Oriental Studies (Apr 2018)
Comparing the Mongolian Scriptural Graphics and that of Zaya Pandita’s Clear Script in the Light of the General Theory of Writing and History of Writing Systems of Central Asian Peoples in the 17th Century
Abstract
The article views the Oirat Clear Script (‘Todo bičiq’) developed by Zaya Pandita Nam-mkha’ rGya-mtsho (1599–1662) as one of the Mongolian writing systems in terms of the theory of writing with due use of the formal technique of the theory. The paper considers historic characteristics of the most famous Mongolian writing systems, namely the alphabet of the Mongolian written language and the Oirat Clear Script (‘Todo bičiq’) alphabet created on the basis of the classical Mongolian alphabet in the 1640s — comparing those to one another and to other writing systems, such as the Uighur, Sogdian and Arabic ones. The article provides an overview of case studies on the history of Mongolian writing systems performed within the framework of studies on the general history and theory of writing as a linguistic discipline from the early the 20th century to the present days. The author agrees with the opinion that it is the Old Uighur alphabet — based on the Sogdian (Palmyrene) alphabet — that served as the basis for the Mongolian scripts. The article attempts to show that the additional signs of Clear Script proposed by Zaya Pandita — from the perspective of their sound meaning and inscription as compared to the original meanings of the signs of the Mongolian script preserved by Clear Script — only in one of their several sound meanings can be viewed as evidence of the peculiarities of the phonetic system of the 17th century Oirat language and its dialect which became the basis for the written language of the Oirats. According to the author, while developing Clear Script Zaya Pandita made use of the Arabic alphabet with its set of additional signs creating uniformity of reading of separate spellings, and this is evidence of the repeated appeals of philologists to Mid-Eastern writing systems as a source for the development of Central Asian alphabets.
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