1920-оод онд бичигдсэн Герман-Монгол үгийн индексийг бүтээхэд Д.Нацагдоржийн оруулсан хувь нэмэр (Д.Нацагдоржийн мэндэлсний 120 жилийн ойд зориулав)

On the 120th anniversary of D. Natsagdorj’s birth: What was his contribution to a German-Mongolian Index in the 1920s?

Abstract

This article presents preliminary findings from a trinational (German-Mongolian-Czech) research project examining a two-volume, partly handwritten German-Mongolian Index (GMI) compiled in Leipzig in 1927 under Erich Haenisch's supervision, and held since 1964 in the library of the Seminar für Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft Zentralasiens at the University of Bonn. Long attributed largely to Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj—the pioneering Mongolian writer who studied in Leipzig from 1926 to 1929—the index's authorship and scope have remained largely unexamined until now. Marking the 120th anniversary of Natsagdorj's birth, the authors describe the physical characteristics and provenance of both volumes, drawing on the correspondence between Walther Heissig and Haenisch to reconstruct how the manuscript reached Bonn. Using Optical Character Recognition-based digital comparison, the study shows that 81.75% of the 32,479 entries in Isaak Jakob Schmidt's 1835 Mongolian-German-Russian dictionary have a corresponding GMI entry, with very high match quality. Comparative handwriting analysis identifies at least three scribes: Natsagdorj, Haenisch, and, provisionally, Damdiny Pagmadulam. While the GMI's structure and orthography largely follow Schmidt's dictionary, the compilers substantially revised and modernized the material—replacing obsolete terms, grouping synonyms, and adding entries reflecting contemporary European life. These findings indicate that the GMI was not a simple copy but a collaborative, multi-stage effort toward an updated German-Mongolian dictionary for practical use, marking it as a significant milestone in Mongolian lexicography and German-Mongolian scholarly cooperation. This is the first in a planned series of publications from the project's critical, annotated edition.