Study on Medieval Mongolian Manuscripts Excavated from Kara-Khoto and the Western Regions, Collected by the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies

Author: Kara
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: During the 43rd annual meeting of The Mongolia Society in 2004, I had the opportunity to meet Gy?rgy Kara, a renowned contemporary Mongologist and Turkologist. At that time, Professor Kara kindly presented me with a copy of his newly published work, "Mediaeval Mongolian Documents from Khara Khoto and Xiyu in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies" (published in Oriental Documents, 2003, Volume 9, Issue 2, edited by the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences). Overjoyed, I boldly mentioned my intention to translate the article, not daring to consider my own limited knowledge. After returning to China and carefully reading the article, I discovered that although it was written in English, its content involved multiple languages and scripts, including English, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Tibetan, Arabic, Turkic, Sanskrit, and Mongolian. Translating it was far beyond my capabilities. However,, in August 2005, I returned to Indiana University as a visiting scholar and, under the personal guidance of Professor Kara, successfully completed the translation and annotation work. With the author's consent, the translated text was published alongside the original.