Written
Monuments
of the Orient
Volume 8, No. 1(15), 2022
ISSN 2410-0145
Issued twice a year
The entire issue as a *.PDF file
CONTENTS
Safarali Shomakhmadov. The Sanskrit
Fragment of Kṣāntivādi-jātaka in ‘Proto-Śāradā’ Script from the Serindia Collection of IOM, RAS —
3
The article introduces the Sanskrit fragment of Kṣāntivādi-jātaka kept in the Serindian
Fund of the IOM, RAS. A brief review of the script ‘proto-śāradā’ (in which the jātaka’s text is
written) is given. The author points out that this fragment is a part of a certain Jātakamālā manuscript
‘edition’. The article includes transliteration, translation and comments on the text of the
fragment.
Key words: Buddhism, jātaka, kṣānti, manuscript, paleography, ‘Proto-Śāradā’,
Sanskrit, Serindia
Nie Hongyin. Quotations from Zhuangzi
in Tangut Literature — 16
Eleven quotations from Zhuangzi are found in a Tangut compilation and a Tangut translation work, in
which five paragraphs prove to be missing contents of the current edition. The compilation is well
accomplished, but the translation, similar to some Dunhuang manuscripts in their contents, is a shoddy
work with lots of interpolations or even misunderstandings of the Chinese classics. The Taoist works,
including Zhuangzi, were spread in a very limited scope in Xixia, causing a fact that nobody was
familiar with it, except a few higher intellectuals serving the Emperor.
Key words: Tangut; Xixia; Zhuangzi; translation; missing paragraphs;
Dunhuang
Anna Turanskaya. An Old Uyghur Manuscript
Fragment Dedicated to Caitya Veneration — 27
Caitya is the name for the holy places
tightly connected with the Buddha’s great deeds, that are commonly praised and worshipped in the
Buddhist tradition. These worshipping texts generally called Caityastotra were most probably widespread
among the Uyghur Buddhists. A rather brief text Caityastotra is included in the preface of the late
edition of the Old Uyghur Suvarṇaprabhāsottama sūtra also known as Altun Yaruk sudur. Several fragments
of the other versions are found in the Turfan collection of Berlin. The newly identified fragment
dedicated to the third Caitya veneration is preserved in the Serindia collection of the IOM, RAS. The
aim of the present article is to provide transliteration, transcription and translation of the
text.
Key words: Old Uyghur Buddhist literature, Caitya veneration,
Caityastotra, Serindia collection of the IOM, RAS
Alexander Zorin. Tibetan Texts from Khara-Khoto
on Acala and Jvālāmukhī Preserved at the IOM, RAS — 38
The paper deals with two Tibetan
manuscripts from Khara-Khoto that contain instructions on a variety of Tantric rites connected with the
wrathful deity Acala treated here as Bhagavān, i.e. an Enlightened one, and the demoness Jvālāmukhī (Kha
’bar ma). Summarized contents of all the fragments are introduced in the paper. Both manuscripts mention
the 11th c. Indian guru Vajrāsana whose Tibetan disciple Bari Lotsāwa is said to have brought his
instruction on the Jvālāmukhī torma offering to Tibet. Another line of transmission of this
practice goes back to Atiśa. The practice was certainly shaped by the first half of the 12th c. but the
Indian authenticity of the demoness who gave it her name seems to be somewhat dubious.
Key
words: Khara-Khoto, Tibetan manuscripts, Tantric rites, Tantric deities, Vajrāsana, Bari
Lotsāwa, Atiśa
Alice Crowther. A Manuscript
Russian-Chinese-Manchu Dictionary (from before 1737) in T.S. Bayer’s Papers in Glasgow University
Library. Part I: Authorship of the Dictionary — 57
This article presents an anonymous
Russian-Chinese-Manchu manuscript dictionary (from before 1737) held in the papers of Theophilus
Siegfried Bayer (1694–1738) in Glasgow University Library’s Special Collections. Part I of the article
introduces the Manchu materials found in the papers of T.S. Bayer, a member of the St. Petersburg
Academy of Sciences from 1726 to his death, and the history of the arrival of the Bayer papers in
Glasgow. Previous scholarship on the dictionary is then summarized and possible candidates for its
authorship are reviewed. Although it is not possible to identify the author of the dictionary, it is
clearly a product of the language-learning activities of the members of the first Russian Ecclesiastical
Mission to Peking. Part II will discuss the Manchu and Chinese lexicon of the Bayer collection
dictionary and the dictionary’s annotations.
Key words: Manuscript dictionary, Manchu, T.S.
Bayer, Hunterian Library, Russian Ecclesiastical Mission
Natalia
Yampolskaya. Intermixture of Mongolian and Oirat in 17th Century Manuscripts — 75
The Oirat
alphabet Clear Script was created in 1648, but few specimens of Oirat penmanship from the 17th c. have
survived, and very little is known about the early history of its development and adaptation. Some
information on the subject can be gathered from manuscripts that were discovered at the site of the
ruined Dzungar monastery Ablaikit. Among these manuscripts are multiple fragments of the Buddhist
canonical collection Kanjur and two folios from ritual texts composed by the Fourth Panchen Lama. These
texts are written in Mongolian, but the scribes used graphemes from Clear Script, elements of the
vocabulary and grammar of Written Oirat. Fragments of another manuscript found in Ablaikit, a small
birch-bark copy of the Heart Sutra, contain a text written in Oirat with interpolations from Mongolian.
Combined, the observations based on the study of these sources show that the transition from Mongolian
to Clear Script was gradual, and for a period of time in the second half of the seventeenth century both
writing systems were used by the Oirats.
Key words: Ablaikit, Oirat manuscripts, Clear
Script, Zaya paṇḍita, Mongolian manuscripts, Kanjur
Dmitrii
Nosov.Buryat Folklore Collector’s “Desktop”: MS Mong. E 289 from the Collection of the IOM, RAS — 88
The
paper contains a brief description of Mong. E 289 unit from the collection of the Institute of Oriental
Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This is a set of 373 folios of various formats recorded
and compiled by Tatiana K. Alekseeva, a Buryat folklore scholar. Among them is the text of an epics,
titled by the author as Geser qaɣan-u nom ɣaraqu-yin tuqai (“Prehistory of Geser”). The text is
presented in different phonetic transcription systems. 120 folios of text in Old Mongolian scripts were
done in the field. The record took place on the territory of the modern Osinsky district of the Irkutsk
region during the summer of 1946 from the storyteller Morkhonoi A. Shobonov. The complex of both field
record and different “whitewashed” variants of the text can help to uncover the “desktop” of the
collector.
Key words: Buryats, shamans, Geser epics, folklore textology, Old Mongolian
script
