Unknown Treasures hidden in lines of Mongolian Buddhist Literature
in the Case of Mongolian Versions of the Lotus Sutra
(53rd Annual Meeting of the PIAC, St. Petersburg 2010)
The Lotus Sutra, of which five Mongolian texts are available at present, is believed to have been firstly translated from Tibetan into Mongolian in the Middle period, although the original translation is missing. The oldest of the five, a Beijing xylograph printed in the 17th century, is a revision by Erdeni mergen dayicing tayiji based on the original by Chos-kyi ‘od zer of the 14th century, as far as we believe the contents of its colophon. Careful comparison among the lines of those five, however, tells us that the colophon is not true at all. Moreover we can find many precious facts about Mongolian philology in the lines of the Mongolian versions of the Lotus Sutra.