''Maitreyasamitināṭaka'' is a

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

drama in the language known as

Tocharian A The Tocharian (sometimes ''Tokharian'') languages ( or ), also known as ''Arśi-Kuči'', Agnean-Kuchean or Kuchean-Agnean, are an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, the Tocharians. The l ...

. It dates to the eighth century and survives only in fragments. ''Maitrisimit nom bitig'' is an

Old Uyghur Old Uyghur () was a Turkic language which was spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries and in Gansu. History The Old Uyghur language evolved from Old Turkic after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and remnants of it migrated to Turfan, Qomu ...

translation of the Tocharian text. It is a much more complete text and dates to the tenth century. The drama revolves around the

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...

Maitreya Maitreya (Sanskrit: ) or Metteyya (Pali: ), also Maitreya Buddha or Metteyya Buddha, is regarded as the future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. As the 5th and final Buddha of the current kalpa, Maitreya's teachings will be aimed at ...

, the future saviour of the world.Peyrot and Semet 2016. This story was popular among Buddhists and parallel versions can be found in

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...

, Khotanese, Sogdian,

Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...

and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

. According to

Friedrich W. K. Müller Friedrich W. K. Müller (January 21, 1863 in Dębno, Neudamm – April 18, 1930 in Berlin) was a German scholar of oriental cultures and languages. He is best remembered for his decipherment of manuscript fragments collected on the German Turf ...

and Emil Sieg, the apparent meaning of the title is "Encounter with Maitreya". The fragments of the Tocharian text come from six different manuscripts, five from the

Shikshin Temple The Shorchuk or Shikshin Temple ( ug, Хорчу, script=cyrl, translit=Xorqu; zh, t=七個星佛寺, s=, p=Qīgèxīng Fósì, l=Seven-Stars Buddhist Temple) is a ruined compound of Buddhist sites located about 25–30 km southwest of the ...

and one from

Qocho Qocho (), also known as Idiqut, ("holy wealth"; "glory"; "lord of fortune") was a Uyghur kingdom created in 843, with strong Chinese Buddhist and Tocharian influences. It was founded by Uyghur refugees fleeing the destruction of the Uyghur Kh ...

Albert Grünwedel Albert Grünwedel (31 July 1856 – 28 October 1935) was a German indologist, tibetologist, archaeologist, and explorer of Central Asia. He was one of the first scholars to study the Lepcha language. Life Grünwedel was born in Munich in 1856, t ...

and

Albert von Le Coq Albert von Le Coq (; 8 September 1860 Berlin, Prussia – 21 April 1930 Berlin, Germany) was a Prussian/German brewery owner and wine merchant, who at the age of 40 began to study archaeology.''Schatzjagd an der Seidenstraße.'' A film by Susanne ...

discovered the Tocharian text during the third German Turfan expedition in 1906, when the Tocharian languages had been extinct for more than a millennium and were unknown to modern linguists. The Uyghur text is represented by three manuscripts, two from

Turfan Turpan (also known as Turfan or Tulufan, , ug, تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 632,000 (2015). Geonyms The original name of the cit ...

and one from Qomul. A colophon to the Uyghur text notes that it was translated from an unidentified language called ''toxrï''. Under the assumption that this name was connected to a Central Asian people known as the '' Tocharoi'' in ancient Greek texts, and since the ''Maitrisimit nom bitig'' shows a "clear dependence" on the ''Maitreyasamitināṭaka'', scholars began to refer to the unidentified language of the latter as "Tocharian".Zieme 2000, p. 48. The ''Maitreyasamitināṭaka'' was originally a long text consisting of twenty-seven acts of ten to fifteen leaves (twenty to thirty pages) each. The Tocharian fragments come from manuscripts of high aesthetic value, indicating a text that was meant to be read. There are stage directions, however, such as ''lcär poñś'' ("all have left

he scene He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

) at the end of each act, which suggests that it was also performed. It is in the '' champu'' style with sections of prose mixed with sections of verse. The ''Maitrisimit'' translation is all prose.

Notes

Bibliography

*Kumamoto, Hiroshi. 2009
"The Maitreya-samiti and Khotanese"
Academia.edu. [Based on a paper read at the ''Symposium franco-japonais : «Interactions et translations culturelles en Eurasie» («Dynamic Interactions of Cultures in Eurasia»)'', jointly held by the University of Tokyo and École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris on 12–13 December 2002.] *Moerloose, Eddy. 1979. "The Way of Vision (''Darśanamārga'') in the Tocharian and Old Turkish Versions of the ''Maitreyasamitināṭaka''". ''Central Asiatic Journal'', 23(3): 240–249. *Peyrot, Michaël; Semet, Ablet. 2016. "A Comparative Study of the Beginning of the 11th Act of the Tocharian A ''Maitreyasamitināṭaka'' and the Old Uyghur ''Maitrisimit''". ''Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae'', 69(4): 355–378. * Ji, Xianlin (ed.). 1998. ''Fragments of the Tocharian A Maitreyasamiti-Nätaka of the Xinjiang Museum, China''. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 113. Berlin–New York: Mouton de Gruyter. *Zieme, Peter. 2000. "The Search for Knowledge Through Translation: Translations of Manichaean, Christian and Buddhist Literature into Chinese, Turkic, Mongolian, Tibetan and Other Languages".

C. E. Bosworth Clifford Edmund Bosworth FBA (29 December 1928 – 28 February 2015) was an English historian and Orientalist, specialising in Arabic and Iranian studies. Life Bosworth was born on 29 December 1928 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire (now ...

and M. S. Asimov (eds.), ''History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume IV: The Age of Achievement, A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Part II: The Achievements''. UNESCO Publishing. pp. 43–51.

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Bibliography

Further reading