The Old Uygur manuscript Xuanzang Biography was translated from its Archaic Chinese version in the tenth or the eleventh century. It has been one of the most important Old Uygur texts which were unearthed in Xinjiang since the 20th century. This Old Uygur text has not only provided the history of Inner Asia and Indian Buddhism for us, but also records the correct pronunciation of the names of many places in Inner Asia and India. It is of great value and has great significance for the study of the Old Uygur people and the surrounding nations, including the languages, writings, cultures, religion and history, etc. of the Inner Asian nations.Since it was excavated in the 1930’s, the Old Uygur text Xuanzang Biography has been continuously studied by the scholars from all over the world. Some of them did research on the manuscript in itself. Some of them researched other aspects on the basis of this manuscript, but a comprehensive study of the text has not been achieved so far.This dissertation is a comprehensive study of this Old Uygur text, attempting a rearrangement and a systematic study. It contains six parts; The abridged Xuanzang Biography of the original, the transliteration and the literal translation of the Old Uygur version, the modern Chinese translation of the Old Uygur version, the annotation of some words in the Old Uygur version, the glossary, the summary of the morphological phenomena in this text and the summary of the features in the Old Uygur translation. We hope this dissertation can provide reference for future related study.The content of this dissertation belongs to synchronic study, some scientific methods have been used, such as the methods of Philology, the method of static description, the method of document investigation and verification, the method of data statistics and so on. Furthermore, the author is attempting to build up a processed corpus of Old Uygur texts and complete a comprehensive research paper on the Old Uygur text Xuanzang Biography.
