British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
A HUNDRED YEARS OF DUNHUANG, 1907-2007
Abstracts
Recent research on Tocharian texts
Professor Dr Georges-Jean Pinault, Ecole Practique des Haut Etudes, Paris
The research on Tocharian texts has progressed through constant comparison with texts in other languages of Central Asia: Sanskrit (and Middle Indic languages), Sogdian, Khotanese, Bactrian, Uighur, Chinese. The recourse to Buddhist stories which were known only by their translations into Chinese has been conclusive for the identification and preliminary translation of several important narrative texts written in the two Tocharian languages, Tocharian A and Tocharian B. This comparative method can help, but only to a partial extent, to solve the puzzles which the reader of Tocharian manuscripts has to face. Since the bulk of the actual sources of the Tocharian literature has been lost, a complementary approach is based on the internal interpretation of Tocharian texts. Some Tocharian texts are clearly translations from well circumscribed Sanskrit texts, either from the canonical literature or from poetical works, for instance hymns of praise (stotra). Besides, a majority of texts belongs to the vast corpus of narrative literature which was composed for edifying and educational purposes. In this area, many Tocharian texts, while being related to stories known from different languages, are deprived from any clearly defined and complete model from which they have been translated. It is a well-known fact that the genre of storytelling in Central Asia was essentially unstable: the general canvas of a given story has admitted numerous variations, by all sorts of rhetorical means, and by inclusion of material taken from other sources, which belonged to the Buddhist culture, ultimately from Indian origin. Another popular genre of Tocharian literature is based on the compilation of various elements : the poems of confession, which were composed by specialists for Buddhist lay-people. These texts are based on the fundamentals of Buddhist teaching, while using a stock of fixed phrases and traditional metaphors. The paper will explore some other specifics of the Tocharian documents, by comparison with Dunhuang material. Some features are common : the usage of explanatory cartouches on narrative wall-paintings and the genre of the prosimetric texts in Tocharian, which anticipate the so-called “transformation texts” (pien-wen) in Chinese vernacular language of the Tang period, known by Dunhuang manuscripts. This genre has been successful in the Buddhist cities of the Tarim basin, and has been adopted by the Buddhist Uighurs from Tocharian models, as exemplified by the Maitrisimit nom bitig. Albeit in prose, this huge Old Uighur text follows the overall scheme of a Tocharian prosimetric composition, and its oral performance was probably linked to the showing of pictures, for instance for the description of the various hells and of important Buddhist figures.