CC BY
27
Otgon Borjigin
Northwest University for Nationalities, Lanzhou
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE FRAGMENTS
OF A CLEAR SCRIPT MANUSCRIPT OF THE THAR-PA CHEN-PO FOUND IN QINGHAI
The fragments which constitute the subject of this study were acquired in Qinghai in the winter of 1998 by my colleague Hailong, a Khoshut Mongol from Qinghai, who very generously turned them over to me for research and publication when I returned from the United States in 2008. He informed me that these fragments had been found in 1998 by a local herdsman named Zandag in the Cave of Qara-Qabchuu (the Black Gorge) (Fig. 1) in Dulaan County, Qinghai province. In a report written at my request, he remarks:
In the summer of 1998, having heard that Mongke, an elementary school teacher in Baruun Sumu (Right Sumu, sumu or sum is a township-level political and administrative division) of Dulaan County, acquired some fragmented folios of a Mongolian Buddhist scripture from someone else, and out of curiosity, I went to Baruun Sumu to visit Mongke in the winter of the same year. He said: "Since you guys do research work, the scripture may be useful to you someday. Just take it with you and do research on it." Having said that, he gave me the manuscript for free. As for the origin of the manuscript, he said that he had acquired it from Zandag, a herdsman in Kuur Bariyada (the Kuur Production Team) of Baruun Sumu, who found it in the Cave of Qara-Qabchuu. Further details may be acquired by asking Zandag.
In order to get further information on the manuscript, Hailong paid a special visit to Zandag on the occasion of his stay in Dulaan County during the National Day holiday in 2009. According to his report, Zandag, or Mongkezandag in full, 45 years old, now working as a taxi-driver in Dorbeljin Balyasu (Square Town) of Dulaan County, found these precious pieces in the summer of 1998 on the southern slope of a hillock, which is about 5 km away from the Cave of Qara-Qabchuu, and then gave them to the school teacher Mongke.
These fragments (see Figs. 2 and 3), approximately several hundred pieces in number, belong to one and the same Buddhist text written with thick calamus in the Oirat Clear Script, in black ink mingled with almost invariably three lines in red from time to time on both sides of yellowish paper with the text-frame of a single red line. On some larger fragments (see the examples in Figs. 4 and 5), the average size of which is about 14 * 19 cm, the chapter number such as xorin xoyor 'twenty-two', xorin tabun 'twenty-five', or yucin nigen 'thirty-one', etc., reads along the outer side of the left hand vertical line of the text-frame. Since the fragments are found to be in a terrible mess and disorder, and most of them are stuck together, one first has to detach all the fragments from each other before they may be photographed, and it is only the study of the content of the text which may eventually allow us to restore the pieces to their original order.
The script of the text fragments is in a rather neat hand. The general appearance of the writing in this manuscript and the shape of some words and many individual letters closely resemble the writing of a Clear Script manuscript of the Oirat Thar-pa chen-po, a page of which has been published in photograph form in Prof. Gyorgy Kara's Books of the Mongolian Nomads: More than Eight Centuries of Writing Mongolian (Fig. 6) [Kara 2005: 136].
In the same book, Prof. Kara recorded that the manuscript fragments of a Mongolian translation of "The Great Liberator" were found by S. E. Malov, a noted Russian Turkologist, in Gansu, along with the famous manuscript of the Old Uygur version of the Golden Beam Sutra and some other Buddhist works in a copy of the 17th century. According to Prof. Kara, the manuscript has three colophons, and the text of the fragments corresponds almost literally with the text of the late Oirat versions of this work. In the discussion of these colophons, Prof. Gyorgy Kara remarked:
Its has three colophons, the first and the last in Mongolian, the middle one in Uygur. The first colophon contains the date of the copy: Dai Cing Kang-si ... arban nigen jil saysbd sarayin sini naiman ... "the 8th day of the new moon of the siksapada month [of the] 11th year [of the] Ta Ch'ing K'ang-hsi (i.e., 1672) ..." in the last one are the Pandita's verses (i. e., the versified afterword of the Zaya Pandita. — O. B ). The Uygur colophon, though badly damaged, makes clear it belongs to this copy of the Pandita's Mongolian translation of the Tibetan Thar-pa chen-po "The Great Liberator," in Uygur, Uluy os[yur]daci
[= ozyurtaci] nom. Thus the triple colophon of this Mongolian manuscript is a witness to the relations between the Zaya Pandita's Western Mongols and the Yellow Uygurs of Kansu. This copy also demonstrates the authority of the Pandita's translations among the users of the Uygur-Mongolian script [Kara 2005: 143-144].
He believes that these texts were compiled by the Zaya Pandita in Mongolian script and only later rewritten into the Clear Script, considering that this Uygur-Mongolian manuscript stands closer to the original translation of the Zaya Pandita than the later handwritten copies in Clear Script.
In his book Rab-'byam Za-ya panditayin touji sarayin gerel kemeku orosiboi "The Moon Splendor: the Life of the Rabjamba Zaya Pandita", Ratnabhadra gives a long list of the Pandita's translations from Tibetan, which he prepared from 1650 to 1662. According to Prof. Kara,
no autograph copies from his own hand of these translations have yet been discovered, and all known Oirat manuscripts and xylographs in which the translator is indicated, relate to much later times, at best case to the beginning of the 18th century [Kara 2005: 141].
On December 23, 2009, I sent, via e-mail, photographs of some of the larger fragments of the Clear Script manuscript found in Qinghai to Prof. Gyorgy Kara. In his reply dated February 21, 2010, he wrote:
Judging from the photographs of the Clear Script manuscript found in your area, it was presumably the sutra Tarbachinboo (Tharpa chen po), Ixed tonilgogch in Mongolian, translated by the Oirat Zaya Pandita Namhaijantsan from Tibetan. In my book on the Mongolian books (i. e., Books of the Mongolian Nomads: More than Eight Centuries of Writing Mongolian. — O. B.), I mentioned a bit about its colophon. Ayuushi Guushi's Mongolian translation is found in the Mongolian printed Kanjur, which is also one of the first Mongolian xylographs printed in Beijing during the Manchu era. When I have free time, I shall transcribe, from the photographs, the fragments of the Clear Script scripture found in your area, and send the transcriptions to you.
In his second e-mail, dated May 10, 2010, he supplied the transcription of the text of the fragments with his usual kindness, which reads as follows:
arban zuryän [16a] .. .]■-du amuyuulang orosin : caqlasi ...] uyu : dedü nom cü ...] : tere metü süzülün ...] cigiyin [= cagiyin] : burxan ...] gem kiged ire ödüi ...] üyiledüqsen cü : ...]alan töün-d[ü...
arban yüsün [19a]
... bodisadv-du mürgümüi :
... bodisadv-du mürgümüi :
xorin xoyor [22a]
...]dü kilince oyöto arilxu
... bod]isadv maha-sadv-nariyin nere edeni
.. ,]n yalab boltolo tamuyin
...] unan : yurban sangsariyin
...]uda masida getülüqsen oron
...]r? kösöün oron-du ülü
...] mou izourtu
.] ülü törön : erke
...] dedü nom cü
... s]aqsabad-luya
...] budaliyin
xorin tabun [25a]
o amuyuulangjiryalang bolxu bo[l...
nigen köböün bui terej[...
tere abxui [?] balyadtu kü[...
-lang caqlasi ügei edlekü...
-tu köböün-yen amuulun üyi[led...?
arya-bër ayoultu yaz[ar?
balyad töüni öüdün-d[ü...
köl dotoro oroul[...
örgüküi zabsar [...
metü sedkimüi : [.
irekui-du ye [... touni ken ab[... [.
On the basis of these data, we came to the conclusion that the Clear Script manuscript found in Qinghai was a late handwritten copy of the Zaya Pandita's Mongolian translation of Tibetan Thar-pa chen-po "The Great Liberator" (Mong. Yekede tonilyayci; Chin. Da jietuo jing and inclined to date the new fragments to the late
17th — early 18th century.
Zaya Pandita (1599-1662), the learned Oirat man of letters, created the Clear Script (Tod useg) in 1648, 11 years after the settlement of Guush Khan and his people in the area of Kok Nuur, maybe for this reason until recently no Clear Script monuments have been found from the Kok Nuur area. Now it makes one wonder how this Buddhist text in Clear Script was transmitted to Qinghai. It seems difficult to solve this question, but the important discovery would shed new light on the history of the society, culture, and language of the Khoshud Mongols in Qinghai and their cultural relations to the Oirats in Dzungaria.
A historical tale among the Kok Nuur Mongols relates that Lobzangdanjin, a grandson of Guush Khan, carried the books preserved in his tent by yak-back to the Cave of Qara-Qabchuu and hid them in it when he escaped westward to Dzungaria after his rebellion against the Qing was defeated. Although this is just a tale, old books such as fragments of Tibetan Kanjur and Mongolian Buddhist scriptures, an old-fashioned Mongolian garment (Fig. 7), cattle collars, pieces of rope, and so on were indeed found one after another in the very cave [Mongkebayatur 1987]. This permits one to consider it likely that the Clear Script manuscript in question has something to do with Lobzangdanjin's rebellion and relates to the beginning of the 18th century. However, this conclusion seems to be a bit premature, as pilgrim S foot-tracks across Kok Nuur to Lhasa through the centuries are also noteworthy, and thus further research into this question needs to be undertaken.
Bibliography
Kara 2005 — G. Kara. Books of the Mongolian Nomads: More than Eight Centuries of Writing Mongolian [Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series 171]. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 2005.
Môngkebayatur 1987 — D. Môngkebayatur. Lobzangdanjin kiged tegun-u Degedu Mongyol-daki nôluge tusqal [Lobzangdanjin and his influence among the Deed Mongols] // Ôbôr Mongyol-un neyigem-un sinjileku uqayan 3 (28), 1987. P. 38-42, 72.
