Xuastvanift: a confession book of Manichaean Uygurs

The British Library manuscript copy of Xuastvanift (Or.8212/178), a confession book of the Manichaean Uygurs.

The British Library manuscript copy can now be viewed on IDP. This follows publication in 2014 of a book on this text by Betül Özbat:
Huastuanift: Manihaist Uygurlarin Tövbe Duasi
[Xuastvanift — a confession book of the Manichaean Uygurs]
Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları: Ankara 2014
PB, 256 pp., colour and B&W ills., 14TL.
ISBN: 9789751628985

Betül Özbat introduces her book below.

"This manuscript is one of the most important and complete texts among the Old Uygur Manichaean texts. It was first published by W. Radloff (1909) and A. von Le Coq (1910/1). After this scholars such as W. Bang and J. P. Asmussen also studied the text. A. von Le Coq’s publication (1911) was translated into Turkish in 1941 but there was no detailed study after this in Turkey. One of our main aims was to prepare a new publication on this text in Turkish in order to reach Turkish readers.

My book consists of two main sections. The first is an introduction containing brief information on Manichaean Uygurs, Manichaean literature, art, script and religion, as well as Sogdian people and their relationship with the Uygurs. The second part contains the text of Xuastvanift. This follows the text found on the longest extant manuscript which is in the Stein collection in London (Or.8212/178). There are more than twenty copies of the text but I only used other fragments from Berlin and St. Petersburg to supplement the main text. A transcription is given along with notes giving the source(s) of the text.

For example:
[337] k(ä)ntü özümüzni ämgätir biz (U7a, 1-2; L 299; Spb 139-140)

In this example, the number to the left in the square brackets indicates that this is the 337th line of the entire text. The number on the right in the round brackets indicates that this line corresponds to (respectively) the 1st and 2nd lines on the recto of Berlin U7 fragment; the 299th line on the London scroll, Or.8212/178; and the 139th-140th lines on the St. Petersburg manuscript.

A Turkish translation and the transliteration is given after the transcription. The book ends with the interpretation of some problematic points in the text, a glossary and appendix.

The appendix gives images of different manuscript copies of the Xuastvanift. The coloured images of the British Library scroll are the first to be reproduced — the previous publication by A. Von Le Coq had only black and white images."

Sponsorship enabling digitisation of the scroll was kindly provided by a Turkish scholar.