Research on the Chinese texts written by Uighur script in Tang, Sung and Yuan Dynasties

到目前为止，人们已经注意到，在中亚的旧文本中，存在着一些从汉字转录成字母的文本。例如，藏文或布拉米文的文献是众所周知的，这些文献为中古汉语西北方言的语音研究提供了至关重要的信息。我在这三年中多次访问俄罗斯科学院东方研究圣彼得堡分支，发现了15个回鹘文的汉语文献片段。这些残卷都是佛教典籍，我认为它们是根据《圣庙集象真事明经》和《比丘之本》而编的，我从语言学的角度对这些新发现的残卷进行了研究。首先，他们被音译成罗马字母，与他们相应的汉字。其次，讨论了该地区汉语的语音，并试图重建该地区的语音系统。这一系统与《玄奘传》维文译本中的汉语借词系统有相似之处。从音系上可以推断出，这是唐末宋初西北方言的音系。笔者将所涉及的残卷与元代的残卷相比较，推测这些残卷中所使用的汉语读音是汉字的一种继承读音。可以推测，元代回鹘语中，汉文佛经一般是以汉字的读音来诵读，但回鹘语一般是以汉字的阅读来读，就像日本人以汉字的阅读来读一样。

It has so far been noted that among old texts from Central Asia there exist some texts transcribed from Chinese characters into alphabetic scripts. For example, texts transcribed into Tibetan script or Brabmi script are well-known and such texts provide crucial information for the phonological study of the north-west dialect of Middle Chinese.I visited the St.Petersberg Branch for Oriental Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences several times for these three years and found fifteen fragments of Chinese texts in Uighur script. All of these fragments have turned out to be Buddhist texts, which I identified as based on (sheng miao ji xiang zhen shi ming jing) and bi qiu jie ben).I studied these newly identified fragments from the linguistic point of view. First, they are transliterated into the Roman alphabet, with their corresponding Chinese characters. Second, the pronunciation of the Chinese used there is discussed and reconstruction of the phonological system involved is attempted. The system has been recognized as similar to that which is utilized in the Chinese loan words appearing in the Uighur version of (Xuan-Zang-Biography). The Chinese phonological system of can be inferred to be that of north-west dialect of the late Tang Dynasty or the early Song Dynasty. I located the fragments dealt with among those written in the Yuan Dynasty and it is guessed that the Chinese pronunciation used in these fragments is an inherited pronunciation of Chinese characters. It can be surmised that, in Uighur at the Yuan Dynasty, Chinese Buddhist texts were generally recited in the pronunciation of Chinese characters but were generally read in the Uighur reading of Chinese characters as the Japanese reading of Chinese characters.