A comparative study of Buddhist and Bektasi hagiographies in context of Lalitavistara and Velayetname

The interaction of societies throughout history is a reality seen in many areas. One of the topics that are the subject of the interaction in question is belief. In addition to the religious practices of societies in their daily lives, the beliefs that they live in their minds, which are not visible in the physical world, have shown similarities from time to time and have been the subject of research today. The issue of which culture/cultures the Turks brought to their everyday life and belief after their arrival in Anatolia is also discussed under this title. This study has been prepared by focusing on two texts to determine which cultures or beliefs the Turks had after they became Muslims. The "Lalitavistara Sutra", which is considered one of the Buddhist holy books and is also a biography of Buddha, has been compared with the text called "Velayetname", which describes the Muslim mystic Haci Bektas-i Veli and is considered a biography of him. In the first part of the study, a Turkish summary of the Lalitavitara Sutra, which has never been translated into Turkish, is given. In the second part, the Velayetname, which is originally Turkish, is introduced. In the third chapter, the similarities, and differences of the Lalitavistara Sutra and Velayetname were examined under two headings, and clues were sought as to whether Bektasi hagiographies were influenced by the Buddhist sutras.