
Inscription (dated around 582), is still sometimes quoted as proof for the
existence of a Buddhist saṅgha among the Türks.17 But, as it turned out,
the inscription does not speak of the establishment of a “great new sangha”
(Sogd. RBkw nwh snkʾ) but only referred to the erection of a “great stone of
law” (Sogd. RBkw nwm snkʾ), i.e. an inscription.18 In the epigraphic sources
of the Second Türk Empire, which were written in Old Turkic (or: Orkhon
Turkic), there is not a single trace of Buddhism. This is sometimes attrib-
uted to a deliberate suppression of foreign influences due to a ‘nationalistic’
programme.
A very interesting fragment in Brāhmī script from the Hoernle Collection
(IOL Toch 81) published recently, which contains text in three languages
(Sanskrit, Tocharian B [also called Kuchean], Old Turkic), displays some
Western linguistic features in the Old Turkic part.19 It is possible that it pre-
dates the East Uyghur Empire and represents a more Western form of Old
Turkic. Its Buddhist terminology is unique because the word for buddha is not
burhan as in standard Old Uyghur texts but bur hagan, using the traditional
title of a universal ruler of the steppes.20 If the hypothesis should turn out to
be correct that the text predates the East Uyghur Empire—and this is highly
likely—it would be the first witness of Buddhism in a Turkic language. This
would mean that in the Western part of the Tarim basin Turks were already
involved in Buddhism long before the spread of Buddhism among the Uyghurs
in the 9th or 10th centuries.
Brill, 2007), 108. Kudara, too, mentions the opinion of some scholars who think that the
translation of this text must rather be into Sogdian rather than into Turkic. Cf. Kudara,
Kōgi, “The Buddhist Culture of the Old Uigur Peoples,” Pacific World 4, 3rd series (2002):
184, accessed August 26, 2013. http://www.shin-ibs.edu/documents/pwj3-4/09KD4.pdf.
17 See Laut, Der frühe türkische Buddhismus, 6–7. For a first in depth study of this inscrip-
tion see Kljaštornyj, Sergej Grigorevič and Vladimir A. Livšic, “The Sogdian Inscription
of Bugut Revised,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 26.1 (1972): 69–102.
For new readings cf. Yoshida, Yutaka and Takao Moriyasu, “Buguto hibun ブグト碑文
(Bugut Inscription),” in Mongoru Koku Genzon Iseki: Hibun Chōsa Kenkyū Hōkoku モン
ゴル国現存遺蹟・碑文調査研究報告 / Provisional Report of Researches on Historical
Sites and Inscriptions in Mongolia from 1996 to 1998, ed. Takao Moriyasu and Ayudai Ochir
(Osaka: Society of Central Eurasian Studies, 1999), 122–125.
18 Whether nwm (‘law’) refers to Buddhism is still an open question.
19 See the edition with notes in Maue, Dieter, “Three Languages on one Leaf: on IOL Toch
81 with Special Regard to the Turkic Part,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African
Studies 71.1 (2008): 59–73.
20 On the other peculiarities of the Buddhist terminology in this manuscript see the
commentary in Maue, “Three Languages”.