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OCR
RACHEL MIKos Byx T3pr33p BypxaHbI OpoH OpoB — Dpux rarax” Entered the deity’s land By locomotive — Reading a rosary byx mapae (in other words, the “bull’s wheel’, 6yx mapeaap is in the instrumental case) is an expression dating from around 1950, when the railroad was connected from beyond the Russian frontier to the border station of Erén in China for the first time. (This is where, even today, the railcars must have to have their wheels switched from broad to narrow gage.) The word 6yx (‘bull’) refers to the locomotive (strong like a bull, with steam coming out of its ‘nostrils’). The more modern expressions for ‘train’ are memep 3am (literally, ‘iron road’) or 2za2 mapze (‘fire wheel’). The ‘bull’ is at the same time the head rosary, while the other beads are the many cars behind the locomotive. There is a certain amount of humour in associating the head bead of the rosary with a locomotive; and yet the metaphor of ‘rosary = spiritual vehicle’ is eloquent and apt, referring as it does to the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, the branch of Buddhism practised by Mongolians. The subject in the riddle (the one riding or driving the train/ rosary) is completely elided. This places the emphasis in the riddle on the movement of the rosary as it is being read. This riddle does, however, continue a very traditional riddle motif concerning rosaries. Many earlier riddles refer to reading a rosary as a form of travel — as, for example, crossing a mountain pass, as seen in this riddle: Oxo zaBaa JaBx GoJ10x Ouup zaBaa JaBx Goroxr y — DpHX, SPAXHAË XYALL* Through many mountain passes one can pass Through Vajra’s pass one cannot pass — Rosary, the head bead?> Jlozop, I. — Oxsuiixytar, L.: Moneon apdvin onBcoeo masaap, p. 286. JIosop, I. — Oxsuiixytar, L.: Moneon apdvin onBcoeo masaap, p 255. This riddle is translated by A. Taylor as: ‘It is possible to go over many passes / It is not possible to go over the diamond pass. — Rosary and the end (head) of a rosary’. Taylor, Archer: An Annotated Collection of Mongolian Riddles. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1954, p. 351. 156
