 1947 edition in modernMongolian script, translated byTsendiin Damdinsüren | |
| Author | Unknown |
|---|---|
| Original title | ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠤᠨ ᠨᠢᠭᠤᠴᠠ ᠲᠣᠪᠴᠢᠶᠠᠨ |
| Language | Middle Mongolian |
| Subject | History of theMongol Empire |
Publication date | Year of the Mouse in the 13th century (c. 1228/1229, 1240, 1252, 1264) |
| Publication place | Mongol Empire |
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Legacy | ||
TheSecret History of the Mongols[a] is the oldest surviving literary work in theMongolic languages. Written for theMongol royal family some time after the death ofGenghis Khan in 1227, it recounts his life and conquests, and partially the reign of his successorÖgedei Khan.
The author is unknown and wrote in theMiddle Mongol language usingMongolian script. The date of the text is uncertain, but thecolophon to the text describes the book as having been finished in theYear of the Mouse, on the banks of theKherlen River atKhodoe Aral, corresponding to an earliest possible figure of 1228.[1]
While theSecret History was preserved in part as the basis for a number of chronicles such as theJami' al-tawarikh,Shengwu qinzheng lu, andAltan Tobchi, the full Mongolian body only survived from a version made around the 15th century at the start of theMing dynasty, where the pronunciation wastranscribed intoChinese characters as a tool to help interpreters[1] under the titleThe Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty (Chinese:元朝秘史;pinyin:Yuáncháo Mìshǐ). About two-thirds of theSecret History also appear in slightly different versions in the 17th-century Mongolian chronicleAltan Tobchi (lit. 'Golden Chronicle') byLubsang-Danzin.
TheSecret History is regarded as the single most significant nativeMongolian account of Genghis Khan. Linguistically, it provides the richest source of pre-Classical Mongol andMiddle Mongol.[2] TheSecret History is regarded as a piece of classic literature in bothMongolia and the rest of the world, and has been translated into more than 40 languages.[3]
The work begins with a semi-mythical genealogy ofGenghis Khan, born Temüjin. According to legend, a blue-grey wolf and a fallow doe begat the firstMongol, named Batachiqan. Eleven generations after Batachiqan, a widow namedAlan Gua was abandoned by her in-laws and left with her two boys Bügünütei and Belgünütei. She then bore three more sons with a supernatural glowing man who came in through the smoke-hole at the top of theger. The youngest of Alan Gua's three divinely-born children wasBodonchar, founder of theBorjigin.[4] The description of Temüjin's life begins with thekidnapping of his mother,Hoelun, by his fatherYesügei. It then covers Temüjin's early life following his birth around 1160; the difficult times after the murder of his father; and the many conflicts against him, wars, and plots before he gains the title ofGenghis Khan in 1206. The latter parts of the work deal with the campaigns of conquest of Genghis and his third sonÖgedei throughout Eurasia; the text ends with Ögedei's reflections on what he did well and what he did wrong.
Scholars of Mongolian history consider the text hugely important for the wealth of information it contains on theethnography, language, literature and varied aspects of the Mongol culture.[5][6] In terms of its value to the field of linguistic studies, it is considered unique among the Mongol texts as an example free from the influence ofBuddhism prevalent in later texts. It is especially valued for its vivid and realistic depictions of daily tribal life and organization of Mongol civilization in the 12th and 13th centuries, complementing other primary sources available in thePersian andChinese languages.[7]
Its value as a historically accurate source is more controversial: whereas some experts, such asRené Grousset, assess it positively in this regard as well, others, such asIgor de Rachewiltz, believe that the value of the source lies primarily in its "faithful description of Mongol tribal life",[6] andArthur Waley considered theSecret History's "historical value almost nil".[8]
In 2004 theGovernment of Mongolia decreed that a copy ofThe Secret History of the Mongols covered with golden plates was to be located to the rear part of theGovernment Palace inUlaanbaatar.[9]
TheSecret History ends with a colophon stating its original date of completion atKhodoe Aral:
The writing of this book was completed at the time when theGreat Assembly convened and when, in theYear of the Rat, in the month of the Roebuck, the Palaces were established at Dolo’an Boldaq ofKöde'e Aral on theKelüren River, between Šilginček and [...]
— translation byIgor de Rachewiltz, Section 282
The original text corresponding to this date has not survived to the present day. The Year of the Rat in question has been conjectured to be 1228 (Cleaves,Onon), 1229 (Rachewiltz), 1240,[6] 1252 (Atwood), and 1264 (Hung). Proponents of the earlier dates argue that portions of the work whose events post-date the Year of the Rat were added at a later date. This is however disputed by some including Atwood, arguing that thematic elements and chronology posits that the text was always intended to lead up to, and including, the reign of Ögedei Khan. The month of the Roebuck corresponds to the seventh lunar month, i.e. middle of summer.
Some scholars beginning withNaka Michiyo [ja] have argued that this original work was shorter and titledThe Origin of Chinggis Khan (Chinggis Qan-u ujaɣur) – corresponding to the first words of the text.[6]
The common name of the work as it is referred to today isThe Secret History of the Mongols, corresponding to the edited work compiled in the late 1300s with the Chinese titleSecret History of the Yuan (元秘史;Yuán mìshǐ) and the Mongolian titleMongɣol-un niɣuča tobčiyan, re-transcribed from Chinese (忙豁侖紐察脫卜察安;Mánghuòlún Niǔchá Tuōbǔchá'ān—the卜 is not included in the Chinese-transcribed titles of the copies known today, but that may be the result of a corruption[10]).
This title was altered toSecret History of the Yuan Dynasty (元朝秘史;Yuáncháo bìshǐ) when it was included as part of theYongle Encyclopedia. While modern definitive versions are all based on these Ming-era copies, various partial copies of the text have been found in Mongolia and Tibet (Tholing Monastery). The most notable of these is theAltan Tobchi (Mongolian:ᠯᠤ᠋ ᠠᠯᠲᠠᠨ
ᠲᠣᠪᠴᠢ), an expanded Mongolian Buddhist-influenced narrative written in 1651 and discovered in 1926 that contains two-thirds of theSecret History verbatim.[1]
The Ming-era text was compiled at theHanlin Academy as an aid to help interpreters learnMongolian, consisting of three parts: a transcription of the Mongolian pronunciation in Chinese characters; an interlinear gloss in Chinese; and a running, often abridged translation into Chinese. Due to this work's compilation almost a century after the original, it has been noted that the Mongolian transcriptions would likely reflect the pronunciation of the then-Mongols in Beijing, rather than the originalMiddle Mongol of Genghis Khan's era. This text, divided according to length into 12 parts and 282 sections, was eventually folded into theYongle Encyclopedia as a 15-part work in 1408. The original 12-part work was also published around 1410 inBeijing. After the fall of the Ming and rise of theQing dynasty these texts began to be copied and disseminated. The oldest dated full copy is of the 12-part version in 1805 byGu Guangqi [zh] (1766–1835), kept in theNational Library of China. A copy of the 15-part version was made byBao Tingbozh [zh] (1728–1814) around the same time, and this copy is kept bySaint Petersburg State University. A version based on the 1805 text was published in 1908 byYe Dehui, with subsequent scholarship collating this and other partial copies of theSecret History of the Yuan Dynasty to high accuracy.[1]
After the disintegration of the Mongol Empire, the Mongols retreated to form theNorthern Yuan, and a cult of worship formed around the image of Genghis Khan as a supernatural being amidst a decline in literacy. This resulted in works such as theChinggis Qaan-u Altan Tobchi (lit. 'Golden Chronicle of Genghis Khan') containing an apocryphal image of the Khan that replaced the semi-historical narrative of theSecret History. Starting in the late 16th century,Tibetan Buddhism gained a foothold amongst the Mongols, and an increase in literacy resulted in a newAltan Tobchi being created by an unknown author in the 1620s. ThisAltan Tobchi included the earlier parts of the Secret History and combines it with the earlier apocryphal legend cycle. In 1651, the monkLubsang-Danzin expanded this narrative (now usually called theLu Altan Tobchi after the author) and included a full two-thirds of theSecret History.[1] This was discovered in 1926 byDuke Jamiyan [mn] fromDornod, as part of the academic and cultural revival in theMongolian People's Republic.
TheSecret History has been translated into over 40 languages.[3]In foreign scholarship, Russian monk andsinologistPalladius was the first to offer a translation of the abridged Chinese running translation in 1866 while serving as the head of theRussian Orthodox mission in Beijing. Using Bao Tingbo's copy, he also attempted an unpublished transcription of the phonetic Mongolian in 1872–78. Japanese historianNaka Michiyo published a translation in 1907.[6] The first reconstructions of the Mongolian text were done by the German sinologistErich Haenisch in 1937, with a translation published in 1941 (second edition 1948). Russian scholarSergei Kozin published a separate reconstruction and translation in 1941, while French scholarPaul Pelliot worked on a full reconstruction and translation into French that was published posthumously in 1949. The latter two scholars had access to theLu Altan Tobchi as a contributing source.B. I. Pankratov published a translation into Russian in 1962.[11]
Duke Tsengde [mn;zh] (1875–1932) was the first native Mongolian scholar to attempt a reconstruction ofThe Secret History, in 1915–17, though it was only published posthumously in 1996. Tsengde's son Eldengtei and grandson Ardajab continued this work and published a translation in 1980 inHohhot.[12]
The Inner Mongolian authors Altan-Ochir and Bokekeshig independently published reconstructions of the text inKailu in 1941 as part of the national revival inMengjiang. The most influential adaptation of the work into modern Mongolian was completed byTsendiin Damdinsüren in 1947 usingMongolian script, a subsequent version inMongolian Cyrillic was published in 1957 and is considered a classic ofmodern Mongolian literature.[1]
In the English languageArthur Waley was the first to publish a translation of theSecret History's running Chinese, while the first full translation into English was in 1982 byFrancis Woodman Cleaves, titledThe Secret History of the Mongols: For the First Time Done into English out of the Original Tongue and Provided with an Exegetical Commentary.[13] The archaic language adopted by Cleaves was not satisfying to all and, between 1972 and 1985,Igor de Rachewiltz published a fresh translation in eleven volumes of the seriesPapers on Far Eastern History accompanied by extensive footnotes commenting not only on the translation but also various aspects of Mongolian culture, which was published as a two-volume set in 2003. In 2015 this was republished as an open access version omitting the extensive footnotes of the original.[6] TheDaur Mongol scholarUrgunge Onon published the first translation into English by a native Mongolian in 1990, based on a 1980Inner Mongolian version by Eldengtei. This was republished asThe Secret History of the Mongols: The Life and Times of Chinggis Khan in 2001. A further English translation byChristopher P. Atwood appeared in 2023.
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