THE MONGOLIAN MIND: PRINCIPAL IDEAS OF MONGOLIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

For several thousand years Mongolian history and historical writings have been standing out with the following characteristics: a/ informative, b/ knowledgeable, c/ explanatory d/ generalization /universalization/, meaning the trying to find out universe. These features are evidenced in the fundamental principal ideas of Mongolian historical writings. These characters are understandable when we think about the historical roots of the Mongols, whose ancestors lived on such wide central Asian and Eurasian land and steppes over thousands of years.

For centuries Mongolians built many different historical creatures in their home land. We are still discovering amazing ideas from the tremendous creatures of our ancestors. Among these, a very important one is the ideas ingrained in Mongolian historical writings.

The historical writings have several important principles inside their general content. To understand Mongolian historiography one must understand the principal ideas listed below:

1. Sacred principle
2. “Secret” principle
3. Chronological principle
4. Ideological principle.

1. SACRED PRINCIPLE OF THE MONGOLIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

       In general, throughout a long time of my own socio-philosophical studies, I strongly understand our ancestors’ specific historical writings in a rather special “container”, which is human memory. I explained this in my book “Steps of Modernization of Mongolian Society”.[1]

            Mongolian nationals had been keeping in their memory several hundred eposes from the ancient epochs up until the present days and these great epics continue to convey to us about significant historical events which happened with the Mongols a long time ago . It is common that for Mongolians specially train their talented pupils from their early childhood under an erudite teacher. This process is reflected in important historical events as part of ancient Mongolian epics.

            Heroic characters in epics are depicted as unusual sacred heroes because they were respected like Gods or great leaders of whole Mongols and Mongolian ethnicities. Ordinary people believed that epic heroes were actual, sacred leaders of the Mongols. It is indeed possible to learn about important historical events by analytically and critically studying some heroic Mongolian epics. In that sense, it is absolutely necessary to study the famous legendary epics such as Jangar, Geser and so on. They were one kind of historiographical sources of ancient Mongolian history which were composed and shaped in the mind of the Mongols.

            The Ancient Mongolian state “Hunnu Empire” existed around five hundred years, which had about ten Shanyu /Khaan or kings/, including:

• Toumen shanyu - ?-209 /BC/
• Mouden shanyu – 209-176 /BC/
• Laoshan shanyu - 174-163 /BC
• Gunchen shanyu -161-123 /BC/
• Hkuhane shanyu – 53- / In this year Hunnu was conquered by China.
• Actually in Years 9-23 Hunnu collapsed and
• in Year 48 Hunnu empire was divided into two parts.

Some ancient Mongolian epics often describe these legendary figures as heroic. Because intellectuals of this era created heroic epics and these creatures were continually kept in the spirit of people. Modern scholars must try to read it scientifically only. It this era ancient Mongolians had been talking about their shanyu as heroic men or leaders, as sacred creature, even as unusual, unique persons etc. In such circumstances actual historical events and real people were considered as esoteric. Because of such understanding ancient Mongolian heroic epics had been studied only as legends, but not as historical sources.

In fact, sacred stories in eposes about actual history laid a foundation for the secret principle based on which Mongolian history is studied. In other words, telling a real history in a sacred manner in essence contained esoteric information about historic events. But these real historic events characterized as sacred and legendary in heroic eposes had been kept in the mind of common people for a long, long time.

2.  “SECRET” PRINCIPLE OF THE MONGOLIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

Many different tribes and ethnic groups of Mongols lived on the late ancient Mongolian land. All those Mongolians from time to time were united under their own states like Hunnu, Siyambi, Joujan, Moyun-toba, Kidan, etc. Every state had been ruled by powerful Mongol ethnic groups like Dunkhu, Shivei, Hunnu, Kidan, Merkit and so on. The ethnic groups usually had their own powerful leader in kinship and they kept their leadership families’ history very secretly from others due to strong influences from their main religious beliefs or shamanistic teachings.

In accordance with the shamanistic understanding on the world and human life that every shaman can do a bad thing to somebody if he precisely knows a man’s year, day and hour of birth. Based on such strong shamanistic understanding which was predominant among Mongolians during this time, in particular, their leaders usually kept their all life story as a secret, which included historical writings.

As I mentioned above, sacred telling about real history laid the foundation for the secret principle of consideration on Mongolian history. In other words, the content of such telling in its essence included esoteric information about historic events. But the new principle of classic medieval Mongolian historiography named as “secret” meant to keep actual events away from the ears of other ethnicities and nations. Real actions to only those who lead their country and its own people must know the actual events.

Why did the early and later ancient Mongolians keep their important historical events secret from another ethnicities and other kinships? They had a serious reason for it. They were in strong beliefs about their khans and leaders that they came from “the tenger” or cosmos/sky and since their life, actions, adventures and mentality must be unusual, thus, these details must be kept secret from others. It means, historical writings and genius records also must be kept secret inside their own kinship only for safety and security purposes.

This principle of the Mongolian historiography had been very strongly followed in the writings of great Chinggis Khaan’s Mongol Empire up to Mongolian Yuan Dynasty. Its factual depiction was “The Secret History of the Mongols”. Rashid Ad Din, a famous historian, mentioned about this principle in his “Compendium of chronicles /Sudariin chuulugan”[2].

3. CHRONOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE OF THE MONGOLIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

Historically just after the establishment of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in China, Mongolian historians started to write exact chronological history of the Mongols and Mongol states due to potential dangers to destroy historical documents on the part of Chinese conquerors.

Let me elaborate on the danger existed as to Chinese conquerors destroying writings about Mongolian history and historical events. If we read early ancient and late ancient Chinese history then we will see numerous pieces of specific, detailed information about the Mongols’ historical events of. But we still cannot find records written by Mongolians, because we think that they did not write their history and they did not create their own writings. In my opinion, this is only a very general concept. If we read paying deep attention we can find very important information like the following: a/ they used the writings created by Mongolians[3]; b/ we can read very clear, concrete information about ancient Mongolians’ activities in ancient Chinese written sources. It means that ancient Chinese historians used some writings produced by Mongolians themselves during that time[4]. Unfortunately, those written documents did not survive to reach us. Perhaps Chinese historians used them for their writings and then destroyed or those documents went missing forever. Probably because for long times Mongolian historians kept their historical sources and records rather secret.

The first typical chronological historical writing was “Notes of Bogd Hero Chinggis Khaan’s conquests” from the time of Khubilai’s reign in China. Obviously, Chinese historians actively participated in the process of writing this historical book beside Mongolian historians. The entire work was carried out under the direct leadership of Khubilai-Khaan, the Yuan dynasty’s king .

During the Mongolia Yuan Dynasty in China, many young Mongolians specially those from the Golden family successfully studied in Beijing getting educated. Then many of them wrote important Mongolian history books after the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty and throughout the time of the Khaant Mongol State /from 1370 up to 1635 South Khalkha Mongolia, up to 1690 North Khalkha Mongolia and up to 1757 West or Oirat Mongolia/ enjoyed the creation of several dozens of famous history books. This tradition also continued during the time of the Manchu domination over Mongolia up to 1911.

4. IDEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE OF MONGOLIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

This principle of Mongolian historiography was established in the Mongolian communist time during the XX century. Whereas the ideological foundation underlined only the origin of khans’ birth, the ideological principle pervaded the whole historical process from the theoretical views of Marxism. For example, Mongolian Marxist historians explained traditional Mongolian society according to the Marxist social theories like class struggle, social formation, matters between the economic basis and superstructure[5], etc.

In light of this Marxist ideological principle, communist Mongolian historical studies in the XX century characterized scientific historiography. According to Marxist historians, a scientific study of history means only a Marxist ideological interpretation of historical events. But Marxist ideological interpretation concerned exactly marxist  theoretical explanations, political assessments of historical processes, not more. Thus, the Marxist ideological principle was adhered to throughout the whole content of historical studies. It means that historical process offered explanations only on the basis of Marxist theories on socio-economic life and society

Of course, if we clarify with regard to these Marxist views about historical events, then general history and fact studies, and also analyses of Mongolian history during the communist time is extremely important in understanding the past life of Mongolians during that time. In this content we use important works of studies of Mongolian and soviet Russian historians.

                                                 RESUME

            In addition to the aforementioned principal ideas, the ideological foundation of Mongolian historiography had been strong roots either from shamanism or Buddhism. For example, great khans come from “Munkh Tenger” as allowed shamanism, or khans took the soul of Buddhist gods like holy sacred / khutugt gegeen, and so on. These unique characteristics were developed during the Mongolian different historical time as well as in Mongolian historiography.

Thank you for attention.

Literature:

• Rashid Ad Din “Compendium of chronicles / Sudriin chuulgan”, p166. Ulaanbaatar, 2002, Vol. I /in Mongolian/
• Fan Shuan Lin. Тhu Yui Hong A History of old Than state, Ulaanbaatar, 2017
• History of the Mongolian People’s Republic. Vols. 1, 2 & 3 Ulaanbaatar, 1966-1969 /in Mongolian/
• Dashpurev D. “Steps of Modernization of Mongolian Society” USA, 2018, /In Russian/

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