Mongol Money and Multiple Writing Systems

The Mongolian currency is the Togrog. The exchange rate is roughly 1470 Togrog to 1 US Dollar.

Throughout most of Europe, thanks to the prevalence of €2 coins, it’s pretty easy to have a pocket full of change that adds up to more than $30. As an American, where a pocket full of change is rarely more than $2, it was always surprising to count up “loose change” and find enough for dinner.

On the other hand Mongolia doesn’t use any coins at all. Even the smallest denomination (₮1) is still a bill. Consequently it was common to have a wallet stuffed with 30 or 40 bills that didn’t add up to more than $10.

Togrog come in denominations of 1, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10k and 20k. The ₮20,000 bill is worth a little less than $14.

The banknotes are beautiful and have an interesting feature: All bills use four different Mongolian writing systems.

• Phags-pa Script
• Mongolian Cyrillic
• Hudum Script
• Latin Alphabet / Arabic Numerals

Phags-pa Script
The square writing on the left edge of the ₮50 note (pictured above) is Phags-pa script.

Phags-pa is also known as “seal script” and was created by Drogön Chögyal Phagpa, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, during the reign of Kublai Khan (1260-1294). The script was intended to be a unified script for all languages within the Yuan Dynasty, however it never fully caught on and fell out of use after the dynasty was overturned by the Ming Dynasty in 1368.

The writing was widely used in Tibet and because of its highly geometric look, was often used as temple decoration on walls or pillars, serving as both art and message.

Mongolian Cyrillic
Mongolian Cyrillic is a slightly modified form of the Cyrillic Alphabet (including two additional letters) and appears on the back of the note.

“Монгол улс” translates to “Mongolia” – though literally it would be closer to Mongol Country. Cyrillic was introduced to Mongolia in the 1940s and is still very commonly used today.

Hudum Script
Before Genghis Khan, Mongolian tribes lacked any written language. It wasn’t until 1204, with the capture of an Uyghur scribe that the first Mongol writing system was created – based off of the Uyghur alphabet. It is a vertically written language and is unique in that it is the only vertical script written from left to right.

The above detail from the front of the ₮50 note reads “Mongolia” on the left and “Fifty Togrog” on the right. As a point of comparison, below  is a detail from a ₮5000 note (which reads “Five Thousand Togrog”).

This script is also still widely used in Mongolia and is very much a day to day part of Mongolian culture.

Latin Alphabet / Arabic Numerals
Finally, Arabic numerals are used for both the denomination number in the top left corner of the bill (ie. 1, 50, 5000), and the serial number that appears near the upper right and bottom center on the ₮50. Letters from the Latin alphabet are also used in the serial numbers.

The use of Arabic numerals may seem obvious since even Cyrillic alphabets have used Arabic numerals  since the 1700s, but the bills didn’t have to use them. As you can see in the top right and bottom left of the ₮50 bill, the denominations are also written in Hudum script numerals.

An example of “5000″ can be seen below (in the top right); an example of “1″ below that (in the top left).

As of this writing, we haven’t traveled to India or any of the South East Asian countries, so I can’t speak to how many writing systems are used on their money, but so far Mongolia is the only country to have actually used completely different systems for writing text, not simply styles (serif / sans serif) or languages.

Click here to see the complete Flickr Set of Mongolian Money Photos.