Futaki Hiroshi 二木博史
On the relationship between three Oirat manuscripts of Sarayin gerel written by Radnabhadra
67th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Gotemba 2025
As three manuscripts in Todo script and a manuscript in Mongolian script of Sarayin gerel written by Radnabhadra were published in a book in 2018, we are now able to reconstruct the original text of the biography of Zaya Pandita Namkhaijamts, the Buddhist leader of the Oirats in the 17th century.
Professor Borjigin Aldartu of Inner Mongolia Normal University published his doctoral dissertation as a book entitled Luu-yin Qaγan-u Manlai Bayasqaqui Tunumal Erdeni in 2024. He used an Oirat manuscript copied from the Sharmazhaev manuscript by A. M. Pozdneev in his research. B. Aldartu selected the Zakhchin manuscript as a base text and compared it with three other Oirat manuscripts. He concluded that the Zakhchin manuscript was the closest to the original.
In my opinion, the Sharmazhaev manuscript maintains some phrases of the original text, which were lost in other manuscripts. The Zakhchin manuscript and the Natsag beise manuscript are close to each other, but there are obvious differences in some verb endings. The Sharmanzhaev manuscript and the Zakhchin manuscript use verb endings -xulā/-külē and -xā/-kē, while the Natsag beise manuscript has verb endings -xulai/-külei and -xai/-kei. Therefore, the Natsag beise manuscript should be considered a newer text than the Zakhchin manuscript.