6th International Symposium Oriental Studies

The 6 th International Symposium on Oriental Ancient Documents Studies 78 Safarali Shomakhmadov Tangut Blockprints in Indian Siddham Script The real discovery of the forgotten culture of Tanguts was the finding in the spring of 1908 the ‘ghost town’ during the Russian Mongol-Sichuan expedition (1907–1909) under the leadership of Piotr K. Kozlov (1863–1935). The numerous artifacts of ‘famous Khara-Khoto’s suburgan ’ — manuscripts and block-prints in Chinese, Tangut and Sanskrit – allowed to study the forgotten Xi-Xia culture. The influence of two major neighbors of the Xi-Xia Empire — Tibet and China — is clearly traced in the Tangut’s written culture. Particularly, the impact of these two important cultural centers of Central and Eastern Asia on the Tangut State is appreciable especially in the study of the state ideology of Western Xia — Buddhism. Among the royal epithets of Wu-di were such as Huang-di Pusa ( 皇帝菩薩 ; ‘ The Emperor-Bodhisattva ’) and Pusa Tianzi ( 菩薩天子 ; ‘ Bodhisattva – Son of Heaven ’). This ‘continuity’ in the rulers’ titles, no doubt, testifies about the very significant influence of Chinese Buddhist tradition on the spiritual culture of Tanguts. The flourishing of Buddhism in Xi-Xia was in the 11–12 th cc. It was a period of the intensive cultural exchange between Song Empire and Xi-Xia. China exported a large amount of Buddhist literature. The translations of Buddhist Canonical texts into the Tangut language appeared in the middle of the 12 th c. Buddhist texts, preserved in Khara-Khoto, allow us to reconstruct the main repertoire of Buddhist literature of Western Xia. Thus, Lotus Sutra , Prajñāpāramitā texts (‘ Diamond Sutra ’, Prajñāpāramitā-h ṛ daya sūtra , etc.), sutras devoted to Mahāyāna deities ( Avalokiteśvara , Maitreya , Amitabha ) were very popular in the Tangut State. The texts collections related to the Tantric branch of Buddhism — Vajrayāna (‘ Diamond Vehicle ’) — were also numerous among Buddhist literature of Xi-Xia. This part of Tangut Buddhist texts is sutras, various sets of spells- dhāra ṇ ī , allowing to reconstruct the functioning of Buddhism (particularly, its tantric direction) on the level of .