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A Note on Some Mongol Manuscripts in the University Library, Aberdeen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
The activities of the K‘eng ze čin wang, the seventeenth son of the K‘ang-hsi emperor of the Ch‘ing dynasty, as a promoter of translations of Lamaistic texts into the Mongol language, have been fairly well documented. In 1957 the present author published a brief description of a number of manuscripts associated with the name of this prince, which were then, and still are, in the possession of the University Library, Cambridge. For the sake of bibliographical completeness there follows a concise account of a small collection of manuscripts, some complete and some fragmentary, also associated with him, which have come to light in the past few months. These manuscripts belong to the University Library, Aberdeen, and were shown to me by Mr. Howard Nelson of the British Museum, to whom they had been submitted for identification.
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1973
References
1 See Heissig, W., Die Pekinger lamaistischen Blockdrucke in mongolischer Sprache (Göttinger Asiatische Forschungen, II), Wiesbaden, 1954Google Scholar (references in index of personal names), and the same author's Mongolische Handschriften, Blockdrucke, Landkarten, Wiesbaden, 1961, particularly p. 223.Google Scholar
2 JRAS, 1957, 3 & 4, 151–160. Illustrations in the following number.
3 There is the possibility that this converb may have the causative force of the main verb bičigülbei, “caused to be written”, but I consider it grammatically more likely that orčiγulǰu means simply “translated”. Heissig, Blockdrucke, 77, n. 10, quotes from a colophon a passage which refers to the same prince's literary activities. His commentary gives a causative force to a simple form of the verb orčiγulqu: … kengce čin wang buddha guru real olan kelemürči-ber orčiγulbai: “So flnden sich in einer handschriftlichen Sammlung von Gebeten und Sādhana's verschiedene, welche als Veranlasser ihrer mongolischen Übersetzung durch viele Übersetzer den 17. Sohn des Mañjuśrī-Herrschers, K‘en ze čin wang buddha guru real nennen”. The Mongol text has in my opinion a double subject, followed by the subject indicator ber, rather than a single subject followed by the instrumental suffix -ber, and states that the prince and many translators translated the texts concerned.
4 Or budha. The correct writing should be buddha, as in no. 2.
5 Here and in no. 2 real appears to be written goal, but as the error, if any, is small, and the proper form of the name is not in doubt, I write real. See the transliteration of seal no. 2 in my 1957 article.
6 For angqarun abqu see Lessing, Mongolian–English dictionary, p. 1160: “performance, as of a rite according to a predetermined procedure”. Also Kowalewski, p. 16, “s'occuper continuellement du même objet, s'appliquer à q. ch.”
7 For ile onol see Lessing, p. 1171, “intuition of Buddhist truth; vision of the deity evoked by ritual bütügel arγa)”.