Book Description

The seven texts edited in this volume give new insights into the Prajnaparamita literature in Old Uyghur, an important corpus of Old Uyghur Buddhist texts. The volume presents each text with a transcription, transliteration and translation into English on facing pages. Besides the general introduction it also includes an extensive introduction to each text, philological and Buddhological notes, a complete glossary with Chinese counterparts and facsimiles of selected fragments. The volume also makes available for the first time an extensive edition of three important Buddhist texts, namely the Diamond Sutra, the Heart Sutra and the fragments of various commentaries. Master Fu's verse commentary both with and without the sutra text is considerably enlarged, including a large number of new fragments which were identified after the publication of the Berliner Turfantexte I. The original materials serving as the basis of this edition are mainly from the Turfan Collection in Berlin; it also includes six fragments from the Otani Collection in Kyoto, three fragments from the Turfan Museum, two fragments from the St. Petersburg Collection, one fragment from the Bibliotheque nationale de France and one fragment from the British Library.