Classical Mongolian was the literary language of Mongolian that was first introduced shortly after 1600, when Ligdan Khan set his clergy the task of translating the whole of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, consisting of the Kangyur and Tengyur, into Mongolian. This script then became the established writing system used for all Mongolian literature until the 1930s when the Mongolian Latin alphabet was introduced, which then in 1941 was replaced by the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet.
Classical Mongolian was formerly used in Mongolia, China, and Russia. It is a standardized written language used in the 18th century and 20th centuries.
Classical Mongolian language in the context of Tipiṭaka
There are several Buddhist canons, which refers to the various scriptural collections of Buddhist sacred scriptures or the various Buddhist scriptural canons. Some of these collections are also called Tipiṭaka (Pali:[tɪˈpɪʈɐkɐ]) or Tripiṭaka (Sanskrit:[trɪˈpɪʈɐkɐ]) , meaning "Triple Basket", a traditional term for the three main divisions of some ancient canons. In ancient India, there were several Buddhist scriptural canons that were organized into three main textual divisions: Vinaya (monastic rule), Sutra (which contains teachings of the Buddha) and Abhidharma (which are more systematic and scholastic works). For example, the Pāli Tipiṭaka is composed of the Vinaya Piṭaka, the Sutta Piṭaka, and the Abhidhamma Piṭaka. In East Asian Buddhism meanwhile, the traditional term for the canon is Great Storage of Scriptures (traditional Chinese: 大藏經; pinyin: Dàzàngjīng).
