While one can reasonably expect good bilingual dictionaries for most modern languages, with the exception of a few rare ones, this is not the case for older literary material, and it is particularly a problem when the material involved is relatively obscure and perhaps has been researched quite inadequately in times past. Thus the importance of György Kara's effort to provide full linguistic support for what must have been a major work of Middle Mongolian literature, the first Mongol translation of the Sa-skya Pan˙d˙ita's Sa skya legs bshad, a book of moral injunctions that was one of the most popular Tibetan works of its kind and continues to enjoy great popularity in both Tibetan and in its Mongolian and other translations. Sonom Gara's translation of the work is of particular importance because it is from the fourteenth century and thus an early and typical work of Mongolian literature, in a language that still retained many archaic characteristics. It also looks back to an age when the Sa-skya and not the Dge-lugs-pa or any other “reform” group were in control and a different view of Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism prevailed.
Kara's work is in two main parts: part I, a short introduction to Sonom Gara's work (and its main manuscript) and Kara's approach to it, as well as abbreviations and symbols, and part II, the dictionary proper, followed by a bibliography that is of particular importance because it includes so many obscure works, not just in Western languages, but in Mongolian and Tibetan and other Asian languages. The main dictionary is 332 pages long, and, in addition to all the words contained in the Erdeni-yin Sang, it also includes other early Middle Mongol, Uighur script vocabulary, gathered from inscriptions and other sources, going down to the time of Sonom Gara. Also found in the dictionary are comparison passages from the various later Mongol translations of the same work. Uighur influences are also traced, as the Sa skya legs bshad may have been translated into Uighur before it was into Mongolian, the Uighur translation serving as a model for the Mongolian.
Entries are very clearly organized, with a word or root given in bold (with derivations indicated where appropriate) and a main body with Mongolian occurrences also in bold, all occurrences translated and backed up with Tibetan text occurrences and comparative texts. All in all, the dictionary is a very rich resource and provides a level of lexicography normally only associated with Greek or Latin works. While this reviewer does not recommend reading the work from cover to cover, line by line, as I did, any form of reading or use is informative and useful, and more or less intensive, and it is hoped that Professor Kara will, as promised, provide us with a dictionary for all the vocabulary of the entire period. This will be a wonderful resource, one long needed, when it appears.
Although linguistically complex, there appear to be few typographical errors—at least I did not find them if there are any (other than some confusion about font sizes and page formatting). Given the problem associated with creating a book such as Professor Kara's dictionary, and the minimum of publishing support these days, this is amazing. Both author and press are to be commended.
The only real criticism that this reviewer has of the work is the decision to include so much other vocabulary from the period, vocabulary whose discussion is not at the level of the discussion of basic vocabulary from Sonom Gara's translation and related texts. The problem is that seemingly base terms such as ulus, used in these other texts, or dalai, or törö or even yeke, often have quite specialized meanings that must be taken fully into consideration by drawing in a greater variety of comparative texts, not all of them in Mongolian or Tibetan (principally Persian discussions and various polyglot dictionaries). This reviewer's own rendering of the Seal of Güyük, for example, differs greatly from the way that Kara understands its text. Kara's translation of it is reasonable, looked at from the perspective of Sonom Gara's text, but is not reasonable looked at from the perspective of the Mongol Empire and its official language as a whole. Thus, from this reviewer's perspective, it was a mistake to include such vocabulary. Or if it was to be included, it needed to be explained and documented a great deal better. But it is hoped that Professor Kara will provide just such documentation and discussion in his forthcoming full dictionary of the Mongolian Uighur Script vocabulary of the period. This is vital.
