246 wilkens
a means widely used to facilitate the spread of Buddhist texts. As far as we
know, blockprints were usually fabricated in Yuan times at Dadu (大都),
since 1272 the official designation of the capital of the Yuan Empire (present
day Beijing).276 As the colophons tell us, some works were printed in thou-
sand or even ten thousand copies and distributed in order to acquire merit
(Skt. puṇya).277 But another aspect is certainly noteworthy. A centralisation
of duplication of Buddhist texts also meant that the government could exert
control over their respective contents.
Contemporary with the rise of Tantric Buddhism and the spread of the print-
ing technique in the Mongol period, intensified Sanskrit studies emerged as
can be gleaned from several texts. Through recourse to several loanwords from
Sanskrit, Uyghur Buddhists writing poetry in strophic alliteration now were
able to use verses ‘rhyming’ in letters not found in native Old Uyghur words
such as n-, p- or d-. Strophic alliteration is attested already in early Manichaean
texts, but it seems that there was a mutual influence between Old Uyghur
and Mongol poetry at work. On the one hand, it has been stated correctly that
Mongol colophons with strophic alliteration were modeled on Old Uyghur
colophons.278 On the other hand, it is significant that the usage of strophic
alliteration in Uyghur Buddhist texts increased considerably in Mongol times.
2.7 Titles of the Buddhist Clergy
An issue yet to be explored is how the different monastic titles and official
ranks in Uyghur Buddhism are to be interpreted.279 Such a study would have
to include a wide selection of sources in different languages. This problem
276 See Zieme, Religion und Gesellschaft, 51, with further references in footnote 239. The
printers themselves presumably often were of Chinese descent because of the Chinese
pagination of most blockprints (cf. Kudara, “Buddhist Culture,” 186). This would explain
why some mistakes were made while the handwritten model of the text was carved
into the wooden mould. That monasteries of the Turfan region were themselves places
where “a highly and widely extended printing industry” flourished “for several centuries”,
as stated by Carter, is not corroborated by hard facts. See Carter, Thomas Francis, The
Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward. Revised by L[uther] Carrington
Goodrich (New York: Ronald Press, 1955, 2nd edition), 144.
277 Thousand copies: e.g. Kasai, Kolophone, 56–57 [text no. 6], 116 [text no. 41], 133 [text no.
50]. Ten thousand copies: Kasai, Kolophone, 121–122 [text no. 43]; 124 [text no. 45] both
colophons refer to the Sitātapatrādhāraṇī. A text printed in 110 copies was edited in Kasai,
Kolophone, 118–120 [text no. 42], one printed in 108 copies is edited in Kasai, Kolophone,
122–123 [text no. 44]. Furthermore, 100 and 500 copies are mentioned as well. See Zieme,
Religion und Gesellschaft, 97.
278 Zieme, Religion und Gesellschaft, 48.
279 See Zieme, Religion und Gesellschaft, 56, that this is a desideratum.