Dream Motifs in Old Buddhist Uyghur Literature

Abstract

In the simplest terms dream is the imagination sequences seen during sleep. It is the spiritual events that one sees with his soul and realizes with his mind. Depending on the structure of faith and culture, each nation and religion has its own dream motifs, assumptions and traditions of expression. Throughout the history of civilization, religious beliefs, traditions bearing religious identity, mystical customs and lifestyles played specific roles in understanding and explaining the dreams. During this time, with the formations, mysterious structures and features, dreams have become an important material in the art, folklore and literary works of the societies in which they had involved. The importance given to dream in Turkish culture is reflected in our literature. Studies on this subject are mostly focused on dreams in divan, dreams in mesnevi, dream motifs in Turkish folk poems and modern literature. The use of the dream as a literary element has gained frequency mainly in the post-Islamic period. As for the pre-Islamic dream texts, there are no data on the inscriptions, which are the first known written documents of Turkish. Therefore, the first dream texts in our written sources can be traced back to the Old Uighur period. These religions adopted (Buddhism, Manichaeism, Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism) were reflected in their literature; so that there were some Buddhist, Manichaeist and a small number of Christian Uighur manuscripts. Buddhist Uighur literature, which consists of translation works, most of which belong to Buddhist chapel, dates from the 9th century to the end of the 14th century. At the beginning, translations were made mostly from Sogdian, Tocharian and Chinese, while in the last period there have been translations from Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism. During the historical periods of the Turkic language, the periods before the Karakhanid/ Islamic period haven't been discussed much; a detailed and complete study of dream motifs in the Old Turkish texts before Kutadgu Bilig has not been studied yet. As is known, most of the manuscripts from the Old Uyghur period are translated works with Buddhist content. The dream texts and motifs presented in the article are also generally seen in these texts. In this article, dream motifs in the texts of the Old Uyghur period, the second phase of the Old Turkish period, and especially in the texts of the Buddhist Uyghur Literature, will be presented together with the examples identified. The dream pieces in mentioned works and their translation to Turkish have been provided and evaluated. The motifs in the detected dream texts were evaluated under different categories according to their interpretation in the text: I. Motives of birth prophecy; II. Motives of reaching the holiness of Buddha; III. Motives of herald of death; IV. Motives that point to the good end and good news; V. Motives that signify the reward earned after repentance and the right path; VI. Motives that point to salvation and purification from sins; VII. Motifs used in disease diagnosis.