Central Asian Sources and Central Asian Research
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n October 2014 about thirty scholars from Asia and Europe came together for a conference to discuss different kinds of sources for the research on ICentral Asia. From museum collections and ancient manuscripts to modern newspapers and pulp fi ction and the wind horses fl ying against the blue sky of Mongolia there was a wide range of topics. Modern data processing and Göttinger data management and the problems of handling fi ve different languages and Bibliotheksschriften scripts for a dictionary project were leading us into the modern digital age. The Band 39 dominating theme of the whole conference was the importance of collections of source material found in libraries and archives, their preservation and expansion for future generations of scholars. Some of the fi nest presentations were selected for this volume and are now published for a wider audience. Central Asian Sources and Central Asian Research edited by Johannes Reckel Central Asian Sources and Research ISBN: 978-3-86395-272-3 ISSN: 0943-951X Universitätsverlag Göttingen Universitätsverlag Göttingen Johannes Reckel (ed.) Central Asian Sources and Central Asian Research This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Published as Volume 39 of the series “Göttinger Bibliotheksschriften” by Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2016 Johannes Reckel (ed.) Central Asian Sources and Central Asian Research Selected Proceedings from the International Symposium “Central Asian Sources and Central Asian Research”, October 23rd–26th, 2014 at Göttingen State and University Library Göttinger Bibliotheksschriften Volume 39 Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2016 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. Göttinger Bibliotheksschriften edited by Dr Wolfram Horstmann Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen Platz der Göttinger Sieben 1 D–37073 Göttingen This work is protected by German Intellectual Property Right Law. It is also available as an Open Access version through the publisher’s homepage and the Göttingen University Catalogue (GUK) at the Göttingen State and University Library (http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de). The license terms of the online version apply. Set and layout: Petra Lepschy Cover image (Johannes Reckel): The Khazak-Tuva village of “Bai Haba, the first village of the (Chinese) Northwest” in the Altai Mountains © 2016 Universitätsverlag Göttingen http://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de ISBN: 978-3-86395-272-3 ISSN: 0943-951X Contents Preface 7 Introduction: Central Asian written sources – from manuscript and print culture into the digital Dark Ages? Johannes Reckel (Göttingen) ............................................................................................... 9 A preliminary survey of the keyimori in Ordos Ayalagu (Beijing) ............................................................................................................. 17 Iǰil Cürüm from Kalmyckia and his role in transforming the Oirat script in Xinjiang during the early 20th century Ba. Batubayar (Urumchi)................................................................................................. 43 Gábor Bálint’s Manuscripts of the 19th Century Kalmyk and Khalkha Vernacular Kept in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Ágnes Birtalan (Budapest) ............................................................................................... 51 News on manuscripts of Rabghūzī’s Qïṣaṣu l-Anbiyā’ Hendrik Boeschoten (Mainz)............................................................................................ 65 The Making of the Pentaglot: Concepts, Data Structures and Tools Oliver Corff (Berlin) ......................................................................................................... 73 Chinese sources on the modern history of Xinjiang: reading the Kashi shi wenshi ziliao Michael Dillon (Worksop) ............................................................................................... 83 Oirat Texts written in the Clear Script (todo üsüg) preserved at the Ili River in Xinjiang Erdemtu Minggad (Beijing) .............................................................................................. 95 Mongolian Voices of Discontent in Lifanyuan Records of the early Qing-period Dorothea Heuschert-Laage (Bern) .................................................................................. 111 6 Contents Kontinuität in der Phraseologie des Alt- und Neuuigurischen vom 14. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert Aysima Mirsultan (Berlin) ............................................................................................. 121 The Symbolism of “čaraγana”, “tamarisk”, and “tabilqai” occuring in Mongolian customs T. Namjil (Urumchi) ..................................................................................................... 139 The Sino-Mongolian Glossary Dada yu/Beilu yiyu from the Ming Period and the Problem of its Dating Pavel Rykin (Moscow) .................................................................................................... 147 The Manchu-Mongolian letters between Tibet and Qing-China from the collection Daicing gürün-ü mongγol bicig-ün ger-ün dangse Andreas Siegl (Munich) ................................................................................................. 165 The Nobility of the Altai Urianhai Banners in Archive Documents and Oral Tradition Ondřej Srba (Prague) ..................................................................................................... 171 Cornelius Rahmn – pioneer of Kalmuck linguistics Jan-Olof Svantesson (Lund) ........................................................................................... 187 Block printing in the Buddhist Monasteries of Transbaikalia in the 19th and early 20th centuries: current archeography of the texts Surun-Khanda D. Syrtypova (Moscow) .......................................................................... 205 Cataloguing the Berlin Manchu Collection Hartmut Walravens (Berlin) .......................................................................................... 221 Preface In October 2014 about thirty scholars from Asia and Europe came together for a conference to discuss different kinds of sources for the research on Central Asia. Göttingen State and University Library (SUB Göttingen) with its old collections of oriental literature by Thomas v. Asch and Johann David Michaelis and others from the 18th century onward has always been an ideal place for orientalists to meet and conduct research. Göttingen State and University Library also houses the largest modern collec- tion of literature from Central Asia and Siberia in Germany collected over many decades with financial support of the German Research Foundation within the framework of the special collection (Sondersammelgebiet) “Altaic and Palaeoasiatic languages, literatures and cultures”. About 20,000 titles in Mongolian languages, over 7,000 titles in the Uighur language and an internationally renowned collection of literature from Sinkiang in general makes it a center for Central Asian Studies in Europe. A joint project between the SUB Göttingen and the Harvard-Yenching Library for the digitization of older newspapers from Sinkiang connects us with the University Library in Lund, which houses the Gunnar Jarring Collection, offer- ing a continuation into the past of the more modern Sinkiang collection of Göttin- gen. Furthermore, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities houses the longtime project “Wörterbuch des Altuigurischen” (“Dictionary of Old Uighur”), focusing on pre-Islamic Uighur literature. During the conference in 2014 Sinkiang and the Mongols were the two main focus points. The image for the cover of this volume has been chosen accordingly, showing the center of the Altaic world: The Khazak-Tuva village of “Bai Haba (i. e. White River, bai is Chinese for “white”, haba is Mongolian for a deep-cut fast-flowing river), the first village of the (Chinese) Northwest” in the Altai Mountains. Left side on the stone in Mongolian script: “Tuba nutuγ” (i. e. Tuva home country). The Tuva are a Turkish people living in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia, China, 8 Preface Russia, Kazakhstan. Here the Mongolian and the Turkic world mix freely like in the rest of Central Asia.1 The dominating theme of the whole conference was the importance of collec- tions of source material found in libraries and archives, their preservation and ex- pansion for future generations of scholars. Some of the finest presentations were selected for this volume and are now published for a wider audience. Göttingen, November 2016 Johannes Reckel 1 Cf. Reckel, Johannes: Reisenotizen aus der Westmongolei und dem Altai. In: Mongolische Notizen Nr. 24/2016, pp. 10–17. Deutsch-Mongolische Gesellschaft, Bonn, 2016 Introduction: Central Asian written sources – from manuscript and print culture into the digital Dark Ages? Johannes Reckel (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) Central Asia, a region defined by its culture and history as well as by its nature, is much more difficult to comprehend as an entity than long established regions like East Asia (oriens extremus), the Middle East and Near East, Siberia or the Indian subcontinent. Central Asia sits in between all these named regions without any clear boundaries. It is also called Inner Asia. In Russian and German there is some- times a