Studies on the vocabulary of the Buddhist Sogdian text fragments from the Turfan oasis

该项目的目的是分析粟特语中一组特定佛教典籍的词汇。所讨论的文本在时间（公元7 -11世纪）和地点（吐鲁番地区，即今天的中国新疆维吾尔自治区）上都有限制。这些文献是当时该地区存在说粟特语的佛教社区的主要证据。本研究将厘清这一佛教粟特文学语料库的特点。与此同时，它还可以与另一个丝绸之路遗址——中国西部敦煌——发现的更为知名的粟特佛教文本词汇进行比较，这是一个具有截然不同特征的原始材料体。从而厘清吐鲁番地区粟特人佛教的宗派主义特征。这样一个系统的研究是伊朗和佛教研究领域的理想，有助于研究粟特语和中亚的佛教，并弥补研究领域的重大空白。作为研究的基础，我们将为所有已发表和未发表的手稿的词汇汇编一个多语言数据库，从而允许进行语言学分析。由于这些文献大部分是从汉语翻译过来的，因此有必要在整个过程中系统地呈现与粟特语对等的汉语词汇。同时，通过吐火罗语等其他语言接收相关的印度术语和外来词也将包括在内。

The aim of the project is to analyse the vocabulary of a particular group of Buddhist texts in the Sogdian language. The texts in question are limited in time (7th-11th cent. CE) and loca-tion (Turfan region, nowadays Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China). This literature is the primary evidence for the existence of Sogdian-speaking Buddhist communities in this area and at this time. The study will clarify the peculiarities of this corpus of Buddhist Sogdian literature. At the same time it will make possible a comparison with the better-known vocabu-lary of the Buddhist Sogdian texts found at another Silk Road site, Dunhuang in western Chi-na, a body of source material of widely different character. Thus the sectarian character of the Buddhism of the Sogdians in the Turfan region will be clarified. Such a systematic study is a desideratum in the field of both Iranian and Buddhist studies, contributing to research into the Sogdian language and into Buddhism in Central Asia and closing a major gap in the re-search landscape.As a basis for the study we will compile a multilingual database of the lexicon of all published and unpublished manuscripts, thus allowing a philological analysis. Since this literature is largely translated from Chinese, it will be essential to present the Chinese equivalents of the Sogdian words systematically throughout. In parallel the reception of the relevant Indian terms and loanwords via other languages such as Tocharian will also be included.