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First published in 2004.The Mongols are one of the great peoples in the history of High Asia.Their name has been familiar over the whole of the old world for close on eight hundred years.Yet at the most generous estimate it would be anachronistic to speak of a Mongol state, in the modern sense of the word, as existing before the end of 1911.

This introduction to Mongolian literature from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century provides an insight into the changing world views of the Mongolian people: from clan society to Soviet culture. Translated by Charles Bawden, the work is organised into the major categories of Mongolian literature, concluding with a modern short story.

Among the many attractive rugs illustrated and described in H. A. Lorentz's book on Chinese rugs are two pillar rugs, one of which bears a dedicatory inscription in Chinese, the other a dedicatory inscription in Mongol. The rugs apparently form a pair. They are of the same size, the design of each, an encircling dragon, is a mirror image of that of the other, the borders are identical, and the positions of the inscriptions correspond. The shades of colour, too, are the same, indicating contemporaneous manufacture. Yet, on the face of it, the two inscriptions refer to two distinct donations, and they have been so interpreted by the author. The date in the Chinese inscription is the first month of summer in the year i-yu in the reign of Ch'ien Lung, that is 1765, while the date in the Mongol inscription is the first month of summer in the female-blue hen year in the reign of Badarayultu Törö (Kuang Hsü), that is 1885. Mr. Lorentz quotes expert opinion to the eifect that, the dates apart, the two rugs look as if they must have been woven at the same time as each other and be of late date. The inference is, he says, that both were made in 1885. Yet, he says, after describing the Chinese inscription: ‘The puzzle is that the Mongol inscription in the other rug declares that this rug was presented by a different person one hundred and twenty years later!’. He offers an ingenious explanation for this dilemma, suggesting that the second donor, for he is of the opinion that two donations did indeed take place, at an interval of 120 years, caused an earlier rug to be copied, in order that he could present a pair, rather than a single item. The donor's idea would have been, to quote Mr. Lorentz: ‘I herewith submit the copy of a famous rug dedicated in 1765, to which I add another such rug with my own dedication, presenting thus a pair’.

Until well within the second quarter of this century, academic sinology in Britain remained the province of a few isolated, if brilliant, amateurs, men who had retired to scholarly pursuits after a lifetime of activity in some other field. They occupied university chairs with distinction, but never attracted many pupils and consequently never established a tradition of exact, professional scholarship. That such a tradition, sound and solid, though still young, exists today, is above all the merit of two scholars who, having left Germany in the years before the second World War, devoted their lives to the service of learning in their adopted country. The late Gustav Haloun enjoyed a short but memorable tenure of the Chair at Cambridge. At London, Walter Simon, whom his friends, colleagues, and former pupils greet with respect and affection on his eightieth birthday with this volume of essays, inspired a new academic professionalism, which was Germanic in the rigour of its philological exactitude, but at the same time humane in its appreciation of the civilization to which the study of language is the key. His immediate monument is the present Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Far East at this School, and it is appropriate that we should take this opportunity of honouring his life's work among us. But the ‘school’ to which he gave life is by no means confined to London. Scholars whom Simon taught or influenced occupy chairs of sinology and other teaching and library posts in this country, in Australia, Canada, and the United States.