Article

Name: “The King of Aspiration Prayers” (“Bhadracarya”): Buddhist terminology of Mongolian and Oirat translations revisited

Authors: S. V. Mirzaeva

Kalmyk Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciencesб Elista, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The paper considers the Buddhist terminology of Mongolian- and Oirat-language texts of the well-known translated work The King of Aspiration Prayers (Bhadracarya). The composition was translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan in the 8th – 9th centuries, and then from Tibetan to Mongolian and Oirat during the period of active dissemination of Buddhism in Mongolia in the 16th – 17th centuries. Being a part of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, nowadays The King of Aspiration Prayers exists among Mongolian-speaking peoples in the form of a separate text which is recited at the end of regular Buddhist practices or during funeral rites. With evidence from Tibetan, Mongolian and Oirat texts and applying a comparative-textual method, the paper analyzes Buddhist terms emphasizing the lexical groups as follows: anthroponyms, toponyms, concepts of Buddhist mythology, and philosophical terms. The article reveals that the Mongolian and Oirat versions of The King of Aspiration Prayers contain a number of borrowings from Sanskrit, Uighur, Chinese, Sogdian and Tocharian languages. A comparative analysis of the Mongolian and Oirat translations shows that the Mongolian text is characterized by more active use of Uighur forms of Sanskrit words, while the Oirat text interpreter attempted to restore the original Sanskrit forms of such words. In addition, the Oirat text is characterized by a stricter adherence to the original Tibetan text: each Tibetan term has only one translation equivalent in the Oirat text, whereas the Mongolian version may apply differing translation variants for the same Tibetan word.

Keywords: “The King of Aspiration Prayers” (“Bhadracarya”), Buddhist vocabulary, Mongolian translation, Oirat translation

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