Ancient Indian Stories in the Oirat Collection “The Tale of the Nectar Teaching

Abstract

Questions about the similarity of the plots of Oirat written monuments with ancient Indian ones still remain insufficiently studied. Most of the Oirat works have not yet been introduced into scientific circulation or translated into Russian and other European languages. The article examines the origin of the plots of 17th and 18th century Oirat religious and didactic collection. “Aršān nomiyin tuuǰi” (“The Tale of the Nectar Teaching”), dating back to the literary monuments of Ancient India. The collection consists of sixty-four short Buddhist stories. It is framed by a diagram of the Tibetan Buddhist treatise “Lamrim,” presented in thesis form. The main provisions of the treatise are revealed in the collection with the help of artistic examples from various Indian and Tibetian sources. The collection is distinguished by a strict functional purpose; it introduces the laity to the course of Buddhist teachings and instructs them on the path of virtue. It was used by Buddhist monks as a guide in his preaching practice until the beginning of the 20th century. The article examines the structure and content of Oirat and ancient Indian stories in their narrative presentation, identifying similarities and local differences. As a result of the study, it was established that genetically similar plots help to better understand the content of short stories in the Oirat collection, which have lost their essential structural components due to various reasons. The stories of “The Tale of the Nectar Teaching” differ from the source texts by the extreme conciseness of their plots: they lack any descriptions or comparisons, the main focus is exclusively on heroes’ actions, the action unfolds abruptly and dynamically. We noted a significant similarity between the plots of “The Tale of the Nectar Teaching” and ancient Indian works both at the plot-compositional and at content levels. This fact indicates their genetic relationship. The identification of the local differences in the Oirat collection demonstrates the genesis of the plots of ancient Indian monuments and their fate outside India.