Prophecies of the Khalkha Jebtsundamba Khutugtus Written in Oirat Script (From the Oriental Collection in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

Birtalan, Ágnes (2025) Prophecies of the Khalkha Jebtsundamba Khutugtus Written in Oirat Script (From the Oriental Collection in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences). ACTA ORIENTALIA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE, 78 (2). pp. 189-220. ISSN 0001-6446

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Abstract

The present paper aims to analyse and put into context two Oirat Clear Script manuscripts kept in the Ori- ental Collection of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences under the inventory numbers Mong. 184 and Mong. 187. The texts belong to the Buddhist and folk religious genres of ‘prophecy’, whose contents are given various designations of traditional Mongolian and Tibetan termi- nology; in the case of the two texts, W.Oir. zarliq ‘order, decree’ (Mong. 184) and W.Oir. lüngdüng surγali ‘prophetic teaching’ (Mong. 187). Prophetic literature had its heyday in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries and was widespread in written and oral forms. Copying and even preserving these texts at home served to strengthen Buddhist morals, to make people acquainted with some fundamental principles of the Teaching and to awake a ‘feeling of safety’ in the face of calamities and dangerous natural and social situations, which might be avoided or at least attenuated via the possession of them. The present analysis focuses on creating the historical and philological context of this less studied Oirat literacy genre and introducing the central motifs of the texts in the frame of the natura et cultura dichotomy.

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