The Spread of Buddhism

the spread of buddhism in serindia 111

Sogdian, whereas the technical Manichaean word for “law” is yn.

Most probably, Buddhist prea chers and commoners shunned the liter-

ate exotic term rm, which was understandable only to those who were

Buddhists already and which therefore had to be glossed through nwm

for all others.

3. In the Sogdian texts, the notion of kle a is expressed by wytwy
   sr’yt’m “pain and suffering”, whereas in Uighur it is rendered by the
   Sogdian loan word nyzb’ny “desire”. According to T. Moriyasu, this
   again contradicts the “Sogdian hypothesis”. But actually, the Sogdian
   dual term translates the Chinese equivalent for kle a: fan nao ,
   “trouble and disturbance”. The scholarly Sogdian translation abides so
   slavishly to the Chinese original that at face value it makes no sense at
   all.^174 Missionaries could not use it, but must have recourse to a simpler
   explanation for the impurity that causes all rebirths. The term “desire”
   is by no means an absurd equivalence.
   The three preceding examples, adduced by T. Moriyasu, point neither
   to a non-Buddhist tradition as Moriyasu claimed, nor to a direct written
   Sogdian Vo rl a g e as per Laut, but to an oral teaching in Sogdian, whence
   the Turks took out their own Buddhist vocabulary without intrusion
   of the Sogdo-Chinese Buddhist jargon. The two following loan words
   are still more compelling:


4. To translate Indra, the king of the gods, the Sogdian Buddhists,
   according to the old interpretatio indica, used its Sogdian gloss ”,
   “Supergod”,^175 the most frequent designation of the supreme god Ahura
   Mazda. The Uighurs translated Indra through Ahura Mazd as well,
   but through the proper name of the god in Sogdian: Qwrmzt’. They
   must have been instructed by Sogdians who explained them: “” is
   but an epiclesis for the god Xormuzd”. If the Uighurs had been taught
   Bud dhism from Tocharians, they would never have translated Indra in
   that way. But if they had  rst met Qwrmwzt’ among Manichaeans, they
   would not have identi ed him with the supreme God, since Qwrmwzt’
   designates “the Primeval Man” among Manichaeans.


5. Buddhist Uighur possesses some pairs of loan words for the same
   notion. For instance, it translates “fast” by bq, borrowed from a lost
   Sogdian term p’kk < Old Iranian pti- “guard”^176 and by bwst also

(^174) Weller 1935, p. 324.
(^175) This is the case in the Vessantara Jtaka, or in P.3, p. 207, P.5, p. 100, and other
manuscripts.
(^176) Henning 1936, pp. 587f.
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