‘Booklore’ Talismans in Daily Life of the Mongols: A Case Study of Two Collections of Mongolian Manuscripts

Abstract

Introduction. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Mongols had widely used texts on apotropaic magic in their daily life. Among them there are writings with pictures and descriptions of talismans aimed at averting diseases and mishaps, attracting wealth and good favour. All this sort of writings resembles heterogeneity of traditions. Goals. The paper aims at examining various types of ‘booklore’ talismans in magic practices of the Mongols. Results. Like other spheres of Mongolian culture those represent pre-Buddhist, Buddhist and Chinese layers. That was conditioned by the history of the Mongols, their neighbourhood with civilizations they had been integrated with during the course of their existence. As for ‘booklore’ talismans, there are two groups of them: one includes pictures originated from Taoist talismans, the other includes Indian and Tibetan dharanis, texts and Buddhist symbols. They penetrated into the Mongolian culture in different periods and in different ways. Thus, usage of ‘booklore’ talismans by the Mongols resulted in complicated multi-layer complexes which assembled Hindu, Tibetan pre-Buddhist, Mongolized Buddhist and Chinese Taoist elements in different combinations. Conclusions. The work reveals several clusters of ‘booklore’ talismans once popular among the Mongols and originated from pre-Buddhist, Buddhist and Taoist beliefs.

Keywords

• mongols
• daily life
• rites
• manuscripts
• talismans