"SANSARA WHEEL" AS A UNIVERSAL AND ICONOLOGICAL PARADIGM IN MONGOLIAN CULTURE
In this article, the Sansara Wheel, known as a Buddhist symbol, is proved in quality of a constant of Mongolian culture. Methodological approach in interpretation of artworks combining the theory of constants of culture and an iconology is offered here. The hypothesis is made that the known painting by the Mongolian artist B. Sharav (1869-1939) “One day of Mongolia” can be more deeply revealed by means of the offered complex method. The symbol of Sansara Wheel is implicitly hidden in the picture and united different stories and images by several uniting principals. The first principal is temporal. Sansara Wheel divides into absolute (eternal) time, time of Nirvana and subjective (ordinary) time. So, the idea of Mongolian life under the highest holy - the Sky which vested by the absolute time - is metaphorically expressed. The second principal is spatial. The picture is perceived as a fragment of mega-current of life-dimension. There is no compositional completion in the picture. The artist's view captured only one day of Mongolian life. Metaphorically, it means one finite and infinite by stories and day events. The third principal is the principal of “put in spaces.” In the image of Sansara Wheel, between spokes and in the centre the Buddhist stories are placed. “One Day in Mongolia” depicts the life of a nomad from birth till death. These three principals approved that the cultural constant “Sansara Wheel” is reflected not in religious abstract for ordinary human form but in the form of a long story which is easily perceived and even includes grotesque and joke. In semantic and structural analysis a number of plots has received deeper interpretation in the semantic and structural analysis. The Buddhist symbol has helped to reveal the principles of unity in a picture.