The Vagindra script (also spelled Vaghintara, ) is an alphabetic script for the Buryat-Mongol language developed by Agvan Dorzhiev in the first decade of the 20th century. It was used only briefly.
History Agvan Dorzhiev, or Agvaandorj, a Khory Buryat, developed the script in 1905 with the assistance of Tseveen JamsranoOtgonbayar Chuluunbaatar, Einführung in die mongolischen Schriften, Einführungen in fremde Schriften, Hamburg: Buske, 2008, , p. 55 as a means to cultural unification of the Buryats, naming it "Vagindra" for the Sanskrit version of his name.Yeshen-Khorlo Dugarova-Montgomery and Robert Montgomery, "The Buriat Alphabet of Agvan Dorzhiev", in Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan, ed. Stephen Kotkin and Bruce A. Elleman, Armonck, New York: Sharpe, 1999, , pp. 79–98, p. 79."Script, Vagindra", Allen J. K. Sanders, Historical Dictionary of Mongolia, Historical dictionaries of Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East 74, 3rd ed. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow, 2010, . He based it primarily on the Classical Mongol and Todo script, expressing the hope that it would also help Buryats to read materials in the old script.Dugarova-Montgomery and Montgomery, p. 85. Approximately ten books and pamphlets were published in the script until 1910, using a hybrid dialect primarily based on stern Buryat, but it was not used after that; there was discussion in 1917 of reviving it for use in native schools, but Classical Mongol was thought more likely to foster Mongol unity.Dugarova-Montgomery and Montgomery, p. 86. Dorzhiev himself apparently lost interest in the project, and neither mentions it nor uses it in his autobiography.Chuluunbaatar, p. 57. It was opposed by Mikhail Bogdanov, who advocated rapid assimilation through Russian,Dugarova-Montgomery and Montgomery, p. 88. and it has been suggested that the hybrid language used presented problems for readers, although evidence suggests otherwise. Probably most importantly, the Tsarist government perceived Mongolian unification, and hence the Vagindra script, as a political threat and exiled some of its proponents.
Description
The script is derived primarily from Classical Mongol on the analogy of the Clear script,BNMAU-yn Shinzhlėkh Ukhaany Akademi, Information Mongolia: The Comprehensive Reference Source of the People's Republic of Mongolia (MPR), Countries of the world information series, Oxford/New York: Pergamon, 1990, , p. 61. and like it is written vertically. The version published by Nicolai Amagaev and "Alamzhi-Mergen" (Rinchingiin Elbegdorj) in 1910 consists of 7 vowels and 21 consonants.Nikolai Amagaev and Alamzhi-Mergen, Novyi mongolo-buriatskii alfavit, St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1910, cited in Dugarova-Montgomery and Montgomery, p. 86, Chart 1, p. 87. Diacritics are used to indicate long vowels (a vertical line), palatization (a circle), and letters for use in rendering Russian (a dot),Chuluunbaatar, p. 56. including a letter representing the historical Russian double consonant /ʃt͡ʃ/ (corresponding to Cyrillic Щ).Chart linked at Luigi Kapaj (in the SCA: Gülügjab Tangghudai), Mongol Scripts, The Silver Horde, Society for Creative Anachronism, 2003.L'écriture Buryat: L’alphabet, chart at Les écritures, Aleph2, archived on 2012-01-27 He also added a special letter to mark, Х (h) sound of the Buryat dialect. The alphabet can therefore also be represented as having 36 letters including 8 vowels. Unlike Classical Mongol, the letter forms are invariant regardless of position in the word, being based on the medial forms in Classical Mongol, with the exception of a, which is based on the Uighur script and has a reduced form in medial and final position.
References
Further reading Ëndonzhamt︠s︡yn Zhanchiv and Gonchigiĭn Gantogtokh (Sharaĭd). Vagindra u̇sgiĭn dursgaluud [Monuments in Vagindra script]. Corpus scriptorum VIII. Ulaanbaatar: Udam Soël, 2010.
External links
L'écriture Buryat: Les exemples: example of Vagindra script example linked at Luigi Kapaj (in the SCA: Gülügjab Tangghudai), Mongol Scripts, The Silver Horde, Society for Creative Anachronism, 2003.