Abstract
This paper discusses the principle of electronic data and retrieval methods for the Secret History of the Mongols, which is a great classical historical work written in the 13th century with Chinese characters transliterated from Mongol. This handwritten work contains rather rich text information, which should be the contents of forming an electronic database. There are in the original book multi-types of information, including layouts, volumes, chapters, characters, interlinear translation, segments, and Chinese translation, each format of which has been approached in detail and divided separately with markers. On the basis of analysis, our project builds up a complete electronic retrieval system for this great book, which resolves the return to the original shape of the archaic handwriting form with three lines representing one content. The sorting methods of the system are also designed according to the original text formats, namely concordance technology, which can print out retrieved objects with their contexts, retrieve with statistical data, and freely browse search.