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PÉTER, ALEXA third son, Jingim (1243-1286)! in order to give a clear and brief introduction to the substance of Buddhism.” The Tibetan text can be found in The Collected Works of the Great Masters of the Sakyapa School, printed in Derge (Sde dge) in 1734.° The colophon gives the complete title of this work: A Treatise for Bodhisattva Prince Jimgim entitled: Explanation of the Knowable.* It consists of five chapters: three of them discuss the history of Buddhism and its principal tenets, while the other two explain the basics of Buddhist cosmology.° It is probable that Phagpa Lama himself translated it into Mongolian because later Mongolian translators usually made a word by word translation following the Tibetan original as closely as possible. The translator of The Explanation of the Knowable, undoubtedly an expert in Buddhism, freely added words and phrases, divided or combined Tibetan sentences, or re-arranged some parts of the original in order to make it more easily understandable to Mongolian readers. The manuscript of the Mongolian translation became an item of the private collection of Prince Yunli,° the seventeenth son of Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722). With other books of Yunli’s library it was purchased by the famous Russian scholar, V. P. Vassiliev in the 1840s in Beijing. However, its existence was unknown to scholars until Professor Vladimir Uspensky discovered it in 1993 while compiling the catalogue of Mongolian manuscripts in the St. Petersburg University Library Collection.’ The Great Volume of Precise Understanding on the basis of edition of Sark6zi Alice (ed.): A Buddhist Terminological Dictionary. The Mongolian Mahavyutpatti The Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary of Buddhist terminology, The Great Volume of Precise Understanding (Skt. Mahavyutpatti, Tib. Bye brag tu rtogs par byed pa chen po, Mong. Ilyal-i ilete ugayulun üiledügci-yin jerge delgeregülün sudur) was originally compiled in Tibet as early as 801 or 812 by a committee of Indian and Tibetan scholars for a special imperial order. King Ralpacen (Ral pa can, 802-838) The name Jingim (meaning ‘True Gold’) was given him by the emperor’s Chinese Buddhist adviser, Hai-yün (1202-1257). (Name variants: Jing gyim, Jim gyim, Cinggim, Chen chin, Zhen jin, Ching kim.) Jingim was appointed crown-prince and head of the Central Secretariat in 1273 by his father. Phagpa was chosen to teach the princes Buddhist intellectuality and spirituality. Péter, Alexa: Comparison of Two Tibetan Compendiums on Buddhist Cosmology dating from the 13" and 19" Centuries. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 69(4) 2012, 442-443. 3 Sa skya bka’ ’bum, vol. pa, ff. 1r-35v (vol. XIII), VI, 1-18. The reprint edition of the entire collection: Bsod nams Rgya mtsho (ed.): The Complete Works of the Great Masters of the Sa skya Sect. Toyo Bunko, Tokyo, 1966. Tib. Shes bya rab tu gsal ba zhes bya ba’i bstan bcos bskul /rgyal bu byang chub sems dpa’ Jim gyim. > Péter, Alexa: Comparison of Two Tibetan..., 443-444. Prince Yunli (1697-1738): a Manchu prince of the Qing dynasty. He was a cultured and deeply religious sympathizer of Tibetan Buddhism. See Uspensky, Vladimir: Explanation of the Knowable by ’Phags-pa bla-ma Blo-gros rgyal-mtshan (1235-1280). Facsimile of the Mongolian Translation with Transliteration and Notes. Resarch Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo 2006. 318
