Problems of reception, translation and interpretation of “The secret history of the Mongols” (1240) in Russian oriental studies (on the example of the work of S. A. Kozin)

Abstract

The article deals with one of the first major historical and literary texts of medieval Mongolian literature “The Secret History of the Mongols” (1240). The text was found and made public by the Russian Orientalist Scholars as early as the 19th cent. The Mongolian text transcribed in Chinese was discovered in the Chinese Imperial Library (Beijing) by Archimandtrite Palladios (Petr Ivanovich Kafarov). He published the original text accompanied with translation, commentaries and an index in 1866 in the Proceedings of the Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mision in Beijin. In 1941 S. A. Kozin (Sergei Andreevich Kozin) published research on “The Secret History of the Mongols”, which was highly acclaimed among the specialists in Mongol studies. This research comprised the reconstruction of the original prosaic and poetical Mongolian Urtext. The author's research principles became a landmark in the Mongolian medieval studies both in Europe and Asia. Following the guidelines as suggested by S. A. Kozin the present research deals with the issues of translation and interpretation of medieval Mongolian texts, principles of commentary concerning their specific features in the Russian Mongolian studies.