The Secret History of the Mongols (Classic Mongolian: Mongγol-un niγuca tobčiyan, Khalkha Mongolian: Монголын нууц товчоо, Mongolyn nuuts tovchoo[1]) is the oldest surviving Mongolian-language literary work. It was written for the Mongol royal family some time after Genghis Khan's death in AD 1227, by an anonymous author and probably originally in the Uyghur script, though the surviving texts all derive from transcriptions or translations into Chinese characters dating from the end of the 14th century, compiled by the Ming Dynasty under the name The Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty (Chinese: 元朝秘史; pinyin: Yuáncháo mìshǐ).
The Secret History is regarded as the single significant native Mongolian account of Genghis Khan. Linguistically, it provides the richest source of pre-classical Mongolian and Middle Mongolian.[2] The Secret History is regarded as a piece of classic literature in both Mongolia and the rest of the world.
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Like many texts during the period, it contains elements of folklore and poetry and is not as factual as some historians would have wanted. It is also at times inconsistent. The Secret History of the Mongols is important as a historical document and as one of the first recorded samples of Mongolian poetry.[3]
The work sets out with a rather mythical genealogy of Temüjin's family. The description of Temüjin's life begins with the kidnapping of his mother Hoelun by his father Yesügei. It then covers Temüjin's early life; the difficult times after the murder of his father and the many conflicts against him, wars, and plots before he gains the title of Genghis Khan (Universal ruler) in 1206. The later parts of the work deal with Genghis' and Ögedei's conquering campaigns on Eurasia, and the text ends with Ögedei's reflections on what he did well and what he did wrong. It relates how the Mongol Empire was created.
It contains 12 chapters:
Several passages of the Secret History appear in slightly different versions in the 17th century Mongolian chronicle Altan Tobchi- "The ... Golden Summary of the Principles of Statecraft as established by the Ancient Khans".
The author of the Secret History of the Mongols is unknown. However, Mongolists claim that the author is most likely to be Shikhikhutag, the chief judge (jarughachi) of the Mongol Empire and adopted brother of Chinggis Khaan. The book covers the period from the origin of the Mongols to the end of Ogedei's reign (1229-1241). At the end of the book, the author concluded it was written to be finished in Khuduu Aral, Kherlen in 1240. Interestingly, the book contains some information about post-1241 events such as Jalairdai's military campaign in Korea (persumably in 1251).
In the Middle East, Rashid-al-Din Hamadani (1247–1318) used this source to complete his history of the Mongols in Jami' al-tawarikh. He says it is secret history and the Mongol imperial family forbade open it outside.
The only surviving copies of the work are transcriptions of the original Mongolian text with Chinese characters, accompanied by a (somewhat shorter) in-line glossary and a translation of each section into Chinese. In China, the work had been well known as a text for teaching Chinese to read and write Mongolian during the Ming Dynasty and the Chinese translation was used in several historical works, but by the 1800's, copies had become very rare.
Baavuday Tsend Gun (1875-1932) was the first Mongolian scholar to transcribe The Secret History of the Mongols into modern Mongolian, in 1915-17. The first to discover the Secret History for the west and offer a translation from the Chinese glossary was the Russian sinologist Palladiy Kafarov. The first translations from the reconstructed Mongolian text were done by the German sinologist Erich Haenisch (edition of the reconstructed original text: 1937; of the translation: 1941, second edition 1948) and Paul Pelliot (ed. 1949). B. I. Pankratov published a translation into Russian in 1962.[4] Later, Ts.Damdinsuren transcribed the chronicle into Khalkha Mongolian in 1970.
Arthur Waley published a partial translation of the Secret History, but the first full translation into English was by Francis Woodman Cleaves, The Secret History of the Mongols: For the First Time Done into English out of the Original Tongue and Provided with an Exegetical Commentary.[5] The archaic language adopted by Cleaves was not satisfying to all and, between 1971 and 1985, Igor de Rachewiltz published a fresh translation in eleven volumes of the series Papers on Far Eastern History accompanied by extensive footnotes commenting not only on the translation but also various aspects of Mongolian culture. (Brill released de Rachewiltz' edition as a two-volume set in 2003.) The Secret History of the Mongols has been published in translation in over 30 languages by researchers.
In 2004 the Government of Mongolia decreed that the copy of the Secret History of the Mongols covered with golden plates to be located to the rear part of the Government building.[6]