Authenticating the tradition through linguistic arguments

Abstract

Copious examples in the writings of Mongolian Buddhist authors demonstrate the significance of the Kavyadarsa in the development of the Mongolian poetic tradition. Numerous versified eulogies, prayers, verses recited at the time of ritual offerings, benedictions in colophons, and other poetic works written by Mongolian scholars of the late seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries evidence their authors' attempts to follow Dandin's principle of alakaras and the influence of other theoretical principles of the Kavyadarsaon their writings. Although the Kavyadarsawas translated into the Mongolian language in the first half of the eighteenth century, at the time of the formation of the Mongolian Danjur by Khalkha translator Gelegjaltsan (Dge legs Rgyal mtshan), Mongolian Buddhist scholars had become well acquainted with the Kavyadarsa through the Tibetan translations of this text and through indigenous Tibetan commentaries on it. However, it is plausible that already in the Yuan court of the thirteenth century, and slightly later in the fourteenth century, some Mongolian scholars had access to the Kavyadarsain its first, complete Tibetan version, which was produced in the latter part of the thirteenth century.