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THE RENEWAL OF MONGOLIAN BUDDHIST TERMINOLOGY
the work from Tibetan into Mongolian. He was an important and very learned per¬
son, the author of several other works; among others he compiled veterinary books.
There are several copies of this blockprint: in Marburg, Stockholm, Prague and
Ulan-Bator, with further copies in private possession in St. Petersburg. The Oriental
Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences possesses three copies of the xylo¬
graph, the most complete one was brought by György Kara, Katalin Kőhalmi and
Andras Rona-Tas from Erdeni-dzu Monastery.”
Nearly the entire text of the blockprint was taken over from a work in the Mdo sde
section of the Tibetan Kagyur (Bka’ ’gyur): The Supreme Dharma of the Application
of Mindfulness (Tib. ’Phags pa dam pa’i chos dran pa nye bar bzhag pa, Skr. Ary
asaddharmasmrtyupasthänasütram, Mong. Outuy-tu degedü-yin nom-i duradqui
oyir-a ayulqui)."
Terms of Buddhist Cosmology
From numerous possible Buddhist subjects I chose only one to show the evolution
of Mongolian Buddhist terminology through these two vocabularies and two texts.
This subject is cosmology.
According to the Buddhist tradition Buddha taught three levels of cosmology:
the numerically definite cosmology based on the Abhidharma teachings, the special
cosmological system of the Kalacakra tantra and the non-cosmological system of the
Dzogchen (Rdzogs chen).'* Out of the three main cosmological systems Abhidharma
is the simplest, and the most comprehensible, expounded in the 4" or 5" century
Indian text is the Treasury of Abhidharma (Skt. Abhidharmakosa) by Vasubandhu.'*
The Abhidharma world system is a mandala-like world system made of concentric
oceans and mountain ranges centered around an axis, Mount Meru. Viewed from
above, Mount Meru is square with four square slabs of decreasing size in ascend¬
ing order. Beyond Meru and completely surrounding it like curtains there are seven
golden mountain ranges, each forming square and are named according to the shape
of their peaks. The space between the mountain ranges are filled with seven seas."
Beyond the seventh ring of mountains lie four oceans, one in each cardinal direction,
2 Sark6zi, Alice — Bethlenfalvy, Géza: A Tibeto-Mongolian Picture-Book of Hell. (Treasures of Mon¬
golian Culture and Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism 5) Institute of Ethnology, Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, Budapest 2010, 1.
35 Lha sa edition, 1934, Bka’ ’gyur Mdo sde, vol. Za, ff. 171r-516v, vol. ‘A, ff. 1r-478v, vol. Ya, ff. 1r¬
521v, vol. Ra, ff. 1r-355v.
4° Brauen, Martin: The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism. Shambala Publications, Boston
1997, 22.
Poussin, Louis de La Vallée: Abhidharmakosa-bhasyam. Transl. Pruden, Leo M. Asian Humanities
Press, Berkeley, California 1990.
16 Kongtrul Lodré Tayé: Myriad Worlds. Buddhist Cosmology in Abhidharma, Kalacakra and Dzog¬
chen. Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, New York 1995, 109-112.
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