Vagindra script

The Vagindra font (also: Vaghintara font) is one of several Mongolian writings. It was 1905 by the Buryat Lama Agvaan Lchaaramba - also Agvaan Doržijev, Agvaandorž, Agvaanchamba, Buryat Khanèjen Agvaan or Vagindra - created and named just after this last name variant. It is the second basic attempt at a further development of the classical Mongolian script.

Agvaan Lchaaramba

Agvaan Lchaaramba was born in 1853 as Agvaandorž and came up with 19 years as a pupil in the Brajbün Monastery in Lhasa. Together with the eighth Bogd Žavzandamba Khutagt he returned to Mongolia and put a little later in Ikh Khüree the vows of a lamas from. In 1888 he received the title of Lchaaramba, and in the same time he was admitted to the followers of the 13th Dalai Lama.

In the following years Agvaan Lchaaramba spent some time in India before he finally returned to China to Buryatia. In 1898 he embarked on a trip to Europe and visited most European cities. However, the central event was a visit to St. Petersburg, in which he presented Tsar Nicholas II a Bittgeschenk on behalf of the Dalai Lamas. In the following years he played the role of a mediator between Saint Petersburg and Tibet, which sought the support of Russia in the pursuit of independence by the Manchus repeatedly. That this active political role meant a direct threat to Agvaan Lchaaramba, is evident in the repeated emerging rumors that a bounty had been suspended on him.

While he constantly brought to his messenger activity between Russia and Tibet, he developed 1905 Vagindra font. He established himself as a linguist.

In 1909 he began the construction of a Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg, which was inaugurated in 1915. When he fled from Russia after the October Revolution of 1917, he was imprisoned by the Russians for spying. A bribed guards finally directed a letter to the Mongolist Kotviè further, which eventually got him free with the help of some other scientists.

1938 Agvaan Lchaaramba was in the temple Acaan in Buryatia, where he lived, was arrested and taken to Ulaan -Ude in a prison where he still died as 85- year-old man in the same year. In research, one is still not sure on which side Agvaan Lchaaramba actually was. One possibility is that he was a double agent.

The alphabet of Vagindra font

After the introduction of oiratischen written language and the clear writing of the attempt to create a new font has now been undertaken by Agvaan Doržijev, favoring the westburjatischen dialect. The major novelties with respect to the classical Mongolian script were not only the elimination of digraphs and the polysemous letter but also the positional allographs (except letter " a"), the latter leads the Mongolist Š. Čojmaa at influencing European writing systems back that Agvaan Lchaaramba detail met during his travels:

" The influence of the Cyrillic and Latin letters can be established at many points. Thus, the shape of the letters does not differ at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a word [ ... ]. "

Both in the case of long vowels as well as the use of diacritics is Doržijev oriented undoubtedly at the oiratischen font. The Vagindraalphabet included as an addition, a number of additional characters which are exclusively intended for the posting of Russian words in Cyrillic. The same applies to two punctuation marks ( question and exclamation mark ), which were previously unknown in the Mongolian writing systems.

Historical Development

The failure of this writing was probably because of several factors: the orientation on westburjatischen dialect, the difficult control of the hybrid literary language for speakers of many different Buryat dialects as well as the complicated spelling.

Agvaan Lchaaramba themselves not only left in 1908 a grammar together with the alphabet its new font in Saint Petersburg print, but gave between 1906 and 1910 various linguistic and folkloric books in his own small publishing house out. In Buryatia writing was nevertheless received with some interest, but traded it to a constructed specifically for the Buryat writing, which certainly also offered a means of identification.

After the Buryat 1931-1937 used a Latin alphabet was finally introduced the Cyrillic alphabet under the influence of the Russians. Today the Vagindra is primarily of interest for linguistic science.