Hagiographic Genre in the Buryat-Mongolian Literature of 18th – Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the hagiographic genre in the Buryat- Mongolian literature of the medieval period. The author examines origins of the genre, rooted in the Indo-Tibetan literary tradition and associated with Buddhist “hagiographic” literature. The traditions of Indo-Tibeto-Mongolian hagiography in Buryat literary criticism have not been specially studied, so this is one of the new areas of study that requires comprehensive review. The analysis of the poetic work of Aghvan Dorzhiev, “Entertaining stories about a trip around the world,” undertaken in the article, makes it possible to trace how such a unique author, who has absorbed the primordial traditions of Indo-Tibetan culture, due to the received almost twenty years of education in Tibet, then the experience of teaching Buddhist philosophy to such a student, like the XIII Dalai Lama, managed to creatively synthesize, as a citizen of Russia, who received his initial education at home, two different cultures. His work, although written in the genre of a medieval life, is evidence of the genre transformation under the influence of new historical, literary and other realities. Thus this work can be viewed as a transition from medieval traditions to the new realistic literature in Buryat- Mongolian culture.