200 wilkens
parts of the Tarim basin approached Buddhism in various ways. Some groups
converted at an early stage whereas others remained faithful Manichaeans for
quite a long time or adhered to their own native religion.
2.2 Uyghur Buddhist Sources
The history of Buddhism in both Uyghur polities is blurred by the fact that
there has been a great amount of confusion as to the date of important
documents.44 Sometimes the manuscripts and inscriptions45 have to be dated
several centuries later than their first editors and many scholars following in
their lead thought,46 e.g. the famous stake inscriptions I and III or the dedi-
catory inscription from Toyok were dated by F. W. K. Müller and Şinasi Tekin
respectively to the 8th century and therefore assigned to the East Uyghur
Empire in Mongolia.47
in Urban Centres along the Silk Road during the First Millennium AD,” in The Urban Mind:
Cultural and Environmental Dynamics, ed. Paul J. J. Sinclair et al. (Uppsala: Department
of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, 2010), 441–455 (with a rich
bibliography).
44 The same is true for Uyghur paintings which are usually dated much too early. The
Buddhist paintings from Bäzäklik, for instance, are often dated to the 8th or 9th century.
See e.g. Golden, Peter, Central Asia in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), 46, dating the portraits of two female donors to this period, or Shatzman Steinhardt,
“Uighur Ritual Complex,” fig. 14, who dates a painting from cave 1 kept in the National
Museum in New Delhi to this period.
45 Next to wall inscriptions (longer texts, which are sometimes related to literary works, and
short texts, e.g. in cartouches), texts on movable objects (stakes, wooden plaques, temple
banners) are to be mentioned. Similar to colophons in manuscripts and block-prints,
inscriptions on temple banners sometimes testify to the personal piety of worshippers.
An edition of the Old Uyghur Inscriptions on temple banners housed in the former
Museum of Indian Art (now: Museum of Asian Art) in Berlin is found in Moriyasu, Takao
and Peter Zieme, “Uighur Inscriptions on the Banners from Turfan Housed in the Museum
für Indische Kunst, Berlin,” in Central Asian Temple Banners in the Turfan Collection of
the Museum für Indische Kunst, Chhaya Bhattacharya-Haesner (Berlin: Reimer, 2003),
461a–474a.
46 Tekin dates one manuscript of the Maitrisimit to the 8th century. See Tekin, Şinasi,
Maitrisimit nom bitig. Die uigurische Übersetzung eines Werkes der buddhistischen
Vaibhāṣika-Schule. 1. Teil: Transliteration, Übersetzung, Anmerkungen. 2. Teil: Analytischer
und rückläufiger Index, vol. 1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1980), 8–9. This early dating cannot
be correct. Cf. already Zieme, Religion und Gesellschaft, 20–21, who ascribes to a dating to
the 9th century.
47 See Tekin, Şinasi, “Die uigurische Weihinschrift eines buddhistischen Klosters aus den
Jahren 767–780 in Tuyoq,” Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 48 (1976): 225–230; also published