Sinitic Buddhist Liturgy in a Mongolian Guise: A Newly Discovered Mongolian Text Related to the Huayan Repentance Liturgy from Toyuq, Xinjiang

Abstract In 2015, a long scroll written in Uyghur-Mongolian script, along with a few fragments of a similar codicological type, was excavated at the site of Toyuq in Turfan. The Mongolian text that survives in the manuscripts is identified as part of an important Buddhist liturgical text that has come down to us in Chinese, Tangut, and Old Uyghur. This finding not only presents us for the first time with a Mongolian version of this liturgical text, but also allows us to further identify another fragmentary Mongolian manuscript acquired in Turfan in the early twentieth century that is currently housed at the Lüshun Museum in China as part of the same liturgical text. Aside from introducing the newly discovered manuscripts and explaining their archaeological context, this article also discusses the historical significance of the discovery and the new light it sheds on the history of the transmission and reception of the text.