Uyghur stories and histories, recorded and translated by Gunnar Jarring, 1946 and 1951

Gunnar Jarring was a Swedish scholar of the Turkic languages who also had a career as a diplomat. In this series he set down the language and culture of the Uyghurs of Eastern Turkestan as they were in the twentieth century: texts collected from speakers, written out, translated into English and explained in notes.

Part I, from 1946, gives texts from Khotan and Yarkand. Part IV, from 1951, turns to the history and customs of Guma, as told by Maqsud Haji, a native speaker whom Jarring interviewed not in Turkestan but in Srinagar. Researchers still use early records like these to study how speech differed from one district to the next, and to recover the cultural history of the region. Jarring also built an important collection of Central Asian manuscripts, which later went to Lund University; these parts were published in Lund by C. W. K. Gleerup.

Only these two parts are offered, I and IV, each in its original printed paper wrappers. Both are browned and chipped at the edges; Part IV is the more worn, with paper lost along the fore-edge and spots on the cover. The contents and plates have not yet been checked page by page.