Qīndìng Měnggǔ yuánliú 欽定蒙古源流
Imperially Commissioned [Translation of the] Origins and Transmission of the Mongols by 薩囊徹辰 (compiler)
About the work
The Qīng court’s official Chinese translation in 8 juǎn of the most important indigenous Mongolian historical source of the Late-Yuán-into-Manchu period, the Erdeni-yin tobchi (Mongolian; “Precious Summary”; Chinese title 蒙古源流, lit. “origin and transmission of the Mongols”). The Mongol-language original was composed by Saghang Sechen Hong-tayiji 薩囊徹辰鴻台吉 of the Ordos 鄂爾多斯 Mongols (b. 1604, fl. through the 1660s) and completed in the second to sixth months of his cyclical year yǐchǒu 乙丑 (1662, by his lunar reckoning). The work synthesizes seven earlier Mongol and Tibetan historical sources and traces the descent of the Mongol khans from Indian (Śākyamuni-Buddha-related) and Tibetan royal lineages through Chingghis-qan and his successors down through the Yuán emperors and the Northern-Yuán Mongol khans culminating in Lighdan-qan 林丹庫圖克圖汗 (the last Mongol Great Khan, defeated by the Manchus). Translated into Chinese under imperial commission in Qiánlóng 42 (1777) at the prompting of the Khalkha prince Cenggünjab 成袞札布. The Chinese version, prepared by the guǎnchén 館臣 (court compilers), polished and arranged into 8 juǎn, was used by the Qiánlóng emperor in his own Yùpī tōngjiàn jí lǎn 御批通鑑輯覽 to correct centuries of garbled Sino-centric transcription of Mongol clan and reign names — most famously rehabilitating the Yuán imperial-clan name as Köyit (却特 Quète) against the standard Jīwēn 奇渥温.
Tiyao
Translated and submitted by imperial commission in Qiánlóng 42 (1777). The book is a Mongol composition. There is an author’s postface stating: “I, of the lineage of Khutughtu Sechen Hong-tayiji 庫圖克徹辰鴻台吉, the lesser Sechen Saghang Tayiji 小徹辰薩囊台吉, originally knowing all the affairs, took the source-and-transmission of the various qans, briefly arranged them, and combined them with the Red Book (Hóng cè 紅冊) of profound and refined exposition; the Pénghuā Hàn shǐ 蓬花漢史 compiled by Sharba Khutughtu 沙爾巴胡土克圖; the canon-source-and-events compiled by Zaghala Wardi-qan 雜噶拉斡爾第汗; the Great Yellow Book of the Source and Transmission of the Ancient Mongol Qans 古昔蒙古汗源流大黃册 — in all seven histories conjoined. From the second month of the year yǐchǒu, the constellation Ji-tu yìhuǒshé on duty (i.e. the year of the lesser snake), on the 19th day, with the constellation Jiao-mu-jiao Gui-jin-yang on duty, until the first day of the sixth month, with the same constellations on duty, the work was completed.” The events recorded run through the lineages of the qans of Ènádékè 額納特珂克 (i.e. India), Tǔbótè 土伯特 (i.e. Tibet), and the Mongol qans, and the offerings to the various great Lamas and the propagation of the Buddhist teaching; and the rise and fall of governance and order within their countries is also given by year — head and tail completely covered. The format is comparable to the Yuán Mì shǐ 元朝秘史 preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. Earlier, our August Sovereign in his survey of the past took up the question of the origin of the Yuán imperial clan name Jīwēn 奇渥温 and considered that there must have been a transmissional error. He inquired of Cenggünjab 成袞札布, the Princely-Ruler of the Khalkha Left Wing, who presented this book for imperial inspection. Investigation of the origins revealed that Jīwēn was an error for Köyit 却特; centuries of perpetuated error were corrected and made clear. His Majesty incorporated this correction into his Yùpī tōngjiàn jí lǎn 御批通鑑輯覽 and further committed this work to the guǎnchén 館臣 to translate into Chinese, polish, arrange, and bring to a total of 8 juǎn. Juǎn 1: the constitution of the fēng tán 風壇, shuǐ tán 水壇, and tǔ tán 土壇, the descent of the various species of life, and the six Galab (kalpas) — multiplication, subtraction, and computation of cyclical periods — leading to the rise of the Buddhist teaching of Śākyamuni. The whole is the introduction. Next: the lineage of the qans of Ènádékè (India), beginning with the great-grandson of Singhasanu Khan, the qan Sálwà Ǎrtáxidi 薩爾斡阿爾塔實迪, whose son Dānbāduō Kègǎr 丹巴多克噶爾 became the Buddha; from Wūdíyǎnà-qan 烏迪雅納汗 onwards, the great qans who upheld the Buddhist teaching, and the seven zàn-dá-qí-bā-lā and the four xī-nà qans, all are detailed by name and title — corresponding broadly to the Šākya-vaṃsa 釋迦譜 in the Tibetan canon. Next: the lineage of the Tubetan qans, beginning with Niyatsanbo-qan 尼雅特贊博汗 elected on Mount Shànbù 善布山, ending with Zháshí Dé-qan 札實德汗, broadly aligned with the Western-Region (i.e. Tibetan) Jiā lā bǔ jīng 嘉喇卜經. The book records the marriages of Princess Wénchéng 文成公主 (Táng Tàizōng’s daughter) to Tèlè Dé-Sūlóng-Zànbo 特勒德蘇隆贊汗, and Princess Jīnchéng 金城公主 (the daughter of Prince Yōngwáng Shǒulǐ 雍王守禮, niece of Táng Zhōngzōng) to Tèlè Dānzū-kè-Dānhán 特勒丹租克丹汗 — all of which match the Tángshū records of Tàizōng Zhēnguān 15 (641) and Zhōngzōng Jǐnglóng 1 (707). It is shown that Tǔbótè 土伯特 is the Túbō 吐蕃 of the Tángshū, and the so-called Yè-zōng Lòng-zàn 葉宗弄贊 of the Tángshū is a corruption of Tèlè-Dé-Sūlóng-Zàn 特勒德蘇隆贊. The qans of his line are named Zànbo 贊博; the Tángshū’s zànpǔ 贊普 is also phonetically near. From juǎn 3 onward, the work records the Mongol lineage. The youngest son Bùěrtéqínuò 布爾特齊諾 of Sēěr-tè-Zànbo-qan 色爾特贊博汗 of Tubet, having taken refuge at Bìtà 必塔, was raised to a chieftaincy by his people. After several generations to Bóduānchá’ěr 勃端察爾, whose mother was Aōlóng-Guōwò Hātún 阿隆郭斡哈屯 — she conceived him from a strange dream — and after another nine generations the Yuán Tàizǔ — broadly agreeing with the Yuán běnjì but with some divergences. He calls Yuán Tàizǔ Suǒduō Bókèdá Qīngjísī-qan 索多博克達靑吉斯汗 (Sutu Bogda Cinggis Qan), Yuán Shìzǔ Hūbìlài Chèchén-qan 呼必賚徹辰汗 (Khubilai Sechen Qan), Yuán Shùndì Tuōhuān-Tèmùěr Wūhāgátú-qan 托歡特穆爾烏哈噶圖汗 (Toghon Temür Uqaghatu Qan). After Shùndì’s flight north, the line of qans was transmitted down to Lín-dān Kùkètú-qan 林丹庫克圖汗 (Lighdan Khutughtu Qan, d. 1634, the last Mongol great khan), whose defeat by Our Dynasty (i.e. the Manchu Qīng) is recorded in clear narrative order — the lineages, names, and lifedates are entirely registered. The Míng imperial line is also briefly attached. The most flagrantly garbled items: he makes Kùsèlè-qan 庫色勒汗 a younger brother of Yuán Míngzōng who reigned 20 days — there is no such event in the standard history; he makes Míng Tàizǔ “Zhū Gé” 朱葛 who served Yuán as Left-Province Long-officer (zuǒ-shěng zhǎng-guān 左省長官) and slandered to death the Tài-shī Tuōkètuō-gā 托克托噶 太師 and then raised troops to expel Shùndì — pure fancy. Other dates are also often discrepant with the standard history. The reason: events within China the author had only by hearsay and could not get them all straight. But the establishment of the dynasty beyond the frontier and the transmission of the line, the geographical and personal names, the language, the phonology — all are matters of his own personal knowledge and clear sight, quite unlike the dynastic histories of successive ages, which gathered up echoes and rumors and added their own unfounded compilation, leading to error upon error and unrecoverable corruption. To rely on this book for fixing those corruptions is genuinely useful for historical study. We respectfully consider that our August State, with its all-direction unity and its cultural radiance reaching outward, has made the Mongol bùluò 部落 long submissive subjects, and so we have been able to obtain their privately transmitted secret records and store them in the external-history repository, using them to verify older texts and to dispel the corrupted second-hand misreading. The harmonized and unified scripts of our age are indeed of unparalleled splendor.
(Editorial note appended:) This book is a record by an external dependency and ought by precedent to be classified under zǎijì 載記 (records of dependencies). However, it deals largely with the affairs of the emperors of the Yuán dynasty and is therefore of a different character from the histories of Korea or Annam. We therefore include it among the Miscellaneous Histories.
Abstract
The Qīndìng Měnggǔ yuánliú is the imperially commissioned 8-juǎn Chinese translation, completed in Qiánlóng 42 (1777), of the most important indigenous Mongolian historical source of the Late-Yuán-into-Manchu period: Saghang Sechen Hong-tayiji’s Erdeni-yin tobchi 蒙古源流 (Mongolian; lit. “Precious Summary”). The Mongol-language original was composed by Saghang Sechen 薩囊徹辰 (b. 1604; fl. through the 1660s, of the Ordos 鄂爾多斯 Mongols, descendant in the eleventh generation from Khabutu Sasen, taišī of Lighdan), completed in 1662 (his postface gives precise dates by the Tibeto-Mongolian astronomical-cyclical reckoning). The work synthesizes seven earlier Mongol and Tibetan historical sources, including the Hóng cè 紅冊 (the Hu-lan deb-ther of the 14th-c. Mongolian-Tibetan tradition) and a Sharba Khutughtu compilation, and traces the descent of the Mongol khans from a sequence of Indian-royal-then-Tibetan-royal lineages through Chingghis-qan, his successors, the Yuán emperors, and the Northern-Yuán Mongol khans down through Lighdan-qan 林丹庫圖克圖汗 (d. 1634), the last independent Mongol great khan defeated by the Manchu Qīng. The text was presented to the Qiánlóng emperor by Cenggünjab 成袞札布, the Khalkha Left-Wing princely-ruler, in response to imperial inquiries about the etymology of the Yuán imperial clan name Jīwēn 奇渥温; the imperial inquiry-and-correction process established that the inherited Sino-centric form was a corruption of Köyit 却特, and the rectification was incorporated into the imperially issued Yùpī tōngjiàn jí lǎn 御批通鑑輯覽. The Chinese translation by the guǎnchén (court compilers, including the Manchu and Mongol scholars at the Sìkùquánshū editorial bureau) was published in 8 juǎn and brought into the Sìkù under the Miscellaneous Histories — the Sìkù compilers note that strictly the work belongs under zǎijì (records of dependencies), but classify it under záshǐ because of its substantive concern with Yuán-imperial affairs. The work is the foundational Qīng-period source for the rehabilitation of Mongolian indigenous historiographical tradition into Chinese-language scholarship. Date bracket here is 1662 (composition of the Mongol original by Saghang Sechen) to 1777 (the Chinese translation).
Translations and research
- Isaac Jacob Schmidt, trans. 1829. Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen und ihres Fürstenhauses, verfasst von Ssanang Ssetsen, Chungtaidschi der Ordus. St. Petersburg / Leipzig. The first complete European translation, into German, with the Mongol text in parallel — foundational.
- John R. Krueger, trans. 1961–1967. Poetical Passages in the Erdeni-yin tobchi. Bloomington / The Hague: Indiana University / Mouton.
- Erich Haenisch. 1939. Geschichte der Mongolen und Eroberung Chinas: Erdeni-yin tobchi. Leipzig.
- Wáng Liánchéng 王連成 (modern translator), Měnggǔ yuánliú jiào zhù 蒙古源流校注. 2008. Beijing: Mínzú chūbǎnshè.
- Igor de Rachewiltz. 1976. Index to the Secret History of the Mongols. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. (Companion to the Mongol historiographical corpus that the Mongol yuán liú belongs to.)
- David M. Robinson. 2009. Empire’s Twilight: Northeast Asia under the Mongols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
- Christopher P. Atwood. 2004. Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. New York: Facts on File. (Article on Saghang Sechen and the Erdeni-yin tobchi.)
- Junko Miyawaki-Okada. 2007. “The Plot in the Erdeni-yin tobchi: A Discussion of the Date of Composition.” Inner Asia 9.
Other points of interest
The Mongol yuán liú is one of two principal indigenous Mongolian historiographical works to enter Chinese imperial canon (the other being the Yuán cháo bì shǐ / Mongol-un niucha tobcha’an, recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn). The Qīng court’s deliberate sponsorship of the translation — and the imperial use of the work to correct centuries of Sino-centric transcriptional error — is a representative episode in the Manchu-Qīng project of guǎnshí tóngwén 觀什同文 (“looking together at the unity of script”), the Qīng ideology of multi-ethnic textual integration. The work also preserves the only sustained pre-modern indigenous Mongolian dating of the Tang-dynasty marriages of princesses Wénchéng and Jīnchéng to the Tibetan btsan-po (=zànpǔ), confirming the equivalence of Tǔbótè (Tibetan Bod) and Túbō 吐蕃.