"The Secret Legend" is the oldest literary monument of the Mongols. It is believed that it was created in 1240 during the reign of Ogedei Khan. The original monument has not survived. The oldest manuscript that has come down to us is a Mongolian text transcribed in Chinese characters and provided with a translation into Chinese. The transcription was made in the late 14th century for educational purposes so that the Chinese could learn Mongolian. In particular, this is why one of the authors of the transcription of the Secret Legend, Huo Yuanjie, used so-called “mnemonic hieroglyphs” during transcription: in many cases, to transcribe a particular word, hieroglyphs are used that are suitable not only in phonetics, but also in meaning to the corresponding Mongolian word. The language recorded in this monument is a very archaic Mongolian language, which, according to N.N. Poppe’s classification, belongs to the East-Middle Mongolian dialect.

The secret legend, being the most extensive and literary processed of the most ancient Mongolian monuments, is an invaluable source on the history, language and ethnography of the Mongols. It includes poetic fragments dating back to folk poetry, and prose parts represented by a variety of genres: from legends and elements of epic to samples of clerical speech.

The original text is presumably taken from publications in the magazine "Baikal" ( Ulan-Ude) (1989, No. 6 and 1990 No. 1).