224 wilkens
Whether these different approaches were complementary135 or whether
they caused friction and dissent is not mirrored in the texts known so far.
Interreligious polemics are attested in the manuscripts, but intra-religious dis-
sent is a field yet to be explored.
Another important issue neglected so far is whether different varieties of
Buddhism developed not only chronologically but also geographically, viz. on
account of the diaspora situation of various Uyghur groups. The exploration
of this problem is a future task, but we may refer here to Hong Hao’s (1088–
1155, 洪皓) work Travelogue of the Pine-tree and Desert Lands (Chin. Song mo
ji wen 松漠紀聞) which he committed to writing from memory. In this text it
is stated that the Uyghurs in Hebei (河北) had their own temples and statues
alttürkische Maitrisimit: Symposium anlässlich des 100. Jahrestages der Entzifferung des
Tocharischen, Berlin, 3. und 4. April, ed. Yukiyo Kasai, Abdurishid Yakup and Desmond
Durkin-Meisterernst (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 403–416. However, the cult of Maitreya in
Uyghur Buddhism was many-facetted and had different sources. See Kasai, Yukiyo, “Der
Ursprung des alttürkischen Maitreya-Kults,” in Die Erforschung des Tocharischen und die
alttürkische Maitrisimit: Symposium anlässlich des 100. Jahrestages der Entzifferung des
Tocharischen, Berlin, 3. und 4. April, ed. Yukiyo Kasai, Abdurishid Yakup and Desmond
Durkin-Meisterernst (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 67–104. Röhrborn states that the cult
of the future Buddha Maitreya continued to flourish until the late phase of Uyghur
Buddhism mainly among laypersons. By recourse to a late avadāna text he demonstrates
how Maitreya Buddhism was replaced by Pure Land Buddhism. Cf. Röhrborn, Klaus,
“Maitreya-Buddhismus zwischen Hīnayāna und Mahāyāna,” in Turfan Revisited—The
First Century of Research into the Arts and Cultures of the Silk Road, ed. Desmond Durkin-
Meisterernst et al. (Berlin: Reimer, 2004), 265a–266a. The supporters of Pure Land
Buddhism were active in the Turfan Region (especially at Toyok) already in the 6th and
7th centuries (cf. Yamabe, Nobuyoshi, “An Examination of the Mural Paintings of Toyok
Cave 20 in Conjunction with the Origin of the Amitayus Visualization Sutra,” Orientations
30.4 (1999): 38–44). These obviously were Chinese Buddhists according to the Chinese
inscriptions in cave 20 in Toyok, but Uyghur Buddhist texts belonging to this school
are not earlier than the 11th~12th centuries. Toyok remained one of the centres of Pure
Land Buddhism in the Turfan oasis, as three lines in Old Uyghur added to a Mongolian
manuscript mention Sukhāvatī as the place where the Buddhas are supposed to settle
down and where the bodhisattvas are supposed to sit. The manuscript, housed in the
Ōtani Collection of the Ryukoku liberary under the shelf mark Ot. Ry. 8126, was acquired
in 1912 by Yoshikawa at Toyok. The Mongolian part, however, is not necessarily connected
to Pure Land Buddhism. It contains the formula oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ. See Murayama,
S., “Zwei mongolische Manuskripte aus Ost-Turkestan,” Central Asiatic Journal 4.3 (1959):
279–288.
135 In a late colophon, Tuṣita and Sukhāvatī are indeed mentioned as two alternative religious
goals. See Zieme, Peter, Buddhistische Stabreimdichtungen der Uiguren (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1985), 169 (text no. 46.37–41).