Research On The Poetry Of The Qochu Uighur Dynasty

If we consider the state of research into classical Uyghur poetry, it becomesapparent that relatively few researchers of Uyghur poetic history haveventured beyond the poems collected in the classic works Qutadghu Bilik andA Dictionary of the Turkic Languages. With only a few exceptions, the poemsin these two great works were written in an Islamic environment. Poemswritten outside of an Islamic environment, specifically in a Manichaean orBuddhist environment such as that of the Qochu Uyghur Kingdom, have yet toarouse the attention of most researchers. An important portion of the ancientUyghur manuscripts that have been preserved for centuries in museums,libraries, and research institutes both domestically and abroad consist ofpoetic works from the Qochu Uyghur Kingdom. The poems of this era, bearingwitness to the literary and culture of the Qochu Uyghur Kingdom, which in itsday was relatively developed, constitute first-hand material for research into allareas of Turkology.Therefore, in light of this situation, this article relates some of thecharacteristics of the poetic works and poets written in the Buddhist andManichaean environment which so deeply affected the lifeways, psyche, worldview, and personal values of the Uyghurs over the many centuries of theQochu Uyghur Kingdom.The article consists of three sections, namely the preface, the main bodyof the text, and the conclusion. The preface lays out the reasons for the selection of this theme, the signifance and relevance of the theme, the currentstate of domestic and international research on the subject, the object of thepresent research, and the methods used herein.The first chapter discusses, from a number of angles, the poetic works ofthe Qochu Uyghur Kingdom, their types, the famous poets of this era, and thethe influence of Buddhist literature on Qochu Uyghur literature.The second chapter, via a relatively deep analysis of poetic works,examines the characteristics of Qochu Uyghur poems, their structural features,their use of linguistic and expressive methods, and the characteristics of theirideological content.Finally, the paper concludes by noting that the development of everynation’s literature proceeds by naturally inheriting and building creatively on itsprevious successes in order to create new works suited to their own time; thatthe poetry of Qochu Uyghur literature developed on the basis of and alsoserved to enrich traditional poetic forms, and that it constitutes a perfectedpoetic form characteristic of the literary development of its era; that the literarysuccess of Qochu Uyghur poems can serve to illuminate the flourishingUyghur literature of its era; and that these poems are diverse in their date ofcomposition, types, and style, and that they can serve as reliable material instudying the formation and development of Uyghur poetry and in futureresearch.