ON THE WRITING PROCESS OF THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS

The Secret History of the Mongols must have taken a long timeto complete instead of getting finished at one stretch of time. Two things attest to the truth of this proposition. First, although the history is written in the form of chronicle, there are three elements generally considered undesirable for the narrative mode of a chronicle. These are the insertion of episodes, changes in the person of the narrator, and the confusion in narrative order, etc. Second, according to The Basic Annals of Shizu (Kublai Khan) in History of the Yuan Dynasty, copies of the anecdotal accounts of Genghis Khan had been made out of interviews and sent to the history writing office well after the date when The Secret History of the Mongols is supposed to have been completed. Besides, a plan to write the sequel to The Mongolian History, which may very well be The Secret History of the Mongols, is mentioned in The Basic Annals of Wenzong (named Timur) in History of the Yuan Dynasty. These two facts plus the epitaphs on the tombstones left behind by people of the Yuan Dynasty are ample proof that there is far more secret about this Mongolian royal family than is written in The Secret History of the Mongols.