Yuáncháo bìshǐ 元朝秘史
The Secret History of the Mongols (Yuán-cháo bìshǐ) anonymous (闕名)
About the work
The Hàn-character phonetic transcription of Mongqol-un niuča tobča’an — The Secret History of the Mongols — composed in classical Middle Mongolian in the seventh month of “the year of the rat” (1228, 1240, or 1252; the jiǎzǐ dating remains debated). The original Uighur-script Mongolian text was lost in the Míng; what survives is the early-Míng phonetic transcription into Chinese characters, accompanied by interlinear glosses (pángzhù 旁註) and chapter-end summary translations (zǒngyì 總譯), produced for use as a language textbook in the Sìyí guǎn 四夷館 / Huìtóng guǎn 會同館 (the Hàn-Mongol Translation Bureau) during the Hóngwǔ reign (ca. 1369–1382). The transcription preserves the phonology of mid-13th-century Mongolian with extreme precision and is one of the foundational texts of Mongolic historical linguistics. The Sìbù cóngkān 三編 reproduces the 12-juǎn (15-juǎn with continuations) Yuán/Míng arrangement under the title Yuáncháo bìshǐ (literally “Secret History of the Yuán Dynasty”), which is the conventional Hàn-language title; modern scholarship since the 1950s prefers Měnggǔ bìshǐ 蒙古秘史 (“Secret History of the Mongols”) as more accurate to the work’s content. The KR2d0014 instance follows the SBCK arrangement, listing the work as 十卷 (ten juǎn).
Tiyao
Abstract
The Mongqol-un niuča tobča’an — known in Hàn-language convention as Yuáncháo bìshǐ and to modern scholarship as Měnggǔ bìshǐ — is the principal indigenous Mongol-language source on the rise of the Mongol empire under Chinggis Khan (Chéngjísīhán 成吉思汗) and his successor Ögödei (Wōkuòtái 窩闊台). The text covers the Mongol world from the legendary descent of the Borjigin from Börte-čino down to ca. 1252 (or, in the most cautious dating, the death of Chinggis in 1227 with later additions in Ögödei’s reign 1229–1241). The work consists of 282 numbered sections in alternating prose and verse — the first major monument of Mongolian literature — and was composed at the imperial Khaghan’s court for restricted use, hence the title niuča “secret.” Its frank treatment of intra-Borjigin politics (the Tayichi’ud betrayal of Yesügei, Temüjin’s youthful poverty, his murder of his half-brother Begter) made it inappropriate for general circulation, and the Yuán court suppressed it from imperial historiography; the Yuánshǐ (KR2a0021) compilers of 1370 did not consult it. The original Uighur-script Mongolian text was lost; the present text is a Hàn-character phonetic transcription produced for the early-Míng Sìyí guǎn Translation Bureau (ca. 1369–1382), where it served as a Mongolian-language textbook with interlinear glosses for each Mongolian word and a chapter-by-chapter Chinese summary. Despite its didactic origin, the transcription preserves the mid-13th-century Mongolian source-text with high fidelity — the title Mongqol-un niuča tobča’an is transcribed as 忙豁侖紐察脫卜察安 Mánghuòlún niǔchá tuōbǔchá’ān. The work was first publicly printed in modern times by Zhāng Déhuī 張德輝 in 1908. The standard modern critical edition is É’erdēngtài 額爾登泰 and Wūyúndálái 烏雲達賚, Měnggǔ bìshǐ 蒙古秘史 (Inner Mongolia People’s Press, 1980); the standard English translation is Igor de Rachewiltz’s The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century (3 vols., Brill, 2004–2013).
The dating bracket here runs from 1228 (the earliest plausible “year of the rat”) to 1264 (the last plausible terminus before Khubilai’s reorganisation of the imperial historiographical apparatus). The text is treated by Wilkinson (Chinese History, §64.2 #1) as the unique indigenous Mongol source on the foundation of the empire and as essential first-tier evidence for any work on the Yuán.
Translations and research
- de Rachewiltz, Igor, tr. 2004–2013. The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill. The standard scholarly translation in any language; vol. 3 substantially revises and expands vols. 1–2. (Open-access translation-only edition issued 2015.)
- Atwood, Christopher P., tr. 2023. The Secret History of the Mongols. Penguin Classics. With introduction, appendices, and a guide to spelling and pronunciation; the most up-to-date English translation drawing on linguistic and historical scholarship.
- Cleaves, Francis Woodman, tr. 1982. The Secret History of the Mongols: For the First Time Done into English out of the Original Tongue. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Set in type 1956 but withheld from publication until 1982; rendered in deliberately archaic King-James English.
- Onon, Urgunge, tr. 2000. The Secret History of the Mongols: The Life and Times of Chinggis Khan. London: Curzon.
- É’erdēngtài 額爾登泰 and Wūyúndálái 烏雲達賚, ed. 1980. Měnggǔ bìshǐ 蒙古秘史. Hūhéhàotè: Inner Mongolia People’s Press. Standard Chinese punctuated edition.
- Zhā-qí Sī-qín 札奇斯欽 (Jagchid Sechin), tr. 1979. Měnggǔ bìshǐ xīnyì bìng zhùshì 蒙古秘史新譯並註釋. Táiběi: Liánjīng. Modern Chinese translation with full annotation.
- Atwood, Christopher P. 2016. “How the Secret History of the Mongols Was Written.” Mongolica 49: 22–53.
- Wáng Guówéi 王國維. 1923. “Měnggǔ shǐ-liào sì zhǒng xù” 蒙古史料四種序. In Wáng Guówéi, Hǎi-níng Wáng Jìng-ān xiānsheng yí-shū. Foundational Chinese-language critical introduction.
- Pelliot, Paul (1878–1945). 1949. Histoire secrète des Mongols. Paris: A. Maisonneuve. Posthumous; pioneering French translation.
Other points of interest
The Bìshǐ preserves Chinggis Khan’s own bilig 必力克 (“aphorisms” / “decrees”) in their earliest Mongolian form, including the famous formulations of yarghu (judicial assembly) and ulus (people-as-political-unit). Section 245 records the conferral of titles on the Twelve Generals; section 282 closes with the Khan’s parting injunction to Sübetei. The work is the principal evidence for early Mongolian phonology (the Manggu niucha tuobucha’an transcription system, when reverse-engineered, allows the reconstruction of mid-13th-century Mongolian phonology with substantial precision) and as such occupies a foundational place in Mongolic historical linguistics independent of its historical value. The Sìyíguǎn transcription’s interlinear glosses are also of substantial importance to the lexicography of Yuán-period Sino-Mongolian.
The Sìkù zǒngmù’s exclusion of the work from the Quánshū — on the explicit ground that it is “barbarian language” 夷狄之語 — is one of the clearest examples of late-imperial Hàn-Confucian linguistic chauvinism towards the Yuán heritage; the SBCK arrangement followed here is therefore methodologically significant as preserving the work outside the Sìkù edited line. Wilkinson observes that “no Mongol-language source was used by the [Yuánshǐ] editors” — even the Bìshǐ — a striking lacuna in the standard dynastic history compounded by the Quánshū’s exclusion.