On the Fragment of the Naran-u Gerel Catalogue Preserved in IOM, RAS

Abstract

Until recently the manuscript entitled Naran-u Gerel in the collection of St. Petersburg State University was considered to be the only extant catalogue of the 17thc. recension of the Mongolian Kanjur. The article presents a fragment of the Kanjur catalogue discovered among the manuscript fragments from Dzungaria preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences. Its textual similarity to the Naran-u Gerel and structural proximity to the manuscript copies of the Mongolian Kanjur indicate that having been reflected in more than one catalogue the repertoire and structure of the 17th c. recension were not that random as it was previously represented in Mongolian studies.