Hidden Manuscript

Buddhist texts in Uyghur from the Yuan period, partly with Sanskrit sources in Brāhmī script

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Extent: 212 pages

Publisher: Wiley-VCH

Subjects: Buddhist Studies

Series: Silk Road Studies

Language: English, Sanskrit

Paperback (Forthcoming)

(November 2026)

ISBN: 9782503612386

Price: $82.00

This volume is dedicated to a text from a Turfan manuscript now “hidden” in a private collection.


This volume is dedicated to a text from a Turfan manuscript now “hidden” in a private collection. The anonymous compilation of textual units written on the blank back of an ancient Chinese scroll is about the importance and necessity of almsgiving by Buddhist lay people and was probably intended for use in rituals. The main text is written in late Uyghur. Interspersed are Sanskrit passages in Brāhmī script, such as stanzas from the Udānavarga, a eulogy of life in the wilderness and the beginning of the Puṇyakriyāvastu-sūtra, all with Uyghur translations. The study, conducted by a team of scholars led by Juten Oda, who “discovered” the manuscript in 1990, includes transliteration and transcription with facing black and white photographs, normalised text with translation, philological and exegetical notes, parallel texts, glossaries and colour photographs.