Jalair Batbayar was born in Ulaan Baatar on 2nd April 1959 and still lives there today. He is a painter, a poet and a calligrapher. He has written, in beautiful calligraphy, the poems that accompany thirty photographs he selected from this book. Jalair Batbayar is a self-taught master of calligraphy. He learned it secretly during the Soviet era. At that time, Buddhist temples and books were destroyed. Nomads were entrusted with the books from monasteries and they protected them by hiding them in rock crevices in the middle of the steppe. Jalair Batbayar was therefore able to keep on learning and practising the arts of painting, calligraphy and poetry clandestinely. Since 1991, when Mongolia became officially independent, he has been practising these arts openly and has had exhibitions in various locations in Ulaan Baatar, Japan and, more recently, in Washington, in the United States with the National Geographic Society. In 2001, he wrote and published a book on the history of Mongolian writing and has been teaching painting since 1990.

Mongols were nomadic people for many centuries, yet they have succeeded in passing down their script and cultural heritage to successive generations.

There has been little study of the origins and evolution of the traditional Mongolian script in Mongolia. This is set to change with the publication of this book by D. Batbayar, which is considered one of the first research books into the traditional Mongolian script, its origins, and the art of calligraphy, wooden printing blocks and the pictograms used in the traditional script.


D. Batbayar's book shows that Mongols not only used more than one script, but then created and spread many popular scripts throughout the world and created the art of calligraphy.


With the publication of this book Batbayar, himself a calligrapher and fine arts teacher, is attempting to revive the forgotten art of calligraphy. He spent 10 years researching the origins of calligraphy in Mongolia.


This book is about the traditional Mongolian script, its origin and evolution into the art of calligraphy and holographic printing. It explores the uses of the brush and pictorial images in the Mongolian art of handwriting.


The six chapters of the book offer a wealth of knowledge obtained from a careful research into the literary and cultural heritage of the country. The 210 illustrations make the reading a pleasant journey into a section of Mongolia's history and tradition.