Quintessence Of Wisdoms

The 29 Chapter Mongolian Suvar(?)aprabh(?)sottama-S(?)tra (AG-29 in short) is one of the most broadly-spread and influential Buddhist scriptures among Mongols. It was first translated by the translator Sirab-Sengge in the first half of the 14th Century during Yuan dynasty. In the historical literatures found today almost do not have any information about the details of Sirab-Sengge’s translating. And none of AG-29 existing today are Sirab-Sengge’s original translation. They are actually all copies of the manuscripts or block-print based on his original translation written after the end of 16th century. It is well known that Tibetan Buddhism was reintroduced to Mongols in the end of 16th century and thus raised a second trend in translating Buddhist works into Mongolian since Yuan dynasty. Many Buddhist scriptures were either newly translated or largely revised, and the AG-29 was one of them. All the above mentioned reasons as well as the many different versions of existing AG-29 has made it very hard for people to fully and clearly understand the translation details and the historical progresses of AG-29.Fortunately, there are some Colophons of AG-29s manuscripts which in some degrees recorded initial translation, transcription, revision and even ’reinterpretation’ and such historical contents into the AG-29, although they are not identical from each other. These historical contents provided us with important clues and materials for understanding and studying AG-29. Some of these colophons are known by the academia and has done some research progress about it. There are, however, still parts of colophons are not known to scholars at all, not to speak of doing research. By a thorough comparative study on the different versions of the colophons, it can at least recover parts of the historical trace of the original translation and revision of AG-29.There are quite a few historical documents recording Uighur Buddhism in Yuan dynasty, but there are barely historical records about Uighur and Uighur Buddhism’s impact on Mongols during early dates (13th-14th century). When we are reading early dates Mongolian Buddhist scriptures, we are often direct or indirectly affected by the Uighur language and Uighur Buddhism. And till now the Uighur influences still exist. Above facts forced us to carefully consider the possibility that there is a close relationship between Mongolian and Uighur in terms of Buddhism. Moreover, the parts of colophons of AG-29 clearly recorded that it referred the Tibetan as well as the Uighur version of the suvar(?)aprabh(?)sottama-S(?)tra when it was translated into Mongolian. Uighur versions of this sutra are one of the largest Buddhist literatures we found till now. Although some of them were written in 17th century, but it translated actually first in 10-11 centuries or earlier. Above points direct us to more specific questions:are there any connections between AG-29 and Uighur version of the suvar(?)aprabh(?)sottama-S(?)tra? If the answer is negative, then is there an influence from Uighur Buddhism on AG-29 and how big is the influence?Based on considerations we mentioned above, I chose AG-29 as my main focus on study. Firstly, I did a full analysis on the known colophons of AG-29 recording the process of translation and revision of AG-29, and then did a comparative study on them to discuss the translation history of AG-29 as far as possible. Furthermore, I chose the well-known story of Hungry Tiger in 26th chapter of both AG-29 and Uighur version of the suvar(?)aprabh(?)sottama-S(?)tra to do a comparative study on them, and try to use this comparative study to reveal the relationship between those two scriptures.This paper consists of introduction, main body, conclusion, appendix and bibliography etc.The introduction mainly states the basis of my selected topic, summarize of the literatures, previous researches, examples and instructions.There are two sections for the main body. The first section has three chapters that separately research 1. One colophon of AG-29 preserved at Ulaanbaatar; 2. Four colophons of AG-29 preserved at Inner Mongolia, St.Petersburg and Ulaanbaatar; 3. Two colophons of AG-29 preserved at Budapest and Copenhagen with transcriptions, Chinese translations, notes and analyses. The second section has three chapters:the first two chapter separately shows the translation of the story of Hungry Tiger in Mongolian and Uighur into Latin and Chinese with notes and analyses; The third chapter shows the comparative study on the Hungry Tiger from those two versions with the focus on story line, third party loanwords as well as the comparative vocabularies from Mongolian and (old) Turkish language.The conclusion concludes the work, accomplishments and direction of further research of this paper.The appendix clarifies the abbreviations of this paper, and also includes the contents which supplement this paper, such as index and the pictures of some mongolian and uighur versions of the suvar(?)aprabh(?)sottama-S(?)tra.At the end all the relevant literature references are listed in the bibliography.