2025/12/29 by Батцэнгэл Нацагдорж, Нацагдорж, Батцэнгэл
Arts and Humanities · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Eurasian Exchange Networks #FOS: Languages and literature #Languages and literature #Linguistics and Cultural Studies #Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
paper · doi:10.48612/ivrran/mz33-grdg-3hka
openalex publication_date 2025/12/29 · openalex created_date 2025/12/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Among the fragments of birch-bark manuscripts discovered by the Mongolian scholar A. Ochir during archaeological excavations at the ruins of Xarbuxyn-balgas in Bulgan aimag (Mongolia) in 2010 and 2011, there is a handwritten copy of one of the chapters of the Epic of Geser Khan. Among these fragments, we identified and restored three sheets of birch bark whose text corresponds almost verbatim to the second chapter of the Epic of Geser Khan, published in a woodblock-print edition in Beijing in 1716 under the title “Chapter Two: On the Killing of a Black-Striped Tiger, Huge as a Mountain, the Incarnation of a Demon in the North.” Previous studies have suggested that this chapter was transmitted orally until 1680, when it was recorded in writing by the second lCang-skya Khutugtu, and then added to the 1716 woodblock-print edition. However, our findings refute this assumption. We can now confidently state that the Mongolian Epic of Geser Khan had already taken shape by the late 16th or early 17th century and was widely circulated in written form among the Mongols. Moreover, some scholars propose that the birch bark manuscripts from Xarbuxyn-balgas could date to the 15th century, indicating that the Epic of Geser Khan might have been widespread among the Mongols even earlier.