The Linguistic and Philological Significance of the Mongolian Translations of Bhadracaryapranidhānarāja

The Linguistic and Philological Significance of the Mongolian Translations of Bhadracaryapranidhānarāja

Higuchi Koichi
Ehime University

35th Meeting of the PIAC, Taipei 1992

Eighteen Mongolian translations of Bhadracarya including two fragmentary manuscripts of the fourteenth century found at Turfan are known to exist. Here seventeen of them will be discussed. We can divide them into two groups from the linguistic viewpoint. One of them, consisting of six translations, contains archaic forms, and the other, consisting of eleven ones, has no such forms; we will call the former the old versions and the latter the new versions. Each group can be divided into three subgroups from the philological viewpoint. All versions can be regarded as based on the Tibetan original, because the order of verses is the same as that of the Tibetan text, but not the same as that of the Sanskrit or Chinese text(s). However, in the old versions we find many elements that have no counterparts in the Tibetan original, while such elements are absent in the new versions. Though the lines of the Mongolian translations available at present do not coincide with those of the Turfan fragments, we can conclude that the old versions were translated into Mongolian at nearly the same period as the Turfan fragments, since we find in them such forms peculiar to that period as bügsen and sayiǰid-, and the productive use of the preparatory converb -run/rün etc. Also we reach the conclusion that the new versions are revised or new translations from a later period.