Contributions to the Old Turkic Religious Vocabulary as Testified by the German Section of the Codex Cumanicus

Abstract

Manichaean and Buddhist teachings in Central Asia mark a turning point in the history of Old Turkic language and culture. These religious and intellectual traditions expanded the expressive capacity of Turkic, enabling its transformation from a concrete, action-oriented steppe language into an abstract, philosophical, and metaphysical literary language. Although religious concepts of the Uyghur period were often conveyed through lexical borrowings, the word-formation principles preferred by Buddhist monks in rendering religious terminology later served as a model for the creation of technical terms in Turkic texts reflecting Islamic and Christian doctrines. The Turkic terminology shaped under the influence of Buddhist teachings also affected Qur’an translations of the Karakhanid period. The religious terminology attested in these texts shows that the Turks’ conversion to Islam did not constitute a sudden cultural rupture. Rather, it indicates that the literary and religious heritage of Old Uyghur Turkic, already an established language of civilization, was transformed into an Islamic form under the Karakhanids. Accordingly, Islamic concepts were transferred into Turkic through methods previously used by the Uyghurs, such as derivation, compounding, ellipsis, and semantic transfer. Religious terminology from the Uyghur and Karakhanid periods can also be observed in the German section of the Codex Cumanicus. This study examines Turkic religious terms related to Christian doctrine formed through derivation and compounding in thatsection. The terms are listed alphabetically under two main headings and analyzed with reference to etymological and historical dictionaries in order to determine their formation, conceptualization, and continuity in historical Turkic.