'Pagan' Oyuz-Nama: A Philological and Linguistic Analysis

The 'Pagan' Oyuz-nama is a new edition of a Middle-Turkic manuscript written in Uyghur script, which is found under the signature Supplement Turc. No. 1001 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The text is a piece of the Oguz-epic cycle circulating among Turkic-speaking peoples from the 11th century onward, but the exact place and time of recording is unknown. The study by Balazs Danka contains the facsimile of the manuscript, the transliteration, transcription and English translation of the text. The philological analysis includes a study on the palaeography of the text and a comparative study of other known related Oguz-nama versions from the 14th-17th centuries. The linguistic analysis concentrates on phonological issues based on the orthography of the text, word formation and inflectional grammar. The synchronic linguistic examination is contextualized by historical linguistic factors as well, i.e. the language variety attested in the manuscript is compared to Old Turkic. The place and time of writing down of the text is estimated based on the philological and linguistic analysis. The study is supplemented by indices of the lexicon and the morpheme inventory of the text.