Romanised transliteration of the Secret History of the Mongols

What it is

This is a book by Kurakichi Shiratori, dated 31 January 1943. It is a transliteration into Roman letters of the original Mongolian sound of the Secret History of the Mongols, as reproduced by Ye Dehui in 1908. The Commons file is a photograph of a teal cloth-bound book with a white library call-number label reading 222.057 G29G, placed beside a colour reference card. The curator's note calls it a scholarly study edition.

Why it matters

The Secret History is one of the most important sources for the life of Genghis Khan, and it was written in Mongolian. A transliteration shows scholars how the Mongolian words were pronounced, so that students who cannot read the original script can still study the text. Shiratori's edition belongs to a later scholarly tradition that made the Mongolian text more widely available. It is a secondary study of the source, not the source itself.

Look closer

• What does the book's cover, label and format tell you about who would have used it?
• Why might a scholar in 1943 choose to transliterate a Mongolian text into Roman letters?
• What does a transliteration of sounds leave out about the meaning and the original writing of the text?