Ger or Yurt, the Mongols home, press here if you are lost, or want to break out somebodies frame or just dont see the whole site...The Secret History 15-04-2004

Text and pictures copied from: "The history of Mongol Conquest" by J.J. Saunders, see Sources.

The Secret History of the Mongols is our main, indeed our only, native source of information respecting Chingis Khan and his extraordinary career. So far as we know, it was the first Mongol book, as the Koran was the first Arabic book. It was compiled from oral tradition, by some-one who was well acquainted with the Conqueror's early life. Passages of it are in alliterative prose, indicating that they were recited or sung in tribal assemblies before being committed to writing. The title 'secret' probably means 'private', that is, the book was not to be circulated in any form among non-Mongols. It was treated with veneration, not only as embodying a good deal of tribal lore, but also as containing many of Chingis's instructions and pronouncements.
Neither the author nor the date of composition is known. Several guesses have been made at the former, but the total lack of evidence makes the pursuit of this inquiry at present fruitless. More important to the historian is the date of the book, and in recent years much atten-tion has been given to this problem, which would appear to be nearer solution than that of the authorship.
The only clue in the History itself is the statement that it was finished in the Year of the Rat. But which Rat year ? It could be 1228, 1240, 1252 or 1264. The first was the year after Chingis's death and before the election of Ogedei. The History contains a short account of Ogedei, but does not mention his death, which occurred in December 1241 : hence some have assumed that the book was completed in 1240. For 1252 there is little to be said, though Grousset argued (L ' Empire mongol, 1941,230,303) that Chapter 255 contains a hint of the succession of the House of Tolui to the grand khanate, an event signalised by the election of Mongke in 1251. In 1951 Hung ('The Transmission of the Secret History', HJAS) decided for 1264, mainly on the ground that Chapter 247 refers to the Chinese city of Hsiian-te chou as Hsiian-te fu, a name it did not officially acquire till 1263. Waley in 1960 ('Notes on the Yuan-ch'ao pi-shih', BSOAS) detected in Chapter 274 references to fighting in Korea in 1248, and Ledyard in 1964 ('The Mongol Cam-paigns in Korea', CAJ), building on this, argued persuasively that the History could not have been written before this date: the Rat Year must therefore be 1264. This still left unexplained why the compiler never mentioned Ogedei's death and ignored the reigns of Kuyuk and Mongke. Moreover, the History alleges that this particular Rat Year was also the year of a great kuriltai or Diet, but the annals of Kubilai, which are full and accurate, make no mention of a kuriltai held in 1264 at Kode'e-aral, the place given in the History,l nor is there any record of a kuriltai in 1240 or 1252. De Rachewiltz suggested in 1965 ('The Dating of the Secret History', Monumenta Serica) that the kuriltai was the one summoned in 1228 which elected Ogedei as Great Khan in 1229. The Secret History was compiled, he argued, in order to com-memorate the great deeds of Chingis; it would be put in hand soon after the Conqueror's death in August 1227, and nothing would be more fitting, natural and convenient than that the pious work should be done while all the Mongol princes were gathered to mourn his passing and choose his successor, since never again, in all probability, would so many people who knew the details of his career be assembled together and available for questioning. According to this theory, the History was originally no more than a biography of Chingis and ended with the statement that 'he ascended to Tengri (heaven)', the mention of his death being taboo. Years afterwards, certainly not before 1241, a short life of Ogedei was tacked on to it; this life is pro-Tolui in tone and tendency, and represents Ogedei as a weak man dominated by Chagatai, so it could hardly have been published in his lifetime.
No Mongol chronicles were drawn up under Kuyuk and Mongke. Under Kubilai, however, the collection of historical records was under-taken in earnest, no doubt under the influence of Chinese practice. Scholars and scribes were probably employed to compile them in both Mongol and Chinese. As Kubilai could not read Chinese, he would check the Mongol text before authorizing the Chinese translation, which became the basis of the Yuan shih, the dynastic history drawn up after the Ming revolution of 1368. At least one copy of the Secret History must have been left behind in China after the expulsion of the Mongols, and from it the Ming scholars made a transcription in Chinese charac-ters and a translation into vernacular Chinese, as well as dividing the book into sections or chapters. From whatever cause, the Mongol original subsequently perished; yet it is not strictly correct to say that the Secret History survives only in its Chinese form. The Altan Tobchi, a Mongol chronicle of the late seventeenth century, incorporates the greater part of the text of the Secret History: it is noteworthy, as confirming the theory that the life of Ogedei was a later addition, that it reproduces none of the passages relating to him.