222 wilkens
is not a direct translation of any known Chinese original but rather a com-
pilation of selective excerpts from various Chinese commentaries. It was
probably influenced by Daoye’s (~ 7th century, 道液) commentary Collected
Commentaries on the Vimalakīrtisūtra from ‘inside the Passes’ (Chin. Jingming
jing jijie guanzhong shu 淨名經集解關中疏, T. 2777) which Buddhists from
Turfan got to know via Dunhuang.127
But the adoption of commentarial literature from Dunhuang is not the only
area of influx of new Buddhist texts into the West Uyghur Kingdom. We can
detect the transmission of a typical genre of Dunhuang literature, namely the
‘transformation texts’ (bianwen 變文), in Uyghur manuscripts as well. One
manuscript from Berlin’s Turfan Collection (Mainz 711a,b) is a slightly shorter
version of the Chinese Maudgalyāyana bianwen specimens from Dunhuang.
As the editor has rightly pointed out, this provides further evidence for the
connections between Turfan and Dunhuang.128 In Turfan, some fragments of
Praise of Mount Wutai (Chin. Wutaishan zan 五臺山讚) texts have been dis-
covered, which equally underline the importance of Dunhuang Buddhist cul-
ture in Turfan.129
Thus, in the course of time, the Uyghurs translated texts from different
source languages but the need for texts belonging to a particular genre could
arise as well. Obviously, not all Chinese texts were available in the West Uyghur
Chinese on request of a certain Sinkau, an otherwise unknown person. The colophon is
translated in Zieme, “Some Notes,” 150–151.
127 See Kasai, Yukiyo, Der alttürkische Kommentar zum Vimalakīrtinirdeśasūtra (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2011), 14–15.
128 Cf. Zieme, Peter, “Buddhistische Unterweltsberichte—alttürkische Varianten aus der
Turfan-Oase,” in Life and Afterlife & Apocalyptic Concepts in the Altaic World. Proceedings
of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC)
Château Pietersheim, Belgium, September, 3–8, 2000, ed. Michael Knüppel and Aloïs van
Tongerloo (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 145. Further fragments (Mainz 290, U 1905,
U 1906, U 1903, U 5058, SI Kr 2/51) are edited by Zieme as well.
129 See Zieme, Peter, “Three Old Turkic 五臺山讚 Wutaishanzan Fragments,” 内陸アジ
ア言語の研究 Nairiku ajia gengo no kenkyū/Studies on the Inner Asian Languages 17
(2002): 236–237. Pilgrimages to Mount Wutai (五臺山) were extremely popular in the 9th
century. Dunhuang was an important post on the road from Tibet to Mount Wutai. See
Hansen, The Silk Road, 187. Inscriptions relating to the pilgrimage to Mount Wutai in
the Dunhuang caves were studied in Matsui, Dai, “Tonkō shosekkutsu no Uigurugo
daiki meibun ni kansurun sakki (2) 敦煌諸石窟のウイグル語題記銘文に關する
箚記（二）/ Notes on the Old Uigur Wall Inscriptions in the Dunhuang Caves (II),”
Jinbun shakai ronsō ( Jinbun kagaku hen)人文社会論叢. 人文科学篇 Studies in the
Humanities (Volume of Cultural Science) 32 (2014): 37–40.