Buddhist terminology of the Oirat version of “Subhashita” and “Hymn to 21 Tara”

In the development and enrichment of the vocabulary of Mongolian languages an important place is given to borrowings, a large layer of which is Buddhist vocabulary. This article is devoted to the etymology, structure and semantics of borrowed foreign-language Buddhist terms, taking into account their textual functioning. Buddhist terms entered the Mongolian languages through Uyghur from Sogdian, Sanskrit, and then directly from the Tibetan language thanks to the translations of Buddhist works into the old written Mongolian and Oirat languages. An invaluable contribution to the dissemination of the Buddhist canon among the Mongolian-speaking peoples was made by translators, experts in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Old Mongolian writing and Oirat “clear writing” (“todo bichig”). The origins of the Oirat translation tradition were laid by the creator of the Old Kalmyk script, the outstanding educator Zaya-pandita Namkhai Jamtso. The task of studying, understanding and systematizing key Buddhist terms is currently extremely relevant. In the article, using the example of the Oirat translation (in the Kalmyk language) of the Tibetan version of the Sanskrit text “Praise to the 21 Tara” and the Oirat version of the Tibetan original work “Subhashita” (“Precious Treasury of Elegant Sayings”), some Kalmyk Buddhist terms are considered with the use of Mongolian, Sanskrit and Tibetan equivalents. The author of the second written monument is the famous Tibetan scholar of the 13th century Sakya-pandita Kunga-Jaltsan (1182-1251). The texts under consideration belong to different genres of literature.

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