The Mongolian chronicle Erdeni-yin tobci (“Precious Summary”), written in 1662 by the Ordos nobleman Sagang Sechen, occupies a special position among the Mongolian chronicles of the seventeenth century. It was widely received and read among the Mongols, as evidenced by the more than twenty-four manuscripts that have been found to date. Moreover, the work was given the rare honor of being translated from Mongolian into Manchu and from there into Chinese by order of the Qianlong Emperor. In 1777, the three versions of the work were even printed. Thus, the Erdeni-yin tobci proved to be probably the most widespread and well-known Mongolian historical work in the Qing Empire. Moreover, the work was also the first Mongolian historical work to become known in Europe. In 1829, the Moravian missionary Isaac Jacob Schmidt published a German translation of the chronicle. Before this date, Mongolian historiography was practically unknown in Europe. The early translation into a European language ensured that the view of Mongol history presented in the Erdeni-yin tobci continues to shape scholarly accounts to this day.
The chronicle was translated into English for the first, and until now only, time in 1967 by John R. Krueger.Footnote 1 It is to the credit of Johan Elverskog that this important Mongolian historical work has now been made accessible to a wide range of readers in a new, carefully annotated translation. He has based his translation on the expanded version of the Urga manuscript, which was published in 1990.Footnote 2 Elverskog has explicitly set himself the goal of presenting a translation that makes the Erdeni-yin tobci accessible to an academic audience beyond that of Mongolian Studies. To this end he has made a special effort not only to present an easily readable translation, but also to preface each chapter with a brief introduction that places it in the larger cultural-historical context of Inner Asia in general and the Mongols in particular. In addition, the present translation captivates the reader with an extensive annotation apparatus that provides deeper historical, as well as cultural and political, insights into the details of the story that Sagang Sechen unfolds.
Johan Elverskog provides his translation with a general introduction that places the Erdeni-yin tobci in the context of the time in which it was written. He describes, briefly but very precisely and in rich in detail, the events in the Mongolian regions after the collapse of the Yuan Empire in 1368, and he outlines the Mongolian political theory that was prevalent in Sagang Sechen's time. Thus he succeeds in unfolding in a few pages the motivations for Sagang Sechen to write his chronicle. Elverskog also briefly discusses the reception of the work in the Qing Empire and in Europe. This excellent introduction is followed by the actual translation. Here, Elverskog does not follow the author's own division into three parts (of varying length), but instead divides the work into individual chapters, which he prefaces with brief introductions to help the readers find their way around. The translation is thus newly divided into a total of fourteen chapters. The new structure was made according to content-related aspects, which, on the whole, prove to be very coherently chosen. However, the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters are an exception to this rule. The thirteenth chapter is titled “Epilogue,” while the fourteenth is titled “Colophon.” Sagang Sechen's work is an early example of Mongolian historiography that was heavily influenced by Tibetan historiography in the context of Tibetan Buddhist literature, which in turn was influenced by the Indian Nītiśāstra tradition. Thus, he also draws on Tibetan Buddhist models including Nītiśāstra literature in the writing of the colophon. The actual concluding note itself is followed by seventy-nine verses in the manner of the Nītiśāstras. Both the concluding note (Chapter 13) and the poem of seventy-nine verses (Chapter 14) together form the colophon, and therefore they must be read together.Footnote 3 However, one can also go as far as György Kara, who explicitly states in the introduction to his translation of the seventy-nine verses that this poem is actually not a colophon: “The prince wrote this gnomic or moralistic poem, actually not a colophon.”Footnote 4 This final poem has already been translated twice into English.Footnote 5 Elverskog's own English rendering adheres very closely to the translations of his two predecessors, but smooths them out so that the poem becomes more comprehensible to a wider readership.
The translation of the individual chapters of the chronicle is overall very well done. To what extent Elverskog makes use of Krueger's translation I cannot ascertain, since at the time of writing this review his translation was not available to me.
Elverskog has not only provided a readable translation, but also in the extensive annotation apparatus a tool to gain a deep insight into the history of the Mongols from the time of Chinggis Khan to the second half of the seventeenth century. The annotation apparatus on the history of the Mongols (Chapters 3–12) is extremely detailed and based on the latest research, mostly taking into account English-language research. The chapter on Tibet, on the other hand, falls short here, and it is a pity that this chapter was not as carefully historically annotated. The uninformed reader may probably not notice the considerable discrepancies in Sagang Sechen's version of the actual chronology of the history of the Tibetan Empire. For example, Sagang Sechen's statement that the construction of Samye Monastery was begun in 811 is not explicitly corrected, but in the footnote (218n48) it is merely noted that the construction took place during the reign of Trisong Detsen. However, since the dates of Trisong Detsen's life are not corrected (Sagang Sechen gives Trisong Detsen's death date as 845, but he died around the year 800),Footnote 6 the incorrect dating of the temple foundation simply remains as it is. The absent corrections in the annotation apparatus are surprising, because in the notes to the following chapters dealing with the history of the Mongols, such inaccuracies are always noted, commented on, and corrected. For Tibetan, there are also a number of transliteration errors, such as snags pa instead of sngags pa (276), lugs nyis instead of lugs gnyis (231n51), or gsar gyal instead of gsar rgyal (283n26). Potentially careless copyediting is to blame for the misprints in German titles in the bibliography.
However, these minor issues do not in any way diminish the extraordinary achievement of this new translation of the Erdeni-yin tobci, which will remain the standard reference work for this important Mongolian chronicle for many years to come.
