Publication details
Rasiyan-u qumq-a: Linguistic Analysis and Tentative Dating
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Proceedings of the 13th Seoul International Altaistic Conference: Contemporary outlooks on Altaic Languages, 13-16 July 2017, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | Rasiyan-u qumq-a; Preclassical Mongolian; didactic poetry; linguistic analysis; verbal suffixes; dating |
| Description | Rasiyan-u qumq-a (Vase of Nectar) is a previously unknown didactic poem composed by an anonymous Mongolian author. The author frequently refers to Čoyiji Odser, traditionally considered the founder of the Mongolian written religious literature and composer of Mongolian poetic rules. The work repeatedly quotes Bodhisattvacharyavatara and deals with parables, ideas and phrases obviously taken from the Mongolian translation of Subha?itaratnanidhi, which is not mentioned in the text. The only manuscript preserved in an almost complete version (written presumably in the first half of 18th century) was published in a Czech edition and translation (2015) and a Mongolian edition is under preparation. This paper brings a short general presentation of Rasiyan-u qumq-a. Further it deals mainly with analysis of one important feature of Mongolian grammar of the preclassical period: converb -r-un, known usually as converbum praeparativum (Poppe) or quotation converb (Sanzheev). We introduce a short overview of previous studies on the converb -r-un. Then we offer quotations from the text of Rasiyan-u qumq-a giving an evidence about using of -r-un and classify them according to various meanings of this suffix (-r-un ending a dependent clause, -r-un as quotation and direct speech marker, copulative function of -r-un, -r-un marking a finite predicate of a sentence, etc.). At the end, we list some of lexical particularities of the text Rasiyan-u qumq-a indicating its belonging to the preclassical period of Written Mongolian. In the conclusion, on account of various aspects of the text (some of them analysed in more details in Srba 2015) we suggest that the text was composed on the turn of the 17th century, which is - among other reasons - in accordance also with the frequent use of the converb -r-un. |
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