three are original Mongols but they are Great Mongols, the name of his union of steppe peoples. There is Sigi Qutuqtu, a Tartar, his foster brother and his Chief Justice; Tartar Tonga, not a Tartar but a Uighur, who adapted the Uighur script for Mongol and taught Chinggis’ children to write; or Chingqai, a Hirai Turk, an old comrade of Chinggis and a major government figure until 1251, when he was a victim of the grandchildren’s first internal war.
In 1251 Chinggis turned in his (secret) grave, as a list of names found in his biography went the way of Chingqai in a purge. For if he had one boast, we know he wouldn’t boast about world conquest; he’d boast that those who live in felt tents were a single people, in a way they never had been before. Give him two boasts, and if he shares the Secret History’s sentiments he might pick this: I was loyal to my captains and my captains were loyal to me... which is more than Alexander can say. It’s more than any of his conqueror peers can say – no generals in revolt, from him no ugly attacks on his own – as has been observed in his defence. But isn’t this half, at least, a tribute to his people? The Mongols (original and Great, mostly original) are the hero of the book, scholars agree.
Acknowledgements
Firstly, I belong to the United Front of Barbarians, who see similarities in barbarian cultures a world apart. To me, old Germanic poetry can be a dead ringer for old Mongol. In support I’ll cite Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, 2009, on heroic societies east and west, and Karl Reichl, Singing the Past: Turkic and Medieval Heroic Poetry, 2000, a study that juxtaposes the art of the two. Like the Germanic, Old Turk and Mongol verse is structured on head-rhyme and a counterpoint syntax: qurdun aya ayala, qurcha bulqa bulqadu (to march a swift march, to fight a sharp fight). The one inserts pretty smoothly into the other.
Hoelun’s song on a love triangle in chapter 1: this is an Old English poem known as Wulf and Eadwacer. My translation is fairly strict; I’ve left nothing out but the other man’s name. Her verses in memory of Yesugei: from Beowulf, his funeral lament. Start Of the world’s kings and I can claim a straight translation; and glory is lof. Beowulf slew ogres and a dragon but this is what they said of him. I know he won’t mind to lend to a hero after his own heart.
Back to the steppe. The couple of lines on the willow in chapter 4 are from Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Daur Mongols by Caroline Humphrey with Urgunge Onon, 1996. As I do, I’ve taken the sense but changed the words – for one thing, I need rhyme. Here’s a book I have plundered: a marvelous account of Mongol religion and ritual, with chapters such as ‘Elegant Armour and Ancient Trouvailles’ on the shaman’s costume... a title I just had to quote.
Nora K. Chadwick and Victor Zhirmunsky, Oral Epics of Central Asia, 1969 (Chadwick’s material from her Growth of Literature, 1940) – old but never obsolete – was the major source for my sketch of a Uriangqot song-type in chapter 8, along with the plot of Joloi and Yesugei’s hymn to Irle Khan.
When I quote the Secret History of the Mongols I gather several translations for the sense and feel free on the written art. I am most fond of the translation by Francis W. Cleaves, who has run afoul of the majority for his attempt at a King James Bible English. He argued that he should be archaic, like his original, and that the King James style was ‘singularly consonant’ with the matter in hand. Dammit, he was right. Isenbike Togan defends this style, which grants to the oral tradition of history, not just its true dignity but its true weight and strength for people of the time. Cleaves is obscure, but often because he is over-exact.
In my story I spell Chinggis Tchingis. I’ll save that explanation for the next book, when he comes into his title.
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