A Study of three Tibetan letters attributed to Dorzhiev held by the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

This article discusses three Tibetan letters held by the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and originally collected by the Russian Orientalist Fyodor Shcherbatskoy. The three letters are attributed to the well-known figure of Agvaan Dorzhiev, the Buryat who became an aide of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, but the authors determine that only the third letter is actually by Dorzhiev, while the other two were composed by a Kalmyk leader. The article discusses the historical significance of each of the letters and provides an annotated translation of them.