A quest to decode history

"The deeper I dig, the more fascinating it becomes," says Aydar Mirkamal, a professor at Xinjiang University's School of Chinese Language and Literature. The 53-year-old scholar has spent two decades deciphering Huihu (Old Uygur) manuscripts, a niche field that sheds light on the rich history of cultural exchanges along the ancient Silk Road.

He was among 10 scholars honored with the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region's 14th Philosophy and Social Sciences Awards in late May. The awards recognized 158 research achievements produced from 2020 to 2023 alongside seven established experts and three emerging scholars.

The Old Uygur script emerged in the mid-9th century, when the Qocho regime in what is now Turpan in the eastern part of Xinjiang adapted the Sogdian script to create an alphabetical system written vertically from top to bottom, with columns arranged from left to right.

Until the 15th century, it was widely used across present-day Turpan and Hami in Xinjiang, the Hexi Corridor of western Gansu province, and the Chu River Basin in Central Asia. The script later became the basis for Mongolian and Manchu scripts.

From ancient tombs, city ruins, and Buddhist caves in Turpan, a wealth of manuscripts in various languages dating from the 3rd to 14th centuries has been unearthed. Some are written in Old Uygur. Similar discoveries have been made at the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang in Gansu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, where Old Uygur texts appear alongside Tibetan, Sogdian and Sanskrit documents.

According to the website of the China Memory Project of the National Library of China, the Old Uygur script was adopted by the ancestors of today's Uygur, Kazak, Kirgiz and Yugur peoples. Extant texts cover a wide range of subjects, including religion, official documents, literature, medicine, contracts and inscriptions. Some relatively well-preserved Buddhist translations are notable for parables of significant literary value.

About 20 years ago, as a doctoral candidate at Xinjiang University, Aydar Mirkamal learned about Old Uygur documents unearthed from the northern grottoes of the Mogao Caves and decided to study them for his thesis.

He has remained in the field ever since, specializing in ancient manuscripts from Dunhuang and Turpan with a focus on the philological examination of Old Uygur texts. The Kazak scholar says he has been increasingly drawn to it, as these manuscripts reflect how diverse ethnic cultures along the ancient Silk Road learned from one another, exchanged ideas, and integrated.

For example, the Xuanzang Biography, or Daci'en Si Sanzang Fashi Zhuan, is a 10-volume account of the 7th-century monk and translator Xuanzang, who journeyed from the Central Plains of China to India for Buddhist scriptures. From the late 10th to the early 11th century, the biography was translated from Chinese into Old Uygur by Master Shengguang, a native of Bashbaliq in present-day Jimsar county of Xinjiang. The translation reveals how profoundly Xuanzang, a Tang Dynasty (618-907) Central Plains Buddhist icon, influenced Xiyu (Western Regions), which encompassed today's Xinjiang and parts of Central Asia.

Elementary textbooks such as Qian Zi Wen (The Thousand-Character Essay) and Kaimeng Yaoxun, as well as numerous Chinese-Old Uygur bilingual works, demonstrate how widely Central Plains culture was embraced in the Western Regions.

Other Old Uygur texts like Miaofa Lianhua Jing Xuanzan, a commentary work by Tang monk Kuiji, Xuanzang's disciple, from Daci'en Si (Daci'en Temple), located in today's Xi'an, Shaanxi province, indicate that local society once studied Confucian classics such as The Analects, suggesting deep cultural engagement and extensive contacts with the Central Plains during the Tang and Song (960-1279) dynasties.

Aydar Mirkamal noted that many Old Uygur manuscripts are translations from Chinese, some employing simple Chinese characters as phonetic notations for complex ones, and others using Old Uygur script to transcribe Chinese sounds. These features, he says, reflect a long-standing tradition of mutual learning among China's ethnic groups.

"In those manuscript fragments, we see vivid imprints of interaction, exchange and integration among various ethnic groups, and the powerful, enduring vitality of Chinese culture," he says. "The texts are living proof of a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation and of cross-ethnic exchange and integration since ancient times."

In 2024, an Old Uygur philology program led by Aydar Mirkamal was included in a funding list for 10 endangered disciplines by the Chinese Academy of History. The program offers comprehensive support across research, recruitment, team-building and publications, covering all aspects of the selected fields.

Aydar Mirkamal says that the inclusion reflects not only the nation's commitment to niche disciplines with cultural and historical significance but also a renewed academic focus on ensuring that these fields continue to be studied and passed on to the next generation.

"There are a number of senior experts studying Old Uygur, while the younger generation is catching up quickly and making its mark," he says.

Currently, he is working with a younger generation of scholars on the above-mentioned three-year philology program, focusing mainly on collating the Old Uygur translation of Daci'en Si Sanzang Fashi Zhuan against its Chinese original.

Over the past decade, China has built a support system for endangered and lesser-known academic fields once overlooked due to limited scholarly interest, yet now recognized for their cultural value and importance to intellectual heritage. These span areas such as paleography, excavated texts, ethnic classics and frontier history.

Bu Xianqun, a researcher at the Institute of Ancient History with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a recipient of the academy's highest academic title, coauthored a recent article in Chinese Social Sciences Today reviewing the decade's achievements.

He and coauthor Cui Yuan, a doctoral candidate at Anhui Normal University's School of History, observed that research in these fields "has evolved from being spontaneous, fragmented and peripheral to a more organized, well-planned, properly supported and systematically structured phase of institutional development", a shift that has laid a strong foundation for heritage preservation and academic vitality.

Comprehensive progress has been made in research on scripts including Tangut, Khitan, Manchu, Tibetan, Old Uygur, Dai and Dongba, offering a systematic view of historical interactions among China's ethnic groups, they write.

The authors call for further refinement of the disciplinary framework and talent cultivation for these endangered fields, strengthening institutional research and collaborative platforms, leveraging digital tools, and bringing endangered-discipline scholarship to a wider public audience.

Contact the writers at fangaiqing@chinadaily.com.cn