Old Uyghur Fragments Relating to the Order of Manichaean Religious Communities

Abstract

Central Asia has been home to enormous cultural and religious diversity for centuries. This diversity has enabled religions such as Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism to live side by side in the region. Among these religions, Manichaeism has gained an important place as it has a developed missionary structure. Although other religious and non-religious textsare one of the most significant literary sources of the Old Uyghurs, the texts of Manichaeism occupy an important place. In terms of their content, these texts are classified into sub-genres as an example historical reports, stories, tales, legends, sermons, orders and literary texts etc. In this study, five unpublished fragments about the order of Manichaean religious communities which are in the Berlin Turfan Collection will be published. In the introduction of this article, the research history of the studies on Old Uyghur Manichaean texts will be discussed. In the following section, the five fragments included in the study will be transcribed and transliterated. The last part of the study will consist of the translation of the relevant text into Turkish , explanations, and a dicti