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THE RENEWAL OF MONGOLIAN BUDDHIST TERMINOLOGY the work from Tibetan into Mongolian. He was an important and very learned person, 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 xylograph, 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 ascending 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 Mongolian 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. 1r521v, 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 Dzogchen. Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, New York 1995, 109-112. 321
