The date of this manuscript, taken from the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang by A. Stein, was determined by A. D. Ross to be 1350 A. D. A part of the colophon was subsequently translated by T. Haneda. This manuscript believed to be a translation into Uighur from a Tibetan original, a tantra which was transmitted from Nāropa and recorded by Chos-kyi rgyal-mtsan of ○UĞ-○U baγ. The contents can be divided into 4 parts; A1, A2, B and C. A1 and A2 are similar in their forms but differ in contents. Especially, A2 contains a complete chapter or volume, and is the longest as well as the most important of the four parts. It is entitled “The way of achieving the four kinds of stages of Dharma mudrā contained in the thirty first volume of the Fundamental Tantra of Śri-cakrasaṃvara”. These four stages are; 1) “the stage of spirit world regarding the distinguishing characteristics,” 2) “the stage of Dharani which is to be mastered,” 3) “the stage of great wisdom which produces great wisdom,” and 4) “the secret stage.” A1 concerns itself with the way of rebirth from the Intermediate state,” B with “Meditation,” and C discusses “Prayer”; but each of them is less complete than A1. All the parts are written in standard Uighur. There is no confusion of word order as is often seen in translations from Chinese, but there are some distinguished characteristics of the writing system, phonology and morphology. For example, which represents gh, is here written with a new graph formed by adding a dot to the right of G. –γul/-gül, the compound forms of –γu/-gü (deverbal noun), and ol (denominal pronoun) are new morphemes. In addition to the many words newly borrowed from Sanskrit, one can also notice a loan word from a common noun in Tibetan: tigil “semen, menstrual blood”
