Abstract
In his article “The Shes bya rab gsal and the Erdeniyin Tobči” (1931), Chen Yinke pointed out that the Erdeniyin Tobči (written in the late seventeenth century) traced the origin of the Mongols to India and Tibet. Chen argued that linking the origin of the Mongols to India and Tibet was inspired by the new historiographical ideology and method advanced by the Yuan Imperial Preceptor ’Phags pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan (1235-1280) in his work entitled Shes bya rab gsal. In this work, Mongol history was closely associated with historical accounts of Indian and Tibetan royal lineages. In the 1980s, Suluge objected to Chen’s view by arguing that the Shes bya rab gsal did not attempt to trace the origin of the Mongols, nor did it claim that the Indians, Tibetans, and the Mongols are of the same origin Suluge asserted that the theory of a common origin shared by the Indians, Tibetans, and Mongols first took shape in the Altan Tobči and reached its culmination with the compilation of the Erdeniyin Tobči. In this article, the author compares the relevant parts of the Tibetan original text and Shaluoba’s (Shes rab dpal ?) Chinese translation of the Shes bya rab gsal in order to rectify several textual misunderstandings due to imperfect translations. Furthermore, this article discusses the Shes bya rab gsal’s position in, and impact on, the Tibeto-Mongolian historiographical tradition, as well as its relationship with the Erdeniyin Tobči. The author agrees with Chen Yinke that the attempt to present an historical account of the Mongol royal lineage and the notion of a common origin shared among the Indians, Tibetans, and Mongols did not arise from the Shes bya rab gsal. However, it would be unwarranted to deny completely the relationship between the Shes bya rab gsal and the Erdeniyin Tobči since these two works share a common underlying ideology and form of compilation.
Keywords
Shes bya rab gsal; Erdeniyin Tobči; common origin of the Indians, Tibetans, Mongols; Tibetan-Chinese textual comparison; the invention of tradition
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