A Buddhist Story in Old Uighur Turkish: Sena-Upesena Story
Murat Elmali
Abstract
The Story of Sena-Upesana is found in the stories which are translated from different languages, after the Uighurs’ conversion to Buddhism. The products of Jataka and Avadana literature, which had started to be seen in Uighur Turkish with the translations, played a major role in adoption of Buddhism by Uighurs implicitly. These literary products had been compiled sometimes as it is done in the compilations similar to Tales of the Prophet in Islamic literature. The most important of these is “Consecutive Stories of Ten Sins”, which is also known as Daśakarmapathaavadānamālā (DKPAM). DKPAM, which is a translation from a religion lesson book belonging to Buddhist communion of Vaybajıkı (< Skr. vaibhāṣika), consists of ten chapters with reference to “ten sin”. The Story of Sena-Upsena is a quite long story, which is located in chapter of “fornication” in the DKPAM stories. The story presents significant information about both Buddhism of Uighurs and Buddhism of Central Asia. Furthermore, there are various language materials and cultural elements which are not seen in the works which belongs to Old Turkic period. The story of Sena-Upesena is an signifacant story in both history of culture and lingustic studies and studying as a whole story will be important for Turkology studies. So far there has not been a study on the individual story. By the study that we have worked on, the story of Sena-Upesena with Old Uighur Turkic has been come to light and various linguistic material has been presented to attention of Turkologist.
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How to Cite
Murat Elmali (2013). A Buddhist Story in Old Uighur Turkish: Sena-Upesena Story. IJCAS, Vol. 17, No. 1, .