| Written Monuments of the Orient 1(3), 2016
Issued twice a year
The entire issue as a *.PDF file Georges-Jean Pinault. The Buddhastotra of the Petrovskii Collection — 3
The article is devoted to the publication of two leaves of a manuscript in
Tocharian B from the Petrovskii collection, which is kept in the Institute of Oriental
Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in St. Petersburg, known under the
call numbers SI P/1b (SI 1903) and SI P/2b (SI 1904). These two leaves are consecutive
and almost complete. The text is being published here for the first time in its entirety,
with full transliteration, transcription and translation. It is part of a Buddhastotra, a poem
of praise addressed to the Buddha, the stanzas of which are parallel to several stanzas of
the Varṇārhavarastotra by Mātṛceṭa.
Key words: Tocharian, Sanskrit, poetry, Buddhist literature, Buddhastotra, Mātṛceṭa
Semyon Ryzhenkov. Manuscripts of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra from Dunhuang:
Preliminary Arrangement According to its Scroll Division — 21
The paper considers one of the methods of manuscript classification applied to
the Chinese translation of Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra from Dunhuang. Given the fact
that the beginnings and endings of some scrolls of its different versions do not correspond,
researchers identify several types of scroll division (fen juan 分卷). This paper
attempts to reconstruct one of these types based on Daboniepanjing chao 大般涅槃經鈔
(“Digests of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra”) manuscripts from Dunhuang.
Key words: Chinese Buddhism, Dunhuang, manuscripts, Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra, Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, scroll division, digests of sūtras, 北敦 6363, 北敦 3386, 北敦
2838
Natalia Smelova. The Canons of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in the Manuscript
IOM, RAS Syr. 34 — 35
The article deals with the manuscript IOM, RAS Syr. 34, one leaf of parchment
originating from the collection of Nikolai Likhachev. It contains a Syriac translation of
selected documents of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (AD 325): the introduction
to the canons, a bilingual Greek-Syriac list of 42 bishops, and the first five canons of
the council. Most of the texts are incomplete and damaged. The present article focuses
mainly on the study and commented publication of the five Nicaean canons from IOM,
RAS Syr. 34. On the basis of comparative textual research the author aims to show
the place of the St. Petersburg manuscript in the history of Syriac translations of the
canons.
Key words: Christian Church, Late Roman Empire, Ecumenical Councils, canon law,
Syriac translations from Greek, Syriac manuscripts
Peter Zieme. An Old Uighur Fictional Letter Supposedly Written by Prince Gautama
from a Fragment in the Serindia Collection at the IOM, RAS — 64
In this paper the Old Uighur fragment SI 4bKr 11 (SI 4028) of the Serindia
Collection at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, the Russian Academy of Sciences is
edited together with notes. Its content are rather peculiar and shed some light on the
attitude of Uighur monks towards their Buddhism.
Key words: Old Uighur, Buddhist culture, fiction, rare words
Olga Chunakova. The Pahlavi Lapidary — 73
The text “The Pahlavi Lapidary” is difficult for translation and interpretation
because different properties are attributed to stones of the same colour and the same
properties to stones of different colours. Correct translation of Pahl. sāyišn as a concrete
noun ‘a powder’ appears to explain the lapidary and to show that it is not only a question
of stones of different colours, but of different coloured powders of these stones. Pahl.
muhrag used not in its meaning of ‘a seal’, but in the meaning ‘a stone’ appears to
suggest that this text may have been translated from a language in which there is one
noun for these two meanings.
Key words: Pahlavi, Pahlavi literature, Pahlavi lapidary
Kirill Alekseev, Anna Turanskaya, Natalia Yampolskaya. Mongolian Golden Kanjur Fragments in the Collection of the IOM, RAS — 85
The collection of the IOM, RAS contains a number of odd folios from the
Mongolian Kanjur, the history of whose entry into the collection is unknown. The text is
written in golden ink on blue paper. Handwriting and orthography are characteristic of
the first half of the 17th c. Appearance and ductus reveal a striking similarity to the
Golden Kanjur of Ligdan Khan kept in Hohhot. In the article the folios from IOM, RAS
are compared with the Golden Kanjur. An attempt to trace back the history of these
manuscript fragments leads to the conclusion that they could be among the first
Mongolian manuscripts brought to St. Petersburg at the time of Peter the Great.
Key words: Ablai Keyid, Kanjur, “golden” manuscripts, codicology, manuscript collection
of IOM, RAS
Vasily Shchepkin. The Manuscript Nijūgokoku chūka chikyū no zu (“Pictures of the Peoples
of Twenty Five Countries with Maps of China and the World”) in the IOM, RAS Collection — 106
The article introduces a Japanese manuscript containing maps of China and the
world along with depictions of the inhabitants of 25 countries and brief descriptions of
those countries. On the basis of the information about Russia and the Ainu lands, the
author puts forward a hypothesis about the date of the manuscript.
Key words: Japanese manuscripts, dating of manuscripts, geography, Russia, Ainu lands,
depictions of tributaries (zhigongtu)
Reviews
Shimon Yakerson. Ozar Sepharad — Sefardskaia sokrovishchnitsa.
Sefardskaia kniga X–XV vv. Ot rukopisnoi k pechatnoi traditsii. [Ozar
Sepharad: Sephardic treasury. Sephardic Books from the Tenth to the
Fifteenth Century. From Manuscripts to Printed Books] — St. Petersburg:
Filologicheskii fakul’tet SPb. gosudarstvennogo universiteta,
2015. — 127 pp., by Mikhail Kizilov — 111
“Vtoroi” i “Tretii” al’bomy o. Iakinfa (N.Ya. Bichurina) [The “Second”
and “Third” Albums of Fr. Iakinf (N.Ya. Bichurin)] / Introduction
by Academician V.S. Miasnikov and O.V. Vassilieva. Publication
by O.V. Vassilieva — St. Petersburg: National Library of Russia,
2012. — 56 pp. + 58 pp. of facsimiles (Nontraditional sources on the
history of China during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), by Irina
F. Popova — 113
A. Helman-Ważny. The Archaeology of Tibetan Books. Leiden-Boston:
Brill, 2014. — 311 p. Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library. Ed. by
H. Blezer, A. McKay, Ch. Ramble. Vol. 36, by Alexander V. Zorin — 115
Arakawa Shintarō 荒川慎太郎. Seika bun Konggo kyō no kenkyū (西夏文金剛經の研究). — Kyōto: Shoukadoh, 2014, by K. Solonin — 118
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