On the Case Paradigm in “The Story of Prince Manibhadra” - a Monument of Mongolian Translated Literature of the 17th-18th centuries

The article describes the case paradigm of Classical Mongolian with evidence from Mongolian texts of “The Story of Prince Manibhadra” - a well-known monument of Buddhist translated literature of the 17th-18th centuries. “The Story…” originates from the Sanskrit Jataka story of Prince Sudhana translated into Tibetan and then into Mongolian as part of several Buddhist collections of Jataka and Avadana tales. Due to its intriguing plot, the story also existed in the form of separate manuscripts and, moreover, became widespread within the oral tradition of Mongolian peoples. Six texts written in Mongolian script were analyzed: five manuscript texts of “The Story…” and one text from the woodblock-print edition of the Kangyur (all of them stored in the archives of Saint Petersburg and Ulaanbaatar). With evidence from the mentioned texts, the paper considers the case paradigm of Classical Mongolian which includes nine cases as follows: the nominative, genitive, accusative, dative-locative, locative, instrumental, ablative, comitative and connective ones. The basic meanings and syntactic functions of the cases along with corresponding examples from the texts are described. Some peculiarities of the use of the cases in the texts under consideration are examined. In particular, the canonical text of “The Story…” from the woodblock-print edition of the Kangyur is characterized by the use of the similar genitive and accusative cases’ formants -i typical for texts of earlier periods, as well as the archaic dative-locative formant -da / ta; the locative case is also widely represented in the text while it is not that common in Classical Mongolian. Due to the examples it can be concluded that the text of the woodblock-print edition had been compiled prior to the other applied texts, most probably at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries when the actual norms of Classical Mongolian were being established. Additionally, the paper contains examples from the texts of “The Story…” which are translations from Tibetan and provide insight into the method of word-for-word translation applied by Mongolian specialists, namely, adherence to Tibetan syntax and morphology. For example, the instrumental particle -bar / -ber - like the Tibetan particle -kyis - accompanies the subject within a text which is not typical for Mongolian. Moreover, one of the texts contains a combination of the verb ‘qaγacaqu’ (‘to part from’) and the comitative indicator -luγ-a which could also be characterized as an attempt to adhere to the original text (in Tibetan the verb ‘bral ba’ requires an addition of the conjunction ‘dang’) - while according to the norms of Mongolian grammar the ablative formant -aca was to be applied.

Mongolian medieval literature, story, prince Manibhadra, paradigm, cases

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