Abstract:

Turkish tribes and communities were introduced to Buddhism earlier than other religions and belief systems except Tengricism. Although there were some traces of Buddhism during the I. and II. Turkish Khaganate, Buddhism was revived after the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate of Ötüken, when the Uyghurs migrated and settled in the Turfan region. As a result, many translated works on Buddhism were brought into Old Uyghur Turkish and Buddhist Uyghur Literature was formed. Kuanşi im Pusar is a famous sūtra translated at that time. It contains a lot of information about Old Uyghur Turkish. The methods used in the construction of multiplicity in the work are remarkable. Many studies have been conducted on the concept of multiplicity in Turkish linguistics. It is noteworthy that morphological plurality is the most common in the studies. In Turkish, as in most languages, plurality is constructed morphologically, semantically and syntactically. Therefore, plural is a category. Since the first written sources of Turkish (Old Turkish Period), it is seen in the texts that semantic and syntactic methods are included in addition to the plurality made by morphological method. The aim of this study is to draw attention to the plurality made by syntactic method, which is the method used even more than the plurality made by morphological method in the works written in the Old Turkish Period; in addition to this, to indicate that the plurality made by semantic method is also used, and to examine the plurality category in Kuanşi im Pusar, a work belonging to the Buddhist environment written in Old Uyghur Turkish. Document analysis method was used in the study. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the syntactic method of plurality construction is the most commonly used method in Kuanşi im Pusar. The results were expressed with graphs.

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