The Vertical Script and the Buddhist Canon

Classical Mongolian is the literary language of the Mongols written in the vertical script, which tradition says was adopted from the Uyghurs at Genghis Khan's command in the early thirteenth century, when the scribe Tatatunga was captured and set to teaching the script to the imperial family. Written top to bottom in columns running left to right, the script served chancellery, chronicle and epic, including the transmission of the Secret History of the Mongols. The classical literary standard matured in the seventeenth century, when Mongolia turned decisively to Tibetan Buddhism and translation became the engine of literature.

Under Ligdan Khan a commission completed the Mongolian Kangyur, the canon of the Buddha's word, in 1629, and in the eighteenth century the Qing court sponsored the printing of the Kangyur and the enormous Tengyur of commentaries, projects that standardized terminology through dictionaries compiled for the purpose. Monastery printeries across Mongolia and Inner Mongolia produced sutras, prayer books, ritual manuals and popular didactic verse in Classical Mongolian, and lamas moved fluently between Mongolian and Tibetan, often composing scholastic works in Tibetan while preaching and translating in Mongolian.