A History for the Common People : Chronological concepts in popular Mongolian texts of the 18th and 19th centuries
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The Mongols have a remarkable tradition of written historiography developed during the 17th – 19th centuries. Since the very beginnings of the international Mongolian studies, the research of chronicles became a storefront of the Mongolian studies. However, when we observe the corpus of the Mongolian manuscript heritage held in major libraries in Mongolia, China and worldwide, as well as the manuscript heritage still being preserved and used by individuals or kept in monasteries around Mongolia and Mongolian areas in China or Russia, a quantitative distribution of historical chronicles is considerably low. Therefore, a question arises: “Which part of the textual corpus dealing with chronology might have been actually known to an ordinary Mongolian countryside scribe or bibliophile and (subsequently) influencing the oral tradition?” In the paper I examine some of the most commonly diffused Mongolian texts of the 18th and 19th centuries dealing with chronological concepts. All the texts, which will be analysed in the paper, can be classified in the traditional Mongolian approach as teüke (“history”), even though their narrative character and prevailing imaginative content requires them to be classified to the category of the fiction. Nevertheless, in the premodern Mongolia they were considered as “historical writings”. All of these texts count on a general time frame of the Buddhist temporal cosmology with the expected end of the present time sequence – antarakalpa. They announce the coming of the “age of calamities” (čöb-ün čaG, snyigs ma'i dus), which is unavoidable on the general level but preventable as for individuals or individual communities. The main personages of the past narratives are actualized by statements, that they will appear (or have appeared) in Tibet or Mongolia respectively as well-known personalities. A soteriological role of Jebtsundamba Khutugtu(s) is particularly emphasized. The following texts will be particularly investigated: 1.) Jarong kašor suburGan-u tuGuji (“The story about the stupa Jarong kashor”), a Tibetan composition translated several times during the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries into Mongolian enjoyed a great popularity throughout the Mongolian cultural area. 2.) Gerger qaGan-u namtar (“The biography of the King Gerger”), an anonymous narrative almost totally neglected in the histories of the classical Mongolian literature but diffused through the whole Khalkha and in a lesser extent Inner Mongolia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 3.) Tobčilan jokiyaGsan šasin-u jiruqai (“A concise religious chronology”) composed by Vagindr-a sumadi kalpa bhadr-a da-na (Delgeriin Galsanjamba, ngag dbang blo bzang bskal bzang sbyin pa, 1816–1817) of Onon Tsugol monastery and published as xylograph in 1866. The selection of historical data determining for the Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism is intertwined by parallel data related to the mythical land of Shambhala. The chronology of the kings of Shambhala (as described for example by the popular Mongolian treatise Šambala-yin orun-u bayidal qaGad-un üy-e kiged. jorčiqu-yin yosu arG-a jam nuGud-i üjegülügsen sudur) was regarded as a natural part of the general chronology. |
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