Bakhshī (Central Asia) - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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Zarcone, Thierry
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Leiden
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Brill
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(956 words)
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Text of Note
The Uzbek term bakhshī (from Chinese boshi 博, scholar, professor) refers, amongst Uyghurs and Mongols, to a Buddhist priest, a hermit, or a scribe (Laufer, 485-7). In Turkish and Persian sources from eighth/fourteenth-century Central Asia , it is written bakhshī or baḥshī , in the sense of a Buddhist priest (Rashīd al-Dīn, Jamiʿ al-tawārīkh , in Jahn), then, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as bākhshī , in the sense of a person who heals with the help of spirits (Ăbdullāh Poskāhī, 135, 265), and, in the