White Noise

Light for Nations: A Short History of the Jews in the Modern World

Published on February 3, 2005 By geser nart In Religion

Mythical Elements in "The Secret History of the Mongols"
by Dr. Roger Finch
The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 10", December 1994

Once again Mr. Aaron Cohen deputized for our President, whose return was delayed while he recovered from a minor operation performed while he was in England. With his usual style, Mr. Cohen had found in one of his books a reference to the Mongols with which to introduce our speaker.

The "Secret History", said Dr. Finch, might be better called "The Life of Chinggis Khan". Dating from 1240, it begins by tracing his genealogy back to his mythical ancestors Borte Cino (Gray Wolf) and Qo'ai Maral (Fallow Doe; "q" is an alternative graphy for "kh"), who are said to have crossed the sea and settled by the Onan River, establishing the Borjigin clan, to which Chinggis Khan belonged. A later chronicle, the "Altan Tobci", dated between 1621 and 1628, takes the genealogy eight generations further back to an Indian prince who manifested signs of divine origin, having turquoise blue hair, flat palms and soles, and eyelids that closed from the bottom upward. As a boy he had been set adrift in a copper box, was then found and finally became the first king of Tibet, Kujugun Sandali-tu Qagan. Borte Cino was one of three sons of the seventh of these kings, and, as a result of quarrelling with his elder brothers, crossed a lake and came to the land of the Mongols and married a girl called Qoua Maral.

The "Altan Tobci" takes Gray Wolf and Fallow Doe to be human rather than animals. The "Secret History" does not make it clear which they are, but a comparison with the chronicles of other Altaic peoples and other peoples in the same area shows non-human beings playing a leading part. The Tibetans, for example, trace their descent from a monkey and an ogress, while the imperial line of the Mongols is likewise traced back to quasi-historical personages, and another source calls Borte Cino the "Son of Heaven". In Chinese accounts of the origin of the Turkut a wolf figures prominently. The whole tribe was massacred by a neighbouring tribe except for a ten-year-old boy who was left for dead, with his hands and feet cut off. He was nurtured by a wolf, and then the two of them were transported by a "good genius" to the present-day Qara-xojo near Turfan. There the she-wolf gave birth to ten male young, who captured wives and gave their names to their families, and the resulting people adopted a wolf's head as their insignia. On the basis of all this evidence, we may conclude that the very brief reference to Gray Wolf and Fallow Doe in the Secret History represents the same tradition of incorporating what may be termed the "animal ancestor" motif.

The "Secret History" then continues through nine generations, and comes to a brief account of Dobun Mergen (Dobun the Sharpshooter or Dobun the Wise) and his brother Duwa Soqor (Duwa the One-Eyed). These names seem to be made up of a personal name and an epithetical surname, without any reference to animals, so these brothers must be at least quasi-historical persons. Duwa the One-Eyed immediately suggests that he was a Polyphemus figure, perhaps partly mythical, and this second mythical reference may be termed the "giant motif".

Duwa's part in the story is mainly to find a wife, Alan Go'a, for his brother Dobun, and she bore two sons, Bugunutei and Belgunutei (who may have been twins). Dobun had once taken home with him as a slave a poor boy he had found when hunting, and after Dobun's death, this man continued to live with Alan Go'a, and might have been the father of three more sons to whom she gave birth, Bugu Qatagi, Bugutu Salji, and Bodoncar Mungqag (Bodoncar the Fool). Alan Go'a decided to allay all her sons' suspicions about this by telling them that every night a pale yellow man would enter the yurt by way of the smoke hole and stroke her belly, and his light would penetrate it; then he would leave in the form of a yellow dog. This mythical story seems merely to have been an invention of Alan Go'a or one of the sons, and the "pale yellow man" suggests that at least one of the three boys had a lighter complexion; another account suggests that the Borjigin clan (Chinggis Khan's) shared this characteristic, and, as it is descended from Bodoncar, it seems as if he was the one who differed physically from the others, as well as in some other way that earned him the epithet "the Fool". This story, which may be called the "miraculous birth" motif, was evidently put together from elements surviving from an earlier tradition, or taken from an outside source, and was included in the "Secret History" to support the claim of Chinggis Khan to rule by divine right.

Among the chronicles of other Altaic peoples, one of the most developed accounts containing the same mythical themes is the history of Dung Ming, the founder of the Korean race. According to Chinese sources, there was a kingdom in the north called Fu-yu, and further north, across the Sungari River (a tributary of the Amur), lay the kingdom of Korai. The first king of Korai had a harem, and one day a slave girl in the harem saw a cloud or ray of light enter her bosom, and under its influence she conceived. The king wanted to put her to death, but hearing her story he let her give birth to the child, Dung Ming.Fearing the miraculous child might one day usurp his throne, he cast it first into a pig sty and then into a stable, but each time the animals kept it alive. The child grew up and became an expert archer, which made the king even more afraid of him. Dung Ming was forced to flee south, but found his way barred by the Sungari River. He shot arrows into the river, so many that the fish crowded together to avoid them and formed a bridge over which he crossed; the fish then dispersed so that his pursuers could not follow him. He then became king of Fu-yu.

The most obvious parallel between the history of Dung Ming and the Mongolian chronicles is the "miraculous birth" motif. But other motifs common to myths from various parts of the world are the "exposure of the baby" and the "wild child" motifs. The former is not found in the "Secret History", but occurs in the story of Kujugun Sandali-tu Qagan in the later "Altan Tobci" and in that of the ancestor of the Turkut in the Chinese Annals. Both these boys may be recognized as future hero kings by being specially marked, the one by his turquoise hair and reversed eyelids, the other by his amputated hands and feet. Bodoncar too, as we have inferred, may have been marked by having a light complexion. A variant of the "exposure of the baby" motif may be the "exile" motif. The two are combined in the Dung Ming story, and in the "Altan Tobci" Borte Cino has to flee after quarrelling with his two brothers. Also in both stories the hero has to cross over a body of water and then becomes king of a new people. Bodoncar, too, had a quarrel with his elder brothers, who drove him away from home; he crossed the Onan River to an island, and became king of a new people.

In the same way, the "wild child" motif may be an extension of the "animal ancestor" motif. Thus in the story of the origin of the Turkut the orphan boy suckled by the she-wolf may later have mated with her and begotten a new tribe. In most of the myths the one motif excludes the other, and there are few examples of the "wild child" mating with his nurse. There are, however, two folk tales current among the Buryat Mongols in which the "animal ancestor" motif is linked with the "exposure of the baby" one. In both, the mother has given birth to a half-animal baby and then sealed it in a cradle and thrown it into a lake. The close resemblance to the story of the boy with the turquoise hair who was shut up in a copper box and cast into the river may justify us in putting the various mythical fragments together and arriving at a story in which it is Borte Cino who is set adrift in a cradle and found and suckled by a wolf (or, for instance, a shamaness with a wolf as "helper").

Shortage of time forced Dr. Finch to cut out illustrations of parallel themes in Greek and Roman mythology, such as the "miraculous births" fathered by Zeus, the "exposure of the baby" as in the Oedipus story, or the "wild child" motif found in the story of Romulus and Remus. But he turned his attention to another "Polyphemus" myth which parallels the reference to Duwa the One-Eyed in the "Secret History". This is found in a collection of tales of the Oguz Turks, in which the Polyphemus figure is Depegoz (Top-Eye), who is the result of a union between a shepherd and a fairy. He lives in the mountains and raids the countryside, feasting on people. Then a tribal warrior, who had been brought up as a wild boy, gets into the ogre's cave and puts out his one eye with a heated spit. Then, as in the story of Polyphemus, he tries to get out of the cave together with the ogre's sheep, which the ogre is feeling as they go out to the pasture; in this he is not successful, but he succeeds in getting the ogre's magic sword and cutting his head off with it.

At this point Dr. Finch had again to excise a considerable portion of his prepared text, in which he had traced parallels in Buddhist, Christian and Zoroastrian sources, and proceeded to his conclusion. The parallels with Greek and Roman mythology, he said, might be due not so much to Hellenistic influence as to contact with more immediately neighbouring Indo-Europeans who had preserved much of the same original mythology. Of all the Indo-European myths with a "miraculous birth" motif, the closest one to the story of Alan Go'a turns up in the westernmost part of the area, in Ireland. In it a girl shut up in a house made of wickerwork is visited by a denizen of the Land of Youth who comes down through the opening in the roof in the form of a great bird and is then transformed into a glorious young man. Later she gives birth to a baby. Another Irish myth has a Polyphemus element. A race of demons or titans who terrorized the local population had a king with one eye, who could slay anyone with a baleful glance. Being told in a prophecy that he would be killed by his grandson he shuts his daughter up in a tower, but one man enters and she subsequently gives birth to three sons. When the king hears of it he orders the babies to be thrown into a whirlpool. But one survives and is found by a druidess, who gives him to a smith to bring up, and he eventually grows up and kills the king in battle, putting out his eye.

This last myth has all the elements needed to incorporate the Polyphemus figure into a myth containing the "miraculous birth" (though, in Irish fashion, a god is turned into a human father), "exposure of the baby" and "wild boy" motifs. But how are we to connect Irish myths with Mongol ones, when the two areas are so far apart geographically? The missing link here may have been the Tocharians. These were a fair-haired people speaking an Indo-European language (recorded in the 7th and 8th centuries) who lived on the northeast rim of the Tarim Basin. Their language is closer to the Italic and Celtic languages than to those of the Indo-Iranian or Slavonic groups, suggesting that they migrated east, presumably bringing with them the myths common to the west European area. Unfortunately we have no record of their ancestral beliefs or myths, as they have only left behind Buddhist texts, but it is interesting to speculate on the extent to which their stories might have been incorporated into the literature of their neighbours.

Comments

No one has commented on this article. Be the first!

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!