Vagindra script

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The Vagindra script (also: Vaghintara script) is one of the numerous Mongolian scripts . It was created in 1905 by the Buryat Lama Agvaan Lchaaramba - also Agvaan Doržijev, Agvaandorž, Agvaanchamba, Buryat Khanèjen Agvaan or Vagindra - and named after this last variant of the name. It is the second fundamental attempt at a further development of the classic Mongolian script .

Agvaan Lchaaramba

Agvaan Lchaaramba was born Agvaandorž in 1853 and was a student at Brajbün Monastery in Lhasa when he was 19 . Together with the eighth Bogd Žavzandamba Khutagt , he returned to Mongolia and a little later took the vows of a lama in Ikh Khüree . In 1888 he received the title of Lchaaramba, and at the same time he was accepted into the retinue of the 13th Dalai Lama .

In the following years Agvaan Lchaaramba spent some time in India before finally returning to Buryatia via China . In 1898 he set out on a trip to Europe and visited most of the major European cities. The central occasion, however, was a visit to Saint Petersburg , during which he presented Tsar Nikolai II with a petition on behalf of the Dalai Lama. In the following years he repeatedly played the role of a mediator between Saint Petersburg and Tibet , which sought the support of Russia in striving for independence from the Manchus . That this active political role was a direct threat to Agvaan Lchaaramba is shown by the recurring rumors that a bounty was on him.

While he was constantly carrying out his messenger activity between Russia and Tibet, he developed the vagindra script in 1905. With that he established himself as a linguist.

In 1909 he began building a Buddhist temple in Saint Petersburg, which was inaugurated in 1915. When he fled Russia after the October Revolution in 1917, he was arrested by the Russians for espionage. A bribed guard finally forwarded a letter to the Mongolist Kotviè, who with the help of some other scientists finally got him free.

In 1938 Agvaan Lchaaramba was arrested in the Acaan temple in Buryatia, where he lived, and taken to a prison in Ulan-Ude , where he died at the age of 85 that same year. In research, one is still not sure which side Agvaan Lchaaramba actually stood on. One possibility is that he was a double agent.

The alphabet of the vagindra script

After the introduction of the written Oiir language and the clear script, Agvaan Doržijev tried to create a new script, preferring the West Buryat dialect. The main innovations compared to the classic Mongolian script were not only the elimination of digraphs and polysemous letters, but also the positional allographs (exception: letter "a"), the latter being carried out by the Mongolist Š. Čojmaa goes back to an influence on European writing systems that Agvaan Lchaaramba got to know in detail during his travels:

“The influence of the Cyrillic and Latin letters can be seen at many points. The shape of the letters does not differ at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a word [...]. "

Both when writing long vowels and using diacritics, Doržijev undoubtedly followed the Oirat script. The vagindra alphabet also includes a number of additional characters that are intended exclusively for writing Russian words from Cyrillic. The same applies to two punctuation marks (question marks and exclamation marks), which were previously unknown in the Mongolian writing systems.

historical development

The failure of this script was probably due to various factors: the orientation towards the West Buryat dialect, the difficult command of the hybrid written language for speakers of many different Buryat dialects as well as the complicated spelling.

Agvaan Lchaaramba himself not only had a grammar including the alphabet of his new script printed in St. Petersburg in 1908, but also published various linguistic and folkloric books in his own small publishing house between 1906 and 1910. In Buryatia the script was received with some interest, after all, as it was a script specially constructed for the Buryatian, which certainly also offered a means of identification.

After the Buryats used a Latin alphabet between 1931 and 1937, the Cyrillic script was finally introduced under the influence of the Russians. Today the vagindra is primarily of linguistic interest to science.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Otgonbayar Chuluunbaatar: Introduction to the Mongolian Scripts. Buske Verlag, Hamburg 2008 p. 56.
  2. Š. Čojmaa: The Vagindra script. In: Šigšee. Ünen soniny šigšmal nijtlelüüd (June 23, 1995). P. 5.
  3. ^ Otgonbayar Chuluunbaatar: Introduction to the Mongolian Scripts. Buske Verlag, Hamburg 2008 p. 56f.
  4. ^ Otgonbayar Chuluunbaatar: Introduction to the Mongolian Scripts. Buske Verlag, Hamburg 2008 p. 57.
  5. Yeshen-Khorlo Dugarova-Montgomery / Robert Montgomery, The Buriat Alphabet of Agvan Dorzhiev. In: Stephen Kotkin / Bruce A. Ellemann (eds.), Mongolian in the twentieth century: landlocked cosmopolitan, New York 1989, p. 86.

literature

  • Chuluunbaatar, Otgonbayar: Introduction to the Mongolian Scripts. Buske Verlag, Hamburg 2008, ISBN = 978-3-87548-500-4.
  • Š. Čojmaa: Vagindryn üseg [The Vagindra script]. In: Šigšee. Ünen soniny šigšmal nijtlelüüd (June 23, 1995). P. 4f.
  • Ch. Luvsanbaldan, C. Šagdarsüren: Mongolčuudyn üseg bičig, üg chellegijn tüch garlaac. Ulaanbaatar 1986.
  • Weiers, Michael: The development of the Mongolian scripts. In: Studium Generale. Journal for the unity of the sciences in the context of their conceptual formation and research methods. 20th year (1967). Issue 8. pp. 470-479.

See also

Mongolian scripts