Zorin A. One of the First Samples of Cursive Tibetan in European Collections // Journal of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. Volume 2, No. 1—2. Xi’an; Boston: Boston Bilingual Media & Publishing Inc., 2018. P. 65—74.
This paper introduces a letter in cursive Tibetan that was obtained by P.S. Pallas, presumably in Buryatia at the beginning of the 1770s. In 1773, he sent it to I. Bacmeister who obviously added it to the collection of Tibetan and Mongolian texts at the Library of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. It is now preserved at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, RAS (previously called the Asiatic Museum). This early European acquisition of a cursive Tibetan document has a historical value since it belongs to the history of Proto-Tibetology, although the letter was never published or studied. The full text of the document, its description and translation are provided in this paper. The letter contains a prognosis from one of the Sakya hierarchs on a query of a lay Buddhist concerning his future life and necessary measures to secure longevity and avoid a bad reincarnation.
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