Language Contacts and Language Changes in the Mongolian Society of the 13^<th> and the 14^<th> centuries

本研究以<th><th>中古蒙古语语料库为基础，从语言学和社会语言学的角度，特别是佛教典籍为切入点，考察了13、14世纪蒙古社会的语言接触和语言变迁。1999年8月在布拉格举行的第42届常设国际阿尔泰会议上宣读的文件中具体说明了如何进行这项研究<nd>。本文阐述了14^世纪的《诗经》译本<th>，经过多次修改后，如何代代相传。有了这一结果，再加上手头阅读佛教典籍的经验，我开始对中古蒙古语所经历的语言接触和语言变化进行研究。结果就是2000年9月在京都宣读的论文。当时的蒙古人，面对回鹘语、梵语、藏语等具有崇高尊严的语言，成功地将佛教经典翻译成蒙古语。在这一过程中，蒙古族翻译家们出现了许多误解和误译，这也是蒙古族在引进文化的过程中所做的努力的见证。第三篇论文讨论了蒙古佛教经典是如何被翻译和传播的，这篇论文是在京都的一次学术会议上宣读的，当时俄罗斯东方学院彼得堡分支的Sazykin博士出席了会议。去年夏天，我参观并调查了那里的蒙古手稿和印刷品收藏。他对此很感兴趣，并承诺将对几部蒙古佛教著作进行联合研究。这也可以说是这个项目的一个很好的副产品。

This research aimed to investigate the language contacts and the linguistic changes in the Mongolian society of the 13^<th> and the 14^<th> centuries, namely the Yuan Period, in view of the Middle Mongolian language corpus, especially Buddhist works not only form the philological but also from the sociolinguistic viewpoints. How this research should be done concretely was shown in the paper read at the 42^<nd> Permanent International Altaistic Conference held in August 1999 at Prague. This paper clarifies how the original translation made in the 14^<th> century, gone through several modifications, was transmitted from generation to generation. With this result as well as experiences of reading Buddhist works at hand, I began to do research on the language contacts and linguistic changes that the Middle Mongolian had suffered. The result was the paper read in September, 2000 at Kyoto. The Mongols at that time, faced with Uyighur, Sanskrit and Tibetan, all of which were the lauguages with high dignity, had managed to translate Buddhist canon into Mongolian. In doing that, the Mongolian translators made many misunderstandings and mistranslations, which were the testimony of the efforts for the Mongols to introduce the forerunning cultures. The third paper discussing how the Mongolian Buddhist canon was translated and transmitted was read at an academic meeting at Kyoto with the presence of Dr. Sazykin of the St. Petersburg Branch of Russian Oriental Academy, where I visited and investigated the collection of Mongolian manuscripts and printings the last summer. He showed much interest in this and promised to do jointed research on several Mongolian Buddhist works. This also can be said a good by-product of this project.