If you surfed in looking for general information on Mongol bichig, this page probably won't help you. But try here instead. And if you are a regular to this part of the site, but come directly to this page - please note that I've broken this into two sections, documents and books. (Journals are in the book section.) Everything is still available.

A partial listing of documents in Mongol bichig

Click on the link to see a picture of the title page, where available. (Images will open in a new window.) The brief English description should be read as more of a gloss than a literal translation of the title. (For you purists, the transliteration will be given from the bichig eventually.) You are free to make use of these files in research, publications, etc. If you weren't, they wouldn't be here. I wouldn't mind, however, an acknowledgement as the provider of the documents. And please let me know if they are used in publications, talks, etc. I'd like to know what sort of life (if any) these documents take on.

I've re-ordered this list. It now mirrors the list of available downloads to the left, which itself I've tried to group somewhat by topic. Items in the list which aren't available for download on the site are below the ones that are. Please contact me if you are interested in any of the ones that don't appear on the site.

Files available on-line can be found to the left. I've listed them under descriptive labels, which are not necessarily the same as the actual title. Please take note of the file size before opening or down-loading, most are at least 5 Mb, if not larger! All files are in PDF format. More will be added as time permits.

A few words on digitalization and the files

Please realize that the digitalization of this resources started out for my own benefit. I wanted to be able to scribble on copies of the documents while working on them, since my bichig is less than fluent. It was only later that I decided that I might as well make them available to people on a wider basis. You will see on some of the files that some of the scans are less than perfect. A lot of these were initially digitalized with a hand-held digital camera, laying the original document out on a flat surface. Uneveness is a natural result of such a method. (This also explains the various props to help hold pages flat in some files.) You will probably also notice some changes in color, etc. This is usually the result of being forced to re-digitize a page if they weren't clear enough the first time. Working with natural light, some variation is to be expected. In time, I might re-scan some of the documents. For most, however, I expect that this will be the form they remain in for quite some time. This is simply because the originals are quite fragile, and I would rather work with (and offer) an imperfect, but readable, electronic form of the document than risk damaging (or damaging further, in some cases) the originals. Also, if you pay close enough attention, you will notice that some of the pages are of unusual size. That's a bit of sloppiness on my part - when tweaking contrast or other settings, I didn't always pay very close attention to the settings at which the files were saved. Thus something that was scanned in at 200 pixels per inch (for example) ended up being saved at 72 ppi, with the result that the size (in inches / cm) is expanded about three-fold. I figure this is something we can all live with - that is why Acrobat has options like "zoom" and "fit width," etc. Just remember to "fit to paper" before printing!

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